From: rickg@netcom.com (Rick Gordon)
Subject: The case for electronic music
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 92 19:10:21 GMT
Organization: Netcom - SF Bay, Cal Northifornia 
Followup-To: alt.peeves 

There are times when you feel like confronting God one-on-One, just to
get a straight answer to life's central question: Why me?

A couple of weeks ago I was preparing for a concert to be given July
19, a Sunday.  "Preparation" usually means getting the music adequately
rehearsed, alerting the local newspapers, printing programs up, that
sort of thing.  In this case, though, I was preparing to replace a
bass trombone player who had suffered a mild stroke.  By some accident
of uncharacteristically charitable luck I had found a good player who
actually showed up at rehearsal and could play the part.  With only one
rehearsal left before the concert my anxieties were still virulent, but
remission seemed within my grasp.

A phone call from the secretary of the new bass trombone: He's terribly
sorry, but Mr. T has been called out of the country unexpectedly and
won't return for two weeks.  This on the afternoon of the last rehearsal.
The pain in my head increases slightly, making me more alert (this is
one of those survival responses mediated by the brainstem, over which
nobody except percussionists has any conscious control).

The final rehearsal goes OK.  The lack of two trombones (the second has
reneged on a pact with Satan and has been sent directly to Hell, or has
the flu, I forget which) renders the low brass line punchless and anemic,
but overall the ensemble sound is very nice.  The trumpet section,
particularly, has worked hard to achieve a very balanced and clean sound,
and it shows.

After more phone calls I get a commitment from a bass trombone player
to play the concert.  He is known to me to be an excellent reader, he's
played in the group before, the risk is relatively low.  I even line
up a second trombone who can play the part.  Maybe this will all work
out after all, I think.

On the day of the concert I get a phone call.  It's the leader of the
trumpet section, who never calls me unless he has bad news.  My heartrate
ratchets up one notch on hearing his voice.  "I've got bad news," he 
says, causing my arterial pressure to bump the redline.  "I can't play
the concert," I hear him say, as if through a red fog.  Rick's adrenal
gland: squirt, squirt.  By some diabolical miracle he's managed to
slice, chop, and puree his (left) hand in his home woodshop, through the
divine agency of a table saw, router, lathe, or something (I don't
remember what it was that achieved the victory of steel over meat, and
I don't much care).  I thank him for calling, hang up the phone, and
wonder idly whether one little concert ruined will be so bad, in the
grand scheme of things.

As the trumpet section arrives at the venue, the second-chair player
mentions that there's one stand and one chair missing on the stage.  I
fix him with deadly serious but compassionate eyes and say: "No, there
isn't," and have the instantaneously guilty pleasure of seeing somebody
else's eyes glaze over with the volcanic suddenness of incipient
Performance Anxiety.  "Don't worry," I say with a straight face, "you
can handle it."  Like me, he's thinking of all the solo lines he's
*heard* in rehearsal, but never had to play.  The downbeat for the
start of the concert is now less than twenty minutes in the future.

The trombone section has arrived, all three of them.  I make introductions,
go over a few tricky spots I know will throw them if they don't see them
coming, and express my thanks.  The bass trombone asks if we're still using
four trumpets in the group.  "Almost always," I say, cleverly.

Somehow, time passes.

The audience applauds at the group's introduction, I walk the last mile to
the podium, I raise my stick, the concert begins.

 
-- 
Rick Gordon      | "It sure was a lot easier to be a political radical
rickg@netcom.com |  when I wasn't making any money."  -- Chris Baldwin