{"id":303,"date":"2009-07-25T09:04:46","date_gmt":"2009-07-25T15:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.insidethearts.com\/nondivisi\/?p=303"},"modified":"2009-07-25T09:04:46","modified_gmt":"2009-07-25T15:04:46","slug":"workplace-hazards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insidethearts.com\/nondivisi\/workplace-hazards\/","title":{"rendered":"Workplace Hazards"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of days ago the Wall Street Journal published an interesting\u00a0article<\/a> regarding various issues that are sometimes specific to outdoor performances. It got me thinking of some of my own experiences over the years, and how challenging (and humorous) it can be to try and give a convincing performance under less-than-ideal circumstances. I\u2019ve been trying to think of my top few (or bottom few) stories, but it’s hard to narrow it down. Some I\u2019ve witnessed, some I\u2019ve been involved in as a musician.\"hazard\"There was the concert at the Hollywood Bowl when a helicopter decided to hover over a performance of the Mahler 5th symphony until Michael Tilson Thomas stopped the concert and walked off (it resumed several minutes later, but the copter still came by a few times). Aspen is legendary for these sorts of incidents. I remember a hilarious episode as a student when, during a particularly delicate afternoon orchestra program, someone\u2019s very large dog (out on the lawn) simply would not stop barking. It was funny because a) the barking seemed pretty random during pauses in the music, like a commentary b) the house manager ran around frantically but couldn\u2019t find the dog, who appeared to be moving from one location to another and c) the barking was really<\/em> loud.<\/p>\n

Aspen was also where I once saw a (different) dog jump onto the stage during a chamber orchestra concert. He wandered around for awhile and left; everyone just kept playing. That was a weird summer; a few days later I saw a prominent violin soloist whip his bow off the string just before a lengthy orchestral interlude, only to watch it sail into the audience about six rows back. He casually jumped off the stage and waited patiently as his bow was passed to the aisle, then got back up and made the next entrance.<\/p>\n

At Tanglewood I remember numerous concerts that were almost entirely drowned out by storms, sometimes to my great relief. And then there are the hazards to the musicians themselves, beyond the possibility of getting your instrument wet or maybe getting electrocuted. One prominent wind player recalled an orchestral concert in which he was playing an extended solo and was forced to observe a mosquito land on his arm, bite him, and fly off before the solo was finished.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had snakes backstage, storms, raccoons, all kinds of stuff. Anyone care to write in with his or her personal favorite episodes?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of days ago the Wall Street Journal published an interesting\u00a0article regarding various issues that are sometimes specific to outdoor performances. It got me thinking of some of my own experiences over the years, and how challenging (and humorous) it can be to try and give a convincing performance under less-than-ideal circumstances. I\u2019ve been trying to think of my top few (or bottom few) stories, but it’s hard to narrow it down. Some I\u2019ve witnessed, some I\u2019ve been involved in as a musician.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,27,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basics","category-current-events","category-funny-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insidethearts.com\/nondivisi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insidethearts.com\/nondivisi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insidethearts.com\/nondivisi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insidethearts.com\/nondivisi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insidethearts.com\/nondivisi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/insidethearts.com\/nondivisi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insidethearts.com\/nondivisi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insidethearts.com\/nondivisi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insidethearts.com\/nondivisi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}