Come Blow Your Horn

I don’t want to toot my own horn or anything, but I’ve been asked to do my very first guest post for the advice column at The Mouthy Housewives (insert girls shriek and giggle here), and let me assure you what a task it was to come up with sharp-tongued advice considering how meek and docile I am at all times.

Please do stop by TMH and gape at my wisdom.

My father played the horn.

He was a symphony musician until he retired, and contrary to what you might think, symphony musicians are an irreverent bunch (especially the brass players). One of the wives used to call the section the “brassholes.”

These guys like to party. One day the trombone player called my mom and said, “Cathy, I’m sorry if I was rude to you at the party last night. I was really drunk.”

My mom responded, “Bill, I wasn’t at the party last night.”

There was the time a very important basketball game coincided with a semi-important concert, and to solve that problem one musician stuck a portable tv in his instrument case and brought it on stage to watch the game during the concert. This idea worked splendidly until the entire horn section missed its cue and was interrupted from the all-too captivating game by the conductor yelling in a stage whisper, “Where are the Horns?!”

Once when a pompous french conductor came in and had the nerve to point out a mistake the first horn player had made (who obviously knew he had made a mistake as he was a professional), the first horn tried ignoring him; and when the frustrated conductor addressed him in an even louder tone to get his point across, he responded, “What can I say? I make-a ze boo-boo” to the great bright red consternation of the french conductor.

Like a cobra, they would strike when antagonized. There was this guest conductor that no one could stand because he was so arrogant. He used to have a shallow dish with a sponge in it on his stand so he could wet his fingers to turn the page. Except that he was a lush and the glass held gin instead of water; he would lick his fingers before turning the page and thus get through the tedium of the concert.

Finally some thoughtful soul stuck a toothpick with an olive in the dish.

For some reason, this guy had it in for the first horn player and made him do the tuning A in front of the audience at each concert. This was after everyone had already tuned, turning the request into a huge insult – it was if to say he didn’t know how to tune his own instrument. So at the last concert when he ordered him to give an A, my father bent down behind his stand and blew a kazoo instead. The entire orchestra fell out laughing while the conductor stood there livid.

Honestly, some people take themselves entirely too seriously.

There was another guest conductor that no one liked (there really were ones they did like, but these stories are over 30 odd years). He gave the players such a hard time during the rehearsals, coming down on them for the slightest thing; so naturally they got back at him in any way they could. Did they play poorly on purpose you might ask? Of course not; these guys were professionals. However, they made his life very difficult and when the guest conductor couldn’t take the insubordination anymore he threw his baton down and yelled, “Call me a taxi!”

The assistant resident conductor, who was just as much of a brasshole as all the rest, stood up and quipped, “You’re a taxi.”

As a girl I remember the huge red folding seats that threatened to engulf me.  I remember the walk through the box seats at the end of the concert that led to the forbidden staircase and the backstage. I remember my father standing with his friends laughing and ragging on each other. Everyone had a nickname and no one was safe from the abuse that poured out freely.

We were there, often every week, going to the ballets, the operas, the Tiny Tots concerts, the Masterworks, the Pops, the Sunday afternoon concerts. And to this day, the cacophony of instruments warming up, the tuning “A” that causes everyone to snap to harmonic obedience, only to fall out when everyone is done tuning and goes back to their own discordant warm-up – this, this reminds me of my Dad.

So it’s only fitting that Grandpa impart his passion to his grandchildren.

I hope they too share their grandfather’s passion

(with perhaps a touch more reverence).

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