We played once with the Raleigh, North Carolina symphony and the conductor told us a funny story. In a previous concert season they had chosen to perform some composition by a regional composer that featured an Appalacian theme of some sort. In the middle of the piece was 16 bars of music scored for musical saw. They finally found someone in the area who played the saw - a hillbilly woman from up in the North Carolina mountains somewhere. Somehow they got here to come down for this and they'd rehearsed her part in the afternoon before the show. But it was a very long day for her, traveling some distance from her home in the mountains and when showtime came, she was a bit on the tired side.
They brought her out on stage at the beginning of the piece, introduced her and let her get settled. Unfortunately, her 16 bars were way in the middle of the piece and by the time her part came around, she had dozed off and missed it. Dang - talk about 15 minutes of fame!
Responses