Humor

Music humor.

Squeaking and squawking
All eyes roll to the heavens
The clarinet speaks

One beat to change from
Harmon to cup to bucket
Hey, who wrote this s**t?

The jam session starts
Somebody calls "Giant Steps"
Cold fear grips my brain

Here's the girl singer
Stepping to the microphone
Pitch, Time, All gone now

Gig is going well
Some jerk requests "In the Mood"
I look at my watch

I once had a dream
Big house, new car, big money
Now I play the bass

Gorgeous chick tells me
"You sound just like Kenny G"
My ego shatters

Three-eight, eleven-eight
Damn you Andrew Lloyd Webber
Five-eight, seven-eight

The woodwind doubler
Practicing the piccolo
Frustration defined

Pit orchestra gig
Days and nights become as one
I have no damned life

Bad intonation
Strings are sharp and reeds are flat
Brass too loud again

Great changes, good groove
A one-in-a-million gig
No singer. Yippee!

An oxymoron:
"He played the accordion
With delicacy"

The accordion
"Squeeze box," yes, but more often
"The Stomach Steinway"

Bassoons forever
Try in vain not to sound like
A farting bedpost

The strings slowly tune
When they're done the unisons
Are anything but

"I can't find my note"
Bemoans the confused singer
Quit now," we all pray

The contractor calls
Months of Andrew Lloyd Webber
"Bird Lives" no longer

Money's everything
Playing any gig that comes
Whores, we are all whores

That plate of hors d'oeuvres
Cost more than we're getting paid
Think we underbid?

Break time is over
Rest of band is returning
Now for that phone call

Rock drummer, lounge keys
Classically trained singer
Welcome to sub hell

God bless trust fund gigs
Only have to eat ramen
For a few more weeks

My drummer helped me
Count the syllables

"After playing the violin for the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, Albert Einstein asked, "Did I play well?" "You played relatively well," replied Piatigorsky.

"Harpists spend ninety percent of their lives tuning their harps and ten percent playing out of tune." -- Igor Stravinsky

When told that a soloist would need six fingers to perform his concerto, Arnold Schoenberg replied, "I can wait."

"I would like to hear Elliot Carter's Fourth String Quartet, if only to discover what a cranky prostate does to one's polyphony." -- James Sellars

"Exit in case of Brahms." -- Philip Hale's proposed inscription over the doors of Boston Symphony Hall

"Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?" -- Igor Stravinsky

Someone commented to Rudolph Bing, manager of the Metropolitan Opera, that "George Szell is his own worst enemy." "Not while I'm alive, he isn't!" said Bing.

"Her voice sounded like an eagle being goosed." -- Ralph Novak on Yoko Ono

"Parsifal -- the kind of opera that starts at six o'clock and after it has been going three hours, you look at your watch and it says 6:20." -- David Randolph

"One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend hearing it a second time." -- Gioacchino Rossini

"I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music." -- Benjamin Britten on Stravinsky's The Rakes's Progress

The following program notes are from an unidentified piano recital. [from Edmonton Centre newsletter, Canada, and Canadian RCCO newsletter]

Tonight's page turner, Ruth Spelke, studied under Ivan Schmertnick at the Boris Nitsky School of Page Turning in Philadelphia. She has been turning pages here and abroad for many years for some of the world's leading pianists.

In 1988, Ms. Spelke won the Wilson Page Turning Scholarship, which sent her to Israel to study page turning from left to right. She is winner of the 1984 Rimsky Korsakov Flight of the Bumblebee Prestissimo Medal, having turned 47 pages in an unprecedented 32 seconds. She was also a 1983 silver medalist at the Klutz Musical Page Pickup Competition: contestants retrieve and rearrange a musical score dropped from a Yamaha. Ms. Spelke excelled in "grace, swiftness, and especially poise."

For techniques, Ms. Spelke performs both the finger-licking and the bent-page corner methods. She works from a standard left bench position, and is the originator of the dipped-elbow page snatch, a style used to avoid obscuring the pianist's view of the music. She is page turner in residence in Fairfield Iowa, where she occupies the coveted Alfred Hitchcock Chair at the Fairfield Page Turning Institute.

Ms. Spelke is married, and has a nice house on a lake.

Subject: Piano Recital

A Humid Recital Stirs Bangkok

This review by Kenneth Langbell appeared in the English Language Bangkok Post. It was made available by Martin Bernheimer of the Los Angeles Times.)

THE RECITAL, last evening in the chamber music room of the Erawan Hotel by US Pianist Myron Kropp, the first appearance of Mr. Kropp in Bangkok, can only be described by this reviewer and those who witnessed Mr. Kropp's performance as one of the most interesting experiences in a very long time.

A hush fell over the room as Mr. Kropp appeared from the right of the stage, attired in black formal evening-wear with small white poppy in his lapel. With sparse, sandy hair, a sallow complexion and a deceptively frail looking frame, the man who has repopularized Johann Sebastian Bach approached the Baldwin Concert Grand, bowed to the audience and placed
himself upon the stool.

It might be appropriate to insert at this juncture that many pianists, including Mr. Kropp, prefer a bench, maintaining that on a screw-type stool they sometimes find themselves turning sideways during a particularly expressive strain. There was a slight delay, in fact, as Mr Kropp left the stage briefly, apparently in search of a bench, but returned when informed that there was none.

AS I HAVE mentioned on several other occasions, the Baldwin Concert Grand, while basically a fine instrument, needs constant attention, particularly in a climate such as Bangkok. This is even more true when the instrument is as old as the one provided in the chamber music room of the Erawan Hotel. In this humidity the felts which separate the white keys from the black tend to swell, causing an occasional key to stick, which apparently was the case last evening with the D in the second octave.

During the "raging storm" section of the D-Minor Toccata and Fugue, Mr. Kropp must be complimented for putting up with the awkward D. However, by the time the "storm" was past and he had gotten into the Prelude and Fugue in D Major, in which the second octave D plays a major role, Mr. Kropp's patience was wearing thin.

Some who attended the performance later questioned whether the awkward key justified some of the language which was heard coming from the stage during softer passages of the fugue. However, one member of the audience, who had sent his children out of the room by the midway point of the fugue, had a valid point when he commented over the music and extemporaneous remarks of Mr. Kropp that the workman who had greased the stool might have done better to use some of the grease on the second octave D. Indeed, Mr. Kropp's stool had more than enough grease and during one passage in which the music and lyrics were both particularly violent, Mr. Kropp was turned completely around. Whereas before his remarks had been aimed largely at the piano and were therefore somewhat muted, to his surprise and that of those in the chamber music room he found himself addressing himself directly to the audience.

BUT SUCH THINGS do happen, and the person who began to laugh deserves to be severely reprimanded for this undignified behavior. Unfortunately, laughter is contagious, and by the time it had subsided and the audience had regained its composure Mr. Kropp appeared somewhat shaken. Nevertheless, he swiveled himself back into position facing the piano and, leaving the D Major Fugue unfinished, commenced on the Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor.

Why the concert grand piano's G key in the third octave chose that particular time to begin sticking I hesitate to guess. However, it is certainly safe to say that Mr. Kropp himself did nothing to help matters when he began using his feet to kick the lower portion of the piano instead of operating the pedals as is generally done.

Possibly it was this jarring or the un-Bach-like hammering to which the sticking keyboard was being subjected. Something caused the right front leg of the piano to buckle slightly inward, leaving the entire instrument listing at approximately a 35-degree angle from that which is normal. A gasp went up from the audience, for if the piano had actually fallen several of Mr. Kropp's toes if not both his feet, would surely have been broken.

It was with a sigh of relief therefore, that the audience saw Mr. Kropp slowly rise from his stool and leave the stage. A few men in the back of the room began clapping and when Mr. Kropp reappeared a moment later it seemed he was responding to the ovation. Apparently, however, he had left to get a red-handled fire ax which was hung back stage in case of fire, for that was what was in his hand.

MY FIRST REACTION at seeing Mr. Kropp begin to chop at the left leg of the grand piano was that he was attempting to make it tilt at the same angle as the right leg and thereby correct the list. However, when the weakened legs finally collapsed altogether with a great crash and Mr. Kropp continued to chop, it became obvious to all that he had no intention of going on with the concert.

The ushers, who had heard the snapping of piano wires and splintering of sounding board from the dining room, came rushing in and, with the help of the hotel manager, two Indian watchmen and a passing police corporal, finally succeeded in disarming Mr. Kropp and dragging him off the stage.

Instrument Jokes Don't visit this web site if you are easily offended by disparaging remarks about your musical instrument - especially viola players!

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Updated: April 10, 2011 (KB)

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