Live Performances Gone Awry

There are so many instances of classical music disaster stories. I have a great many of them myself. One of the funniest ones involves a trombone player who did not realize that the overture, which he did not play on, was very short, and he went deep into the basement of the hall to practice a little. A piano concerto was next on the program. Well, it took them TEN MINUTES to find the guy. In the meantime, the audience is just sitting there. Think about this - ten minutes is an excruciatingly long time for this to be happening. The conductor of course had gone offstage after the applause for the overture, and neither he or the soloist has come on. Finally, after this ten minutes of dead silence, the trombone player comes out on stage. Now he sat in the back row on a riser, and behind this riser was all the percussion equipment. The chairs on this back row were of the type that are all connected together. Now it so happened that BOTH of the back legs of this trombonist's chair were hanging off the back end of the riser, and no one had noticed this. Accordingly, again remembering that this is after ten minutes of dead silence, this trombonist finally comes on stage, sits down, and the entire row of chairs falls off the riser backwards, into all of the percussion equipment, with a horrendous noise. Amazingly, no one was hurt, and no instruments were damaged. But what a hilarious thing to happen after ten minutes of dead silence!!

I actually have my own very similar falling off a riser in a concert story, but it pales in comparison to that one. It was only my own chair, I wasn't hurt, and my horn was undamaged. I got up and waved to the audience.

"I agree with Entrope. One of the incredible things about classical is that the performers never give anything less than a faultlessly professional performance. :)"

Do you really think no classical musicians have drug and/or alchohol problems? They're human beings too, with their own set of problems like everyone else. That makes about as much sense as saying golfers don't have drug/alchohol/steroid issues the other sports have because it's a high society sport.

Maybe classical has far more 'functional addicts' than most other genres?

Kbarkamian, you are most definitely correct. I have known personally several orchestral musicians who were fired for drug or alcohol abuse.

Entope, I could be mistaken, but, I thought Pavarotti was booed for forgetting the lyrics. You might want to read Frank Zappa's book where he goes into some detail about suing the LSO for unprofessionalism.

We were at a three day outdoor music festival a few years ago , standing right in front of the stage , I told the wife that I was thirsty and was going back to the camper , her and my young daughter accompanied me , we had walked about half way back to where we were set up when the wind blew over a large column of speakers and the stage , killing a women and injuring many .
Needles to say the beer jokes will never end .