On Sunday I had organized a tea party with 4 friends, all female group. It was great!
One of them was Tjitske, the viola player who has more strong tales in her repertoire than anyone I know - and she's an expert at telling them.
She had me in stitches when she told me about the time she played Bach's Mattheus Passion - it is traditionally performed the 2 weeks before
Easter here - and on the stage before the show, they had chocolate easter eggs. She was legally blind at the time. The double bass player asked:
"Hey, toss me one of those," and she threw one in the general direction of the sound.
And lo and behold, she did something a professional pitcher wih 20/20 eyesight couldn't do - the egg landed straight into the bass's F-hole!
They did everything to get the egg out, but since those holes aren't very big the egg had to be in a specific rotation and they got nowhere by
holding the unwieldy instrument upside down.
As the stage lights had warmed up the egg to a softer state, they had the idea of grabbing the conductor baton to wiggle it out. Success!
However, the baton had gotten sticky from the egg, and during the performance about the death of Jesus, the poor conductor had a baton that kept
sticking to the music sheet, while the musicians had to clench their teeth to avoid bursting out in laughter. |
, leaving the sinking ship 
. 
