What is the Most Embarrassing Thing ...

... that you've done on stage or has happened to you on stage?

Here is something I did many years ago that still haunts me. I was in my college orchestra as a percussionist. As you know, percussionists are expected to play a variety of percussion instruments. Actually, all of them. People think it's easy, that we just sit around until we're needed. Then we get up and whack something with a mallet. But you try counting rests for seventy-five bars with a conductor that's all over the place. It's not easy.

One evening - a very special evening - we played Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov. The violinist was superb. Everyone was dressed to kill. In this piece, at the peak of tension, there is a wicked duet between the trumpets and a snare drum that consists of a fast, relentless sextuplet figure that goes on bar after bar ... The trumpet double tongues it (good luck!) and the snare drum marks the rhythm. It's a very difficult thing to pull off, keeping both instruments together for the duration. So what happened? Did we screw up? Embarrass the school with sloppy playing? No, my friends. We played it flawlessly. But what I can never forgive myself for doing is this. I played these marvelous sextuplets in a three piece brown suit. Courduroy, nonetheless. Everyone else looked dignified in black while I stuck out like a pretentious used car salesman. Oh, the shame. The humiliation! I remember going shopping with my mother to pick out the suit. Did I actually say, "I'll take this one, it's only $60?" Oh, the shame.

Please share your embarrassment - if you dare.

My freshman year of college I was a sadly mediocre third clarinet player in my school's marching band, which honestly is pretty mediocre in itself.  Anyhow, we we performing an arrangement of Taps and Eternal Father and during the beautifully orchestrated tutti chord at the end I had one of those wonderful reed malfunctions that mediocre clarinet players are prone to have...it was not a good day.

I've since moved on to be playing glockenspiel or being drum major.

Ha! Was it a squeaker? It happens.

I'm sure nobody can beat this one...

Feeling dizzy and having your stomach upset during a performance of the children choir you were part of... turning pale, vision blurred, stepping forward halfway into a song to tell the conductress you were sick... and all of a sudden, without any warning, vomiting over her right in front of the audience's eyes, before fainting.

It happened to me. As soon as I reopened my eyes and came back to my senses, I knew my days in the choir were over. And so was my career - at 8 years old.

In my freshman spring band concert we played a piece as our finale that has a very sudden loud chord at the beginning. I was emptying my spit inbetween pieces and not paying much attention to the director, so I was completely caught off guard when the rest of the band started. The first chord startled me so badly that I literally jumped off of my seat. The horn parts were completely absent for the first half of the piece as the whole section was in hysterics.

Singing the big solo, incredibly technically difficult, in a Vivaldi oratorio that I'd been practicing for 6 months, and it's actually going okay.  So I think to myself, oh yes, connect with the audience...  I'm supposed to connect with the audience to enhance the musical experience...  I look around the room for a few beats, drop my head back down into my score and have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA where I am on the page.  The whole movement is nothing but endless strings of 1/16 notes so it all looks the same and it's about 10 minutes long so it all starts to sound the same too.  The continuo had my part for cues written in the score, so he followed me when I picked the wrong string of 1/16 notes for the next entrance.  The rest of the orchestra was where we were actually supposed to be.  For a good ten measures or so...  I now run my finger along the notes as I go along.  I'm sure some people think I look odd, but I've learned my lesson.  

On 5/19/2016 at 11:35 PM, Austenite said:

I'm sure nobody can beat this one...

Feeling dizzy and having your stomach upset during a performance of the children choir you were part of... turning pale, vision blurred, stepping forward halfway into a song to tell the conductress you were sick... and all of a sudden, without any warning, vomiting over her right in front of the audience's eyes, before fainting.

It happened to me. As soon as I reopened my eyes and came back to my senses, I knew my days in the choir were over. And so was my career - at 8 years old.

 

Yes, you're right. I have never puked on stage.

49 minutes ago, pateceramics said:

Singing the big solo, incredibly technically difficult, in a Vivaldi oratorio that I'd been practicing for 6 months, and it's actually going okay.  So I think to myself, oh yes, connect with the audience...  I'm supposed to connect with the audience to enhance the musical experience...  I look around the room for a few beats, drop my head back down into my score and have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA where I am on the page.  The whole movement is nothing but endless strings of 1/16 notes so it all looks the same and it's about 10 minutes long so it all starts to sound the same too.  The continuo had my part for cues written in the score, so he followed me when I picked the wrong string of 1/16 notes for the next entrance.  The rest of the orchestra was where we were actually supposed to be.  For a good ten measures or so...  I now run my finger along the notes as I go along.  I'm sure some people think I look odd, but I've learned my lesson.  

 

I'm laughing my donkey off! Can I say donkey here? Anyway, I hope you had your poker face because your voice is so nice and people might not have noticed anyway, like Prince Esterhazy complaining about too may notes. (They have no idea what's really going on.)

Oh, no.  I'm pretty sure it was obvious.  A friend of mine was recording it, and he still swears to this day that, gosh, he somehow managed to forget to push record and missed the first movement.  Yeah, right.  The best part was that, having somehow made it through the rest of the piece without just dying of shame on the spot, which has about 20 minutes of just alto solo, I make it off stage and through the door with the other soloists and go "Expletive, expletive, expletive!  How the expletive did I manage to do that!  Oh my God!"  Forgetting that, since the rest of the choir is filing out just after the soloists, the door is going to open again in a second or two.  The audience may have gotten an earful of profanity.

On 26/05/2016 at 1:30 AM, Ken320 said:

I'm laughing my donkey off! Can I say donkey here? Anyway, I hope you had your poker face because your voice is so nice and people might not have noticed anyway, like Prince Esterhazy complaining about too may notes. (They have no idea what's really going on.)

I think you mean Joseph II, HRE.

I think the most depressing thing I have experienced on stage is playing under a principal violist that did not show up to almost all of the rehearsals (in fact, I was the only viola player at many of the rehearsal dates). It was an all-Sibelius concert, so I can't remember if it was the first symphony or the violin concerto, but there is a fragile moment where the violas are alone. Even though I had practiced the part, I didn't enter and neither did anybody else because the leader didn't play - and on stage is certainly no place to argue with the principal of your section. It would have been different had I been first desk - I have sometimes "taken the reins" if the principal player gets confused, as you should, but if you are not first desk it is highly inappropriate I think, especially if you do not know the principal personally. I just hated it because this solo had been discussed on several occasions during rehearsals and there were no longer any issues.