Naked Trombone Aggression

Fun moment in rehearsal today: one of the pieces we're tackling this week is Ravel's Alborado del gracioso, which is basically eight minutes of (hopefully) organized chaos, with a French accent. It's been a while since we've done it, and we've never played it under Osmo that I can remember, so as we read it through for the first time, we were all pretty well buried in our parts, concentrating solely on making our own wildly complicated lines fit into the larger sound. I'm still sitting at the very back of the viola section, so I was particularly intent on locking in with my principal, 20 or so feet in front of me.

So you can imagine my reaction when I heard what sounded like a toppling tower of soup cans coming from just over my shoulder. I nearly jumped out of my skin, and jumped again a moment later when I felt something heavy and metallic roll smack into my right foot. Almost immediately, there came a voice from the low brass, who sit on high risers right behind the violas: "Uh, little help?"

Apparently, what had happened was that one of our trombonists, Kari Sundstrom, had been trying either to insert or remove his huge metal mute while still keeping up with the furious pace of the piece, and in his haste, had sent the thing spiraling into the air, where it clattered down at my feet. Mutes get dropped and kicked all the time back there (and Sarah's written about what happens when they do,) but this was a mute drop with a whole new level of forcefulness, and the whole band stopped playing to laugh and point.

Trying to pretend that I hadn't just cowered like a child from a falling mute, I stood up, grabbed the mute, and marched it back to Kari, planting it firmly at the base of his stand and instructing him to hold the hell onto it, or I'd keep it next time...