FW: Trouble with Trombones

[Richard Romeo]

don;t know is this true, but...very pynchonesque--Rich


August, 1998, Montevideo, Uruguay.
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Paolo Esperanza, bass-trombonist
with the Simphonica Mayor de Uruguay, in a misplaced moment of
inspiration, decided to make his own contribution to the cannon shots
fired as part of the orchestra's performance of Tchaikovsky's 1812
Overture at an outdoor children's concert.  In complete seriousness, he
placed a large, ignited firecracker, which was equivalent in strength
to a quarter stick of dynamite, into his aluminum straight mute and
then stuck the mute into the bell of his quite new Yamaha in-line
double-valve bass trombone.
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Later, from his hospital bed, he explained to a reporter through
bandages on his mouth, "I thought that the bell of my trombone would
shield me from the explosion and instead, would focus the energy of
the blast outwards and away from me, propelling the mute high above
the orchestra, like a rocket."  However, Paolo was not up on his
propulsion physics nor qualified to use high-powered artillery and, in
his haste to get the horn up before the firecracker went off, he
failed to raise the bell of the horn high enough so as to give the
mute enough arc to clear the orchestra.
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What actually happened should serve as a lesson to us all during those
delirious moments of divine inspiration.  First, because he failed to
sufficiently elevate the bell of his horn, the blast propelled the
mute between rows of players in the woodwind and viola sections of the
orchestra, missing the players and straight into the stomach of the
conductor, driving him off the podium and directly into the front row
of the audience.
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Fortunately, the audience were sitting in folding chairs and thus they
were protected from serious injury, for the chairs collapsed under
them, passing the energy of the impact of the flying conductor
backwards into the row of people sitting behind them, who in turn were
driven back into the people in the row behind and so on, like a row of
dominos.  The sound of collapsing wooden chairs and grunts of people
falling on their behinds increased logarithmically, adding to the
overall sound of brass cannons and brass playing as constitutes the
closing measures of the Overture.
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Meanwhile, all of this unplanned choreography not withstanding, back
on stage Paolo's Waterloo was still unfolding.  According to Paolo:
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"Just as the I heard the sound of the blast, time seemed to stand
still.  Everything moved in slow motion.  Just before I felt searing
pain to my mouth, I could swear I heard a voice with an Austrian accent
say, 'Fur every akshon zer iz un eekvul un opposeet re-akshon!'"  Well,
this should come as no surprise, for Paolo had set himself up for a
textbook demonstration of this fundamental law of physics.  Having
failed to plug the lead pipe of his trombone, he allowed the energy of
the blast to send a super-heated jet of gas backwards through the
mouthpiece of the trombone, said gas jet burning his
lips and face.
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The pyrotechnic ballet wasn't over yet.  The force of the blast was so
great it split the bell of his shiny Yamaha right down the middle,
turning it inside out while at the same time propelling Paolo
backwards off the riser.  And for the grand finale, as Paolo fell
backwards, he lost his grip on the slide of the trombone, allowing the
pressure of the hot gases coursing through the horn to propel the
trombone's slide like a double golden spear into the head of the 3rd
clarinetist, knocking him unconscious.
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The moral of the story?  Beware the next time you hear someone in the
low brass section yell out, "Hey, everyone, watch this!"