You Can’t Tell the Oboist from the Clarinetist Without a Program!
Every time you have a concert, you have to do a program. Seems simple enough – you just list all of the tunes with composers and all of the players by instrument. What could go wrong!?! I know most parents thought I gave this chore to my office assistant who passed it off to the secretary who in turn gave it to an intern to take care of. In reality, I would usually be lying in bed the night before the concert and go “#@%^#**&” (insert your favorite expletive here), “I forgot all about the program”. After that realization, I sometimes forgot again until band class the next day. This resulted in typing a program and getting it printed between school ending and concert time that night. No pressure!
I never really understood the need of a parent to come up immediately after a concert to tell me I had misspelled their kid’s name. How about tomorrow? Or better yet, that I had left the name off entirely. I believe I did this to Robbie Moore for 3 concerts in a row and he still loves me. The exact time in my life when I decided to let program worries go and have a little fun was during my third year at Houston. My parents had come to hear my concert band for the first time ever. After the concert was over, they made their way down front to see their son (me) just as a band parent was expressing their unhappiness with my having spelled their child’s name wrongly. At our next concert, I spelled every kid in the bands name wrong except for their kid. Some messages aren’t meant to be subtle.
Once, there was some emotional distress in band caused by a breakup between Jackie Young and Shane Halpern. I don’t know whose fault it was but I did want to have some fun with it. At the concert that week, I added Halpern as the last name for every girl in band EXCEPT Jackie (ex: Jane Doe Halpern). Some would think that cruel but my memory is that we all laughed. I also think that Shane’s percentage chance of ever getting a date with a band girl plummeted – which was not a bad thing!
There was a period of time in Jazz Band where we had discovered that the secret to life was…………. Chicken. This resulted in me buying a jazz tune called “The Chicken”. When it came time for our concert, I changed the titles of ALL the Jazz Band tunes to something with chicken (ex: Blue Rondo ala Chicken, I’m in the Mood for Chicken, and that Commodores’ hit Brick Chicken). The world is better off with more chicken.
Mike Irby was our soccer coach at Houston for a while and every time we played a match, they would put the box score in the sport’s page of the Commercial Appeal. If the other team scored, he would instead substitute the name of a Houston teacher into the box score (ex: Ben Cook – assist). For one of our concerts, I substituted coaches for all of the composer’s names. Oh, I dressed it up a little (ex: Wolfgang Irby, Ludwig von Haney, etc…). The total number of folks that noticed was about 12. Sometimes this is all only for my enjoyment.
For the last concert I ever conducted at Houston, I left sort of a hidden message inside the names of the Wind Ensemble members. I gave everybody a middle initial. If you read the initials in order, it said, “If you can read this, you must be incredibly bored! Happy Trails!” The next day, I got email from a mom to tell me I had misspelled her daughter’s name and that her middle name was Ann. The fact that she emailed and did not accost me after the concert shows we made progress in 25 years.
I loved every minute I spent in front of the band at Houston (and even the few minutes I have gotten since I retired). While I respect the gravity and importance of teaching someone else’s kids, I none-the-less approached my job like a game provided for my amusement. If I haven’t thanked you for that in a while, I thank you now from the very bottom of my heart.
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