Posted by Scrooge on December 15, 2003 at 20:30:28:
In Reply to: Name That Chord Gig posted by Marty Neilan on December 15, 2003 at 16:26:50:
Once, there was a brass quartet with organ by some European composer that our quintet was to play at this _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _(in the news lately) church. The harmony was complex - quartal actually - and I did a REALLY good job (if I do say so myself) of writing out an INNER fifth part that sounded as if written by the composer. (I did this because the "genious"-organist was having me DOUBLE the fourth part with the trombone, which REALLY made the piece sound S-T-U-P-I-D, particular with the quartal harmonic structure.) I hustled out the extra inner part during our rehearsal break.
The ironic thing about all of this is, the, uhh, "sensitive" organist heard only part of a joke one of the trumpet players was telling (evesdropping on us) that he misunderstood to be a joke about gay people (which it wasn't), and we were not invited back the next year.
Of course, time passes and we're all working there again, as all of the clergy and music staff have all cycled out of that church at least twice since then.
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Moral: If it's a "read music" gig, DO WHAT TONY CLEMENTS SAYS. It often doesn't pay to be nice or try to do anything "above and beyond" for most folks. They either don't appreciate it, actually find it annoying, or sometimes just aren't very nice folks anyway...
- Scrooge