Musicians — a cautionary tale

This is in the nature of a warning to parents.

Just because your child has decided on to be a classical musician, do not be fooled into thinking that this means that they have chosen a life that is normal, staid or boring.  Musicians are musicians are musicians, and it doesn’t matter whether they play classical chamber music, pound out punk rock, or sing sweet folk songs.   When the concert is over, they all want to let their hair down and party.  I learned this when I studied in San Francisco at the conservatory of music located there.

The trouble was, student recitals and special ensemble events were scheduled into whatever time slots were left over after the big events happened.   If we were going to perform in a major venue, we had to fit our rehearsals and performances in around the schedule of the ensemble who “owned” the venue.

This meant that quite regularly, someone was feeling a need to celebrate in a big way on a day that fell in the middle of the week.   Needless to say, the ordinary citizens that were our neighbors frequently felt unreasonably disturbed by revelry at abnormally late hours.   To make things worse, after-concert parties usually didn’t even get started until after 10p.m.  It wasn’t uncommon for a large group of excited musicians to burst into a flat or apartment in full voice, so to speak, with no gradual crescendo to warn the unwitting souls who shared a building with the locale of the party.

This could lead to some misunderstandings.

I can recall numerous epic parties.  After a couple of years, I became famous for my annual Halloween Costume Party and Pumpkin Carving Contest.   Of course, there was no question but it MUST be held on Halloween, no matter what day of the week it fell on. One year during that event someone came across my copy of the Complete Gershwin Song Book.   The extreme inebriation of the lucky finders resulted in it being deemed necessary to play and sing through the entire book of songs, the rationale being that as fully trained musicians we ought to be capable of sight-reading and sight-singing the whole shebang.   Unfortunately, this decision was made at around 3:30 a.m. and the resultant more or less harmonic caterwauling elicited pounding on the wall from our next door neighbors.  

The first party I hosted was an impromptu affair shortly after Jim and I had moved into the flat down near the beach.   I believe that the New Music Ensemble had successfully performed a concert featuring the works of several student composers.  It happened to be a Tuesday night, but no matter.   A party was declared, and I rashly invited the group of composers and performers, which comprised well over 30 people, back to my place.   While some people went off to procure supplies, I rushed home to apprise my new room mate of the coming event.

Fortunately, he was still up, and being a proper sailor and an experienced bachelor, was up for a “small” party even though it was a weekday and he had to be at work by 6:30 a.m. the next day.   Since he was used to living in the bowels of a ship, a notoriously noisy environment, he proposed that when he needed to sleep, he would just retire to his room and we could party on.   That is exactly the plan we followed.  

The party was going swimmingly well, everyone was having a wonderful time.   What with the poker game with cheerleaders going on in the living room, the group of people in the front bedroom who were trying to play Beethoven piano sonatas four handed on the piano, and the folks in the kitchen who were just carrying on conversations, and by carrying on I mean carrying on LOUDLY, the decible level was pretty high.  

Suddenly, Jim emerged from his bedroom, bleary eyed and bedraggled.   “Quiet!” he roared in his best sailor-hailing-passing-vessel voice.  Instantly, the crowd fell silent.   In the resultant hush we could hear our landlords, stomping up and down the hall over our heads.   “Good grief, they’ve been doing that for 15 minutes.   Didn’t anybody hear them?”  he inquired bitterly.  Well, of course we hadn’t, we had been making way too much noise.  ”They woke me up,” he added, glared at us all, and disappeared back into his room.  

We immediately dispersed, of course.   The next day I apologized abjectly to my landlords and neighbors.   The landlords were cool, they knew I was a music student.   In the future, they mildly requested, if we could just give them 24 hours notice they had cousins who lived in Daly City and they could always go stay the night there.   They completely understood about the need to celebrate important passages like senior recitals.   Just not at the drop of a hat.  

After that, I always made sure to invite our next door neighbors to parties too, to avoid surprising them.   Once the people that lived directly to our north actually came to a party, to our great surprise, and had a wonderful time.

Well, obviously there has to be one event that absolutely takes the cake.   By the time this tale occurred, I had quit playing because of a repetitive use injury to my bow arm, and as a consolation prize been hired as Orchestra Manager and Orchestra Librarian to the school.   I was responsible for renting orchestra parts, acting as a liaison between the orchestra and the conductor, getting instruments and stands and other equipment to places where we were performing off campus, taking attendance at orchestra rehearsal, etc. etc. etc.   I also worked as the early morning receptionist on the switchboard.  The orchestra and I knew each other quite well, and I was considered a character by both faculty and student body.

Every year a major fund raising event for the school was the Sing-it-Yourself Messiah, an event held at Davies Symphony Hall.   The school provided the orchestra and the soloists, the members of the audience comprised the chorus.   The school had really tapped into the possibilities of this event.   Not only do you sell tickets to the actual performance, but for a month beforehand you can extract more money from the enthusiasts by holding training sessions and sectionals, for a small fee of course.  

The thing had to be sandwiched in between San Francisco Symphony concerts and perormances.  At first, this wasn’t hard because it oas only a one day evolutionm,  but it rapidly became so popular it became necessary to extend the run of performances.   That particular year, we had worked hard moving downtown to perform, having a rehearsal at Davies Hall, and then done three our performances.   We fell the need to celebrate the end of the fund raiser plus the fact that the lucrative season of Christmas gigs was upon us.  

Someone had sublet a town house up on Twin Peaks, and felt comfortable inviting the group there.  Late at night a group of approximately 100 adrenaline-filled musicians filled the apartment within minutes, chattering fortissimo, and proceeded rapidly to get even louder, unbelievable as it seemed at the time.

It wasn’t too long after the party had commenced before the doorbell rang, accompanied by an authoritative rap at the door.   Although the blinds in the kitchenwere (mercifully) shut, we could see the flashing red and blue lights in the street that indicated that our visitors were of an official nature.  

“The cops are here!” relayed like a silencer through the throng.   Nobody knew what to do, and of course they looked to me, their “Fearless Leader,” to save them from the upcoming, apparently inevitable, disaster.  I looked within and realized that I was in deep, deep shit, since I knew that several of the partygoers were underage, and to compound the problem there was an ample supply of marijuana on the premises.   I had been too busy chatting to really indulge in that particular vice, yet, and so I was still fairly lucid.    My legal life and future prison career flashing before my eyes, I grabbed the person who held the lease on the apartment and we went to answer the door.

“Good evening, officers,” I cooed in my best sober adult motherly woman voice.   “What can we do for you?”

“We have received several calls complaining about this party.”

“Really?  I’m so sorry we have been making a disturbance.”

“Hmph.  Yeah, right,” the spokes-officer replied, or words to that effect.   “What in the world are you doing?   You do realize that it is Monday night, right?”

“Monday?”  I was thunderstruck, thereby confirming in their minds my complete imbecility.   “Oh, my God, you are right, it IS Monday.”   Suddenly I noticed their bemused expressions and realized what an idiot I was making of myself.  

“We completely forgot what day it is!”  I exclaimed.   “You know about the Sing-it-Yourself Messiah, right?”

“Mmm, yeah, I heard something about that,” the officer agreed.  “But I thought that was last night.”

“Well, it runs for more than one night, and we we just did the last performance tonight.  The orchestra and singers really wanted to celebrate, they have been working hard, and we just sort of decided to come here on the spur of the moment.”   I opened the door of the apartment, giving the fine law-enforcement officers a view down the hall of the apartment.    The tableau was rather stunning:   every single person was either in a long black formal, a tuxedo, or a glittering gown.   The people in the apartment nodded and smiled sedately at the cops, who took in a scene worthy of any movie.  They began to retire down the steps of the building.

“Okay, okay.   Just try to keep it down.  Most people need to sleep on Monday nights.   We don’t want to hear any more complaints about you people,” they warned us as they got into their cruiser.  

Needless to say, they didn’t.   

It was over half an hour before the person who had, as I opened the door to talk to the police, scooped up the baggies and joints, stuffed them in a vegetable bag and buried them at the back of the freezer felt it was safe to reveal where the stash had been secreted.   A certain amount of suspicion had begun to rise by the time he came clean.  This dismay was mixed with shock; no one could believe their close buddies would have ripped them off of so much really fine pot.  Ultimately, we did  agree that he was right in thinking that the cops could have just been waiting for the party to get back into full swing before they came back and busted us.

Musicians know how to party heartier than any other group I have ever associated with, and that includes artists, theatre majors, cavers, and engineers. 

A word to the wise. . .