Re: Re: Re: To Dave Zerkel


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Posted by Dave Zerkel on September 16, 2003 at 21:35:31:

In Reply to: Re: Re: To Dave Zerkel posted by Atlanta Tuba Dad on September 16, 2003 at 08:08:41:

I attend a large university in the South and never thought that something like this could happen to me...

About 15 measures into the second tune on my program, my first valve on my PT-15 seized. Frozen. I kindly excused myself from the stage and went back stage, feverishly scratched my head and thought, "Boy, I wish I knew how these things worked!" Having the mechanical aptitude of a house plant, I was unable to make my horn work again, despite my furrowed brow and prodigious perspiration.

At that point, my choices were:

a.) Bail and reschedule, or
b.) Borrow an F tuba from one of my students, who conveniently enough were on the other side of the curtain.

Well, I went with plan B (the show must go on, yadda, yadda...). My choices were a Yamaha 822 and two very similar Kurath/Wilson tubas. Having never played either horn, I asked Ian Melrose, my TA , if I could borrow his horn, the Kurath. He went and grabbed it and I went on and finished the program.

Amazingly enough, no one was hurt, people clapped and my horn could be fixed today with a couple of taps on the rotor post thingy-ma-jig. The moral of the story: Stay in school, don't do drugs, and always say please and thank you.

The End


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