A couple most embarrassing moments on stage

Luckily, both of these incidents took place over a decade ago (I can say that now that it's 2009.)  Everyone who performs publicly for a living has a collection of embarrassing moments - here are a couple that made me cringe for a long time afterwards!  Now I can look back and give them a good laugh.  Usually.

With a certain professional touring ensemble, I was doing a 3-week stint on principal horn, filling in for a colleague from Berlin who had other engagements.  One of our projects involved a series of concerts in the beautiful Teatro in Ferrara, Italy.  The lovely and lively Trevor Pinnock was conducting; Kodaly's Galanta Dances started off the program.  For those of you who know this work, you'll also know that the introduction contains a fanfare for horn alone, very alone, all gutsy and passionate and Spanish.  It had gone like a dream in all the rehearsals, and for the concert, I decided to go for it with all I had.  Bear in mind this theater is the old opera sort with several stories of seating boxes, looking down upon the stage - this concert was sold out and was being broadcast live on RAI, the Italian national radio.  The piece began with a few bars of cellos, then it was my turn.  On the last bar of my solo, I missed a note.  Not one of those "approximaturas" o little bobbles we horn players are often plagued with, but the sort of overblown-by-several-overtones-at-fortissimo-ohmygodiwannadienow missed notes.  The crowd actually gasped.  RAI broadcasted everything to the Italian public sitting safely in their living rooms and cars.  The Galanta Dances kept on dancing for another 17 minutes, and all I could think about was how convenient it would be if a trap door opened under me, and I plummeted out of sight.  After the piece finished, during the applause, Maestro Pinnock came round to my chair and whispered in my ear, "Would you like another shot at that beginning?"  So I said yes, and we played the whole piece AGAIN!  I got my solo the second time perfectly, also broadcast live for those who hadn't ended up driving off the road in horror the first time, and received a solo bow to standing ovation to boot.  Backstage after the concert, the conductor confided in me that he had recently started a solo harpsichord recital, had a memory slip part way through, and had gone behind the curtain to fetch his music and started from the beginning once again.  He said it can happen to anyone.  Who ever gets a second chance like that?  I love you Trevor Pinnock.

The other incident involved the eminently audible consequences of the previous evening's tofu dinner, during the second round of an audition playing the Neuling Bagatelle for Low Horn, but I don't really want to talk about it after all.

25 random facts

While I am working on a "proper" blog, I will share here a list (inspired by a little facebook post going round) of 25 random facts about me.

1) My favorite breed of dog is the whippet.

2) I have a small birthmark under my right eye, which most of my friends and family at one point or other have tried to rub off, thinking it was mascara or dirt.

3) I speak four languages and can do bits of a few others.

4) In middle school, I gave a campaign speech for presidential candidate Gary Hart at an all-school assembly, wearing a Halloween costume of leaves stapled to an orange and green dress.

5) I shook Fidel Castro's hand.

6) According to the Myers-Briggs Personality Test, I'm an ENFJ.

7) I was a vegetarian for almost a decade.

8) I almost never sleep on airplanes, especially those long-haul night flights across the ocean, where everyone else is passed out, legs sticking out at odd angles, mouths open, making collective creepy sleeping noises, while I alone tiptoe through the aisles like an intruder in a morgue.  Or so it seems.

9) I find clowns scary.

10) I can sing the high F in the Queen of the Night Aria from the Magic Flute.

11) So far I've performed in 32 countries on 6 continents.

12) My rising sign is Aquarius.

13) I'm a Reiki master.

14) My favorite sport to watch is rugby.

15) My husband and I got married on a private game reserve in South Africa, in a tiny stone chapel whose doorknobs had been nicked by baboons.

16) I sleep on a round mattress.

17) The longest I ever went without eating was 6 days.

18) According to a religion quiz on beliefnet.com, I should be a Unitarian Universalist.  Or a Neo-Pagan.  Or a Mahayana Buddhist.

19) I haven't driven a car since 1995.

20) My favorite children's book is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.

21) The recording I could listen to every day is Glenn Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations (the earlier recording.)

22) I'm not afraid of spiders and never kill them (on purpose.)

23) My navel was pierced for 2 years, sort of recently.

24) I don't like pork.

25) When I was 10, I lost a mitten at the beach in Oregon and found it 4 months later buried under the sand.

Celtic music and the stirrings of genetic memory

I'm several hours into a train journey from Luxembourg to Amsterdam, to visit friends Laurie and Bruce on their houseboat.  Keeping me company, keeping me sane, is a collection of songs by one of my favorite Celtic folk groups, Silly Wizard.  Andy Stewart sings wistfully:

If I was a blackbird, could whistle and sing,

I'd follow the vessel my true love sails in.

And in the top rigging, I'd there build my nest - 

And I'd flutter my wings o'er her lily-white breast...

There's just something about Celtic folk music.  Something that stirs me profoundly, something beyond the feelings of the moment, reaching beyond the parameters of my everyday consciousness, a half-forgotten dream landscape, mine or someone else's...A friend of ours has the theory that in lieu of reincarnation, the cells of our bodies retain memories of our genetic forebears.  Most of my ancestors, those of whom we have any record, have their roots in Ireland, England, Scotland.  Some made their way to the British colonies in the New World, others came a century later when their crops failed and their children were starving.  Perhaps the music of their homeland wrote itself into their DNA and passed down through generations until it reached me?

Or maybe I was an Irish bard in a past life.  Or maybe my mother listened to The Chieftains while I was still in her womb.  Whatever it is, the connection of my heart to this music teases me to remember, to catch the words of an ancient, quiet voice.  If I was a blackbird...