I’m getting ready to travel to China with a community orchestra, and, barring my current stuffy nose and the 13-hour plane ride, I’m looking forward to it. As with each time I travel, I think of the news stories of both professionals and amateurs who arrived at their destinations, only to end up with broken guitars, splintered violins, and mangled trombones, among other musical instruments. Scary stuff, especially for folks who rely on their ax for a living.
I also tend to look back at some of my own adventures, especially with other amateur music ensembles. The following summarizes a heart-stopping incident on my first European tour with a concert band, during the summer of 1994. (No guarantees of accuracy, as this story is based solely on my memory.)
We were to make a connecting flight, and as we are being herded up the gangplank to board, I knew that another member of the band had the same hard flugelhorn case as I did. It looked much like a suitcase. This other musician, much bigger than me, was ahead of me in line, and he seemed to go through with no problems.
When I got to the point where an airline employee was standing (a young blond man who reminded me of Rolfe from The Sound of Music), just before physically stepping into the plane, he told me to relinquish my flugel, saying it was too big for the overhead compartments. I figured the size of the case, when compared to my larger friend, seemed smaller in comparison – which means it seemed bigger compared to my thin frame.
I put up a bit of a fight, but as I was not really prepared for this, I didn’t have much ammo in my defense except the aforementioned size difference. The airline employee wasn’t listening to me anyway, so I let him have the case and silently hoped for its safe return.
Later, at the warm-up for our first concert, I unpacked my flugelhorn and realized, to my horror, that the second valve was stoically staying put. I couldn’t press it down, and I couldn’t take it out. It was stuck like glue. Now, this was likely not a deal-breaker because I did have my trumpet with me, but a broken flugelhorn is nothing to sneeze at.
After getting over a short bout of panic, I asked around for help. Luckily, we had an older guest soloist with us, the (then) trumpet professor from a local university. I told him the problem, expecting him to operate on my patient with all sorts of tiny metallic tools. Instead, he laid the horn on its side on his lap, then pressed firmly on the second valve casing for a few seconds.
I don’t know how many times he did this – it might’ve been just once. Either way, when he finished, he tried the valve, which performed normally, as if nothing was wrong. Magic! If the Harry Potter books had come out earlier, I would’ve likened him to Dumbledore.
Yes, this was a close call, but certainly not the most catastrophic musical instrument story you’ve ever read. But it made an impression, since I remember it almost a quarter century after it happened.
Fellow musicians, what are you travel stories? Happy ending or no?
Flight? Road? Rails? Cruise?
What happened to your instrument? Who helped you fix it?