An Important Lesson - Page 2

On March 21 2012 21:27 Biff The Understudy wrote:

The guy you share your music stand with when you are in one of the string sections. Better like him, especially if you are in one of these orchestra where you don't move inside the section (not my case luckily). Basically it's your n°1 co-worker: you hear him all the time, you play very close, you have the same music so you have to mind what you write, one turn the pages for the other etc...

If you like him / her, it can be a really special relationship. But when people playing next to each other start to hate each other...

I played in an orchestra where the solo trumpetist was an american Jew from New Jersey, and the second trumpetist was a black dude from New Orlean. It was a cultural shock, they fucking hated each other. They didn't look at each other, they didn't say hello, they didn't even tune together, and they were sitting as far as possible looking opposite direction. It's a disaster for them because it's for basically 30 years of your life that you work in a very negative atmosphere, and it's a disaster for the orchestra, because they never sounded together and never blended their sound.