Chamber Music… it’s that serene and archaic stuff you hear when your mother forces you to go to the loacl fine arts center, right? Not according to our guests last night. According to them, chamber musicians are those musicians who never behaved well enough to sit with the orchestra.

Generally, I have thought that the people who already understood what was going on were the ones who goofed off. After all, if you were born with the inate ability to sing like Kathleen Battle or Samuel Ramey, why would you ever want to pay attention to something meant for those who are beginners. However, I have discovered recently that superior intellect is not necessarily the cause of disregard for order, but that it can just as often be boredom (all cries in support of bad upbringing and ADD need not apply to this blog).

Andrew Hitz (my “boyfriend” the tuba player … tubist?) said it the best, “If you count the number of notes a tuba gets to play in the Largo movement from Dvorak’s New World Symphony, you’ll see that we have fourteen notes to play in a 35 minute piece. Now when you’re a fifteen year old tuba player who is hidden in the back of the auditorium behind the basses, horns and flutes you will find that you engage in… non-musical activities.”

Non-musical activities? Like locking people in the band lockers!? Tsk tsk…