Best posts made by barliman2001

Before this post, I had never heard of Elmer Churampi; but now, I consider him the legitimate heir of Maurice André. Don't misunderstand me - there are many excellent players out there, each and every one with their own personal style and area of excellence. I admire every single one of them, be it Tine Thing Helseth, Alison Balsom, Hakan Hardenberger, Guy Touvron, or Sergey Nakariakov, or... whoever. But no one after the sad demise of MA quite got that mixture of silky smoothness with technical brilliance and - from what I gather - a likeable personality. Elmer Churampi nails that. His performance of the Hummel is remarkabl near MA's style, yet is no mere copy. I raise my hat and a few celebratory glasses to the young guy!

A wife, being somewhat romantic, sends a text to her husband who's on a business trip:
"If you are sleeping, send me your dreams. If you are laughing, send me your smile. If you are eating, send me a bite. If you are drinking, send me a sip. If you are crying, send me your tears...I love you!"
The husband's reply?
"I'm on the toilet. Please advise."

OK, first interim report. Played a Midnight Christmas service last night, as additional trumpet for a group consisting of a Lutheran parson and his seven daughters. The church we played in is rarely used - Christmas, Easter, and the occasional wedding - so the heating in the church had only been switched on an hour previous. No snow yet, but bloody cold. No rehearsal - just a list of numbers from the Lutheran Hymn book and its official Trombone Choir Arrangement book. The group - the parson, on a vintage Yamaha rotary. Daughter One on a rather decrepit Amati French horn. Daughter Two on a Cerveny rotary tenor horn, Daughter Three on a ramshackle Jupiter student bone, Daughter Four on an ancient Conn bellfront euphonium. Daughters Five and Six on no-name rotary baritone horns, and Daughter Seven, the youngest and smallest (age 13 and a half) on an enormous 1890s vintage Bb tuba. And, of course, the parson's wife on a pair of timps with half the tuning screws broken off.
We tuned up about 15 minutes before service. Then, there was a long wait because quite a few dignitaries had turned up (vice mayor, fire chief, police chief, President of the Lions Club, President of the Lutheran Women's League, the Catholic Priest with the President of the Parish Council) and were saying a few words as Christmas greetings. First tune was played an exact 40 minutes after tune-up, in a freezing church... we sounded like a fire truck with asthma. The cooling of the instruments had worked havoc with the tuning, and a few of the daughters just were unable to provide enough air for their instruments... In total, we played nine tunes and decided not to continue carolling after the service (as had been planned), as the tuba and one of the baritones had seized up due to cold...

JUST LOOK AT THIS!!

https://moteefe.com/store/trombone/born-to-be-a-trombone?color=black&cp=OFF2020&fbclid=IwAR3I2J8YFMKD8PYCb1tf9xXCt1vsRH-KqIyRz5RRvXiXY69CHe9kTeMVatc&product=unisex-t-shirt

Ok, as a background, you should know that I have had cataract operations on both eyes in 2014 and since then, my eyes can't change focus any more. Since then, I've had to work with four different pairs of glasses - one for reading closely, one for music reading, one for mid-range seeing (normal distances within the house) and one for outdoors and driving. Bit of a hassle carrying all that stuff around; and when playing music, I could only focus on the sheet music; the conductor was a dim figure somewhere in the distance.
A friend of mine is both a cornet and double bass player and an optician. She has now developed special musicians's glasses that are in effect six-strength varifocals... just got mine, and I am amazed. I can sit at my computer and write this, seeing a clear image of the screen, and I can look up and see the horrible amount of washing-up I still have to do, sharp as anything, in seven feet distance, and I can look out of the window and see clearly what the builders are doing in the yard, at 35 feet distance. And I have a sharp image of the house at the end of the street...
It's a fairly cheap process, considering a consultation will take one full day to adjust the focals to your special needs, and it can't be done but in Yorkshire. But it really is worth it.

The Magic Woman who does this?

Sheryl Doe
Allegro Opticals
1-3 Station Street
Meltham, West Yorkshire HD9 5NX

www.allegrooptical.co.k

John entered a Covid-19 Vaccine Centre and was given his first dose.
On the way home, he found he had suddenly developed severe vision problems. So he called the vaccine centre to ask whether he should see his doctor or go straight into hospital.
"Don't go to the doctor OR the hospital. Your only chance is to return here and collect the glasses you forgot!"

Playing a New Year's Eve Ball with Big Band Markus Fluhr www.bbmf.de, and then several weeks of assisting my wife with "Countess Mariza", done by the touring operetta company she has just wormed herself into to such an extent that the present owner wants to retire and hand over the company to her... then a concert with the Vienna Lakeside Music Academy Symphony Orchestra - music from animation movies - and then a few Carnival gigs.

Vienna, Austria
Traffic lights beside the Opera.
A tourist in a hired car is so entranced by the sight he misses the green light.
A Viennese stops by, winds down the window and calls out, "Your colour didn't come up, did it?"

@tjcombo Two English gentlemen are sitting beside a river, fishing. Suddenly, one rod twitches, and the relevant gentleman pulls a beautiful mermaid from the waters. He regards her for a long time, then throws her back into the river.
Some time later, his companion asks, "Why?"
The answer? "How?"

@j-jericho More like a botfly - you know, the things they pull out of cats' noses on Youtube...

As I am enjoying a leisure moment, I have begun a list of every instrument I ever owned... not in chronological order. And I've decided that you out there, my trumpet friends, should be allowed to share this info.
Please do not see this as boasting, but as plain information.
I am including the fate of each instrument whenever it has decided to move on.

Bb trumpets:
Comet ***
UMI King Silver Flair Dizzy Bell (sold)
Jupiter STR-1010, with one straight and one Dizzy Bell, and an adapted Schilke BERYLLIUM bell (sold)
Jupiter 840 (sold)
Dowids Jazzline (sold)
Stomvi Elite Bb (sold)
Ganter G5 (exchanged for G7)
Ganter G7 custom (sold)
Olds Ambassador (given to a friend as present)
Olds Special (returned to original seller as he after the deal could not bear to part with it)
Olds Studio (for sale at Votruba's in Vienna)
Olds Recording
Courtois Balanced
Buescher Aristocrat 265
Conn International (Amati stencil)
Selmer K-Modified (stolen in burglary in Ireland)
UMI Benge #7 (for sale at Votruba's in Vienna)
Buescher #9
Buescher #11 with quick change to A (stolen in burglary in Ireland)

Pocket Bb trumpets:
Jupiter, small bell (sold)
Stomvi Forte (sold)
Arnold & Sons (Jupiter clone)

C trumpets:
Bach Strad 239, with additional slides in Bb and Ab (stolen in Munich)
Bach Strad rotary C (stolen in burglary in Ireland)
Stomvi Elite (sold)
Couesnon Bb/C (for sale at Votruba's in Vienna)
Gaudet C

D trumpets:
DEG Signature (re-sold within two weeks)
Ganter G3 (sold)
Stomvi Elite (sold)
Courtois

Eb trumpets:
Stomvi (sold)

F trumpet:
Bach Strad (sold)

G picc:
Scherzer (sold)
1966 Selmer

Bb/A picc:
1967 Selmer (sold)
1979 Selmer (sold)
Besson Kanstul 920 (sold, very much regretted)
Stomvi Elite (sold)
Votruba Professional (stolen in Vienna, found and destroyed by police on suspicion of being a bomb)
ACB Doubler

Bb cornets:
Weltklang, with custom made Ab slides (sold)
Ganter Custom (sold)
Besson Imperial (in need of restoration)
Stomvi Elite (sold)
Ganter rotary cornet (returned to H. Ganter for private collection)
Besson International (2x)
Buescher Aristocrat 264
Jupiter student cornet (sold)
Elkhart by Buescher (for sale at Votruba's in Vienna)
Blessing Artist (present to my Scottish godchild)
Unnamed 1880s HP cornet, with personal engraving

Eb cornets:
Besson Imperial (in need of restoration)
B&H Sovereign Round Stamp bell-tuned Soprano (2x, one stolen in burglary in Ireland, the other sold)
Ganter Custom

Flugelhorns:
Ganter G15 (sold)
Votruba Profi (sold)
Courtois 154R
Thomann "Black Jazz" (sold within a week)
Clemens August Glier Kuhlohorn (almost sold...)

I think that's it... enjoy.

"Student, how would you define a Minor Second?" -
"Two clarinets in unison, sir."

@dr-go That sounds rather like the explanation I gave to a group of Texan tourists when guiding them through the Golden Hall at Passau City Hall... There is a very large painting of the wedding of an Austrian Emperor to a Bavarian Princess, and I asked them whether they knew that the fact that the Emperor married in Passau was directly responsible for US Independence? No? Ok, here's the reason. If the Emperor had not married there, he would not have known about the Mariahilf Monastery there. He could not have made a pilgrimage there to pray for victory over the Turks (we're talking 17th cent. here). In consequence, he could not have defeated the Turks and would not have captured their camp. Therefore he would not have found the first bags of coffee in Europe. Without the coffee... there would not have been coffee houses in Vienna. And without them, there would not have been Edward Lloyd's Vienna Coffee House in Boston, Mass., where the conspirators for the Boston Tea Party used to meet and plot. And thus what is now the US would still be a group of English colonies... Long faces, "We didn't know thaaaat..." and the sounds of chins dropping to the polished marble floor... and a couple of English tourists were laughing their heads off...

Trombones have their uses in pretending you are something you are not...

@ssmith1226 However, by cleverly combining some, you will be able to get astounding results:

1. A piece of toast will always fall onto the buttered side

2. A cat always falls on its feet.

So you take a cat, liberally coat its back with butter and throw it down. It will try to fall on its feet, but then the buttered side would be uppermost, so the resulting reaction will cause the cat to hover a foot or so above ground and rotate faster and faster, until you can connect a crankshaft to the cat and drive a generator.

Just happened upon this Norman Rockwell painting... I am sure someone can identify the trumpet!

Our family teddy bear Wendelin who came into the family in the early 1890s... sitting in the rocking swan my grandfather made for me... I used to sit in there in a suit of plastic armor, listening to Lohengrin...

Trumpet player to antiques dealer: "Can you really tell me the value of scales?" - "Of course. They are not rare - though rarer as they should be. They are usually not in perfect condition - and nobody really, really wants them. No value at all."