Best posts made by barliman2001

@seth-of-lagos Mravinsky certainly let the brass do their thing , as you said, "on the ragged edge"; but that ragged edge was most probably sharpened by the instruments they had at their disposal... look at the year the recording was made: 1953. Stalin was probably still alive during much of the recording process, the Cold War was in full swing, trade relations between East and West were almost inexistent and "the Leningrad Factory" - one of only three places in the Soviet Union where brass instruments were made - still lay in ruins, only being rebuilt and back into business some years later. They probably had to do their best on - if lucky - very old instruments, or - if not - on some student grade horns slapped together somehow; and it is known that some of these musicians were reduced to building their own horns out of any materials they could find. One tuba is known to have had engine springs from a military truck as valve springs, being made out of the brass of spent shell casings...
As the joke went...
What is the difference between a Capitalist and a Socialist violin player? -
The Capitalist has an old violin and a new car, withn the Socialist it is the other way round.

@IrishTrumpeter You might invite Rowuk for a holiday stay in Ireland later in the year - he's a very friendly guy and possibly the most knowledgeable trumpet guy on TB ever, the God of the Circle of Breath.

A parson is on a trip in a yacht when a gale comes up and sinks the boat. As he's swimming around far from land, a boat approaches. He refuses to be hauled aboard, saying, "The Lord will rescue me."
An hour later, a helicopter hovers above him. The rescue diver wants to get him into the basket, but he refuses with the words, "The Lord will save me."
Finally, he can swim no more. Sinking, he reproaches the Lord, "Oh Lord, why didn't you save me?"
And he gets an answer, "You numbskull, who did you think sent the boat and the chopper? See you in a moment!"

For me, this Christmas season started with four Christmas market gigs and will continue with five more of the same, but that is almost nothing compared to other years where sometimes I had to play Christmas Oratorio three times in a row... this year is centred around my wife's debut at Graz Opera (she sang almost everywhere else, but never before in Graz) in the small but important role of Mrs. Kramer in Kurt Weill's biggest Broadway success, A Touch of Venus - played many thousans of times in the US, but never before in Austria... Another 12 performances to go...

I've had my fill of Cs... I started off with a Bach C/Bb combo which was out of tune as a Bb and even more out of tune as a C. It only started working when I added an A and even an Ab slide... Fortunately, a friend of mine borrowed it for a theatre job and managed to get it stolen. The insurance paid up ande that pqaid for a Bach rotary C. Nice horn, but not universally useable and rather a hard blow. I had a couple of Besson Mehas afterwards - the Bbs are good, on the verge of fantastic, but the Cs are quirky and extremely mouthpiece sensitive. I then went for a Couesnon C/Bb combo: Easy for the C, with a nice sound, but almost a peashooter on Bb. Anything below the stave is sharp. Another C rotary crossed my path when a friend asked me to advise him as to a rotary C with all the trimmings, NOT a Lechner (he had a colleague who always flaunted his gold-plated Lechner), with a budget of $ 6,000. I had Votruba of Vienna build him a gold-plated, three Vienna keys rotary C, with four different leadpipes - the works - and supervised the build for him. It turned out "the best C I ever played, and it easily outplays the Lechner", at a final price tag of $ 5,400 including shipping. resulting in the other guy selling his Lechner and ordering another Votruba... Another friend of mine has an Inderbinen Alpha C - costly, but not for me. and recently I came upon a Gaudet C. Thiw was the "second choice" brand of Antoine Courtois, horns that had some kind of optical glitch like missed bits of lacquering or an unaligned water key - things like that. The valve block is correctly stamped "Courtois". And that has been m go-to C for the last five years. Nice, mellow tone, yet caqn strip paint if you want to do so; perfectly in tune; and an easy, precise blow. One of the few horns that will only come on the market if you shoot me first - But I've always been a fast draw...

A guy to his friends: "My mother-in-law has now reached her ideal weight." -
"Really? And what is it?" -
"Seven pounds including the urn."

As ROWUK had the right stuff at hand, the matter is now resolved. Thank you for all the offers of help - it shows that TB is the best trumpet forum ever!

And that means that I will be turning the key in the lock...

Ok, had a longish - four and a half hours - Big Band rehearsal (www.bbmf.de) yesterday evening. Had the Recording with me for the first time.
What an experience! A horn that can sing almost like a flugel, whisper, and strip paint at the slightest provocation in that direction. Just what I wanted... only one horn has ever done that to me, and that was another Balanced model - a 1950s Courtois. But that one is in such bad shape, with silver plating almost completely gone, huge areas of red rot and the brass worn paper-thin in patches that Votruba did not want to try a restoration for fear of the horn crumbling in their hands... the Recording, being almost 70 years old now, is good for another 70.

An orchestra are touring Israel. One day, they are free and decide to go bathing on the Sea of Galilee. One downtrodden viola player wrestles with his Lord, saying: "Oh Lord, you know how poorly regarded I am. In your infinite power, let me do something remarkable and here, where you walked on water, let me do the same."
The Lord, in his infinite mercy, accedes to that request, and the viola player is walking on the water. As he nears the shore, he suddenly hears the leader of the orchestra, shouting, "Just look at him! He can't even swim!"

The only thing I did at Christmas was to tag round the rehab clinic with the local ruffians (officially "students of logopaedia nd music therapy")... a four-part choir that managed to sing at least nine parts in three different keys, two guitars that had not been tuned to each other, a mouth organ and five recorders... I am really ashamed to have been seen with those...

@newell-post said in Which trumpet to buy?:

Many years ago, I got to meet Bill Chase before one of their concerts, along with a group of other people. As part of the Q&A somebody asked him what horns they used. As I recall, the answer was: 1 Schilke (for Bill), 1 Connstellation, 1 Benge, and one I don't remember. Maybe a Committee or a Selmer something or other. In any event, that trumpet-centric group had 4 top-notch players that all used different horns. There isn't one right answer.

There is only the right answer for the right player.

A father has intercepted Santa on the roof... "You won't take a tenner to forget my son wanted a saxophone? Twenty? Thirty? A hundred?"

@Dr-GO We don't have a dog house... luckily, there is a maxim in the family that stand-ins always come first. Last stand-in was my wife doing Olga Kokozova in The Count of Luxembourg at two hours' notice...

@fels said in Which trumpet to buy?:

@flugelgirl

I have opined before that you may or may not find your idea of the best horn -- you have to be patient and it will find you

Thirty or forty years ago I was playing a Selmer Paris and wanted something better....I went to our local music store and played several "pro' horns. I selected a Bach 37. Payed it for the next 20 to 25 years. A Schilke X3 was available at the store and that has been why horn since. I still play the Bach, but do not like its weight. I bought my Courois Flugelhorn unseen on Craigs List. There are better (cosmetically) flugels out there, but I can make the Courtois sound the way I like -- it found me.

Courtois instruments seem to have a way of finding one... my 154R flugel came my way after a trade fair in Munich, when the Courtois people had a few more cases left over than they could possibly fit in their truck. I was hanging about there and admiring the way they tried to solve the problem, and when I asked whether I could help them in any way, they just told me to "take my pick". And so I walked away with a brand-new case with - as I found out later - a brand spanking new Courtois 154R flugel in it - for free. Haven't looked at another flugel since then - it's that good. Few years later, Votruba's in Vienna told me they had taken in a Courtois Balanced in part-exchange for a new instrument. Would not sell as it was cosmetically bad, so they let me have it for € 150... it's my main big band axe now. And only recently an old friend told me he's thinning his herd and letting go another almost unplayed Courtois Balanced - he likes "heavy" horns, the harder the better - and that will be mine as soon as I pay the postage...

A man wakes up from a long coma. His wife takes off her widow's weeds and remarks, "There's no relying on men."

And here's another, with a special scene from 4:40...

Seems not to have reached the intended target audience. Locked.

A guy is travelling in a taxi and wants the driver to stop at a KFCs. So he taps the driver on the shoulder. The cabman brakes the taxi hard, jumps out of the cab and runs away, screaming. After about five minutes, the cabbie returns, shamefaced, and explains: "You know, sir, I'm only helping out a friend. My day job is driving the coroner's van..."

This is what happens if a group of superb dancers just have fun with a good band...

@Dale-Proctor said in Phony players:

@BigDub said in Phony players:

On the show, Hogan’s Heroes, Colonel Klink Would occasionally play the violin, much to the discomfort of those who happened to be in the same room.
He looked rather convincing, but if you looked closely, there weren’t even any strings on the instrument!

Interesting factoid - Werner Klemperer’s father was Otto Klemperer, the famous orchestral conductor.

Even more interesting - quite a number of the actors in that show were either of Jewish descent or had lost family and friends due to Nazi terror.