Musical Bummer

Last month, my church worship pastor informed me that they were in need of some upcoming offering music for the month of august. I decided to sign up for a clarinet solo, even though the music was not yet decided. The church pianist and I had an initial meeting to decide what would be best to play, and to decide if a prelude peice was also needed. We eventually chose two songs - "God and God Alone" for the prelude and "Great is the Lord" for an offering peice, both for solo clarinet. I was especially excited about "Great is the Lord". It is a popular song written by Michael W. Smith, my favorite gospel artist. A very strong, intense and undeniably moving contemporary song that accomplishes what a great hymn also does - gives glory to God and praises His name. From the moment I heard this song, I've loved it and have had a dream to play it on any instrument for an offering. This has been an 8-year goal.

I had about 4 weeks to practice these songs and did so at least a couple of times a week for a 1/2 hour each time. Yesterday the accompianist and I met for a final practice which lasted over an hour. The big performances were set to happen today and although I was extremely nervous and way too critical of myself already (What if I squeak? I sound too strained on the high notes! AH, I can't get all the trills!), it was thrilling. A lot of hard work went into these songs, mainly because they are so well known and I didn't want to butcher them in front of an entire congregation. After our group band rehearsal this morning, I decided not to go to our regular coffee so the songs could be played through at least one more time. Sounded good. I walked around and saved my breath, didn't talk to anyone, said a few words of encouragement and just tried to keep myself as relaxed as possible.

Then it was the big moment. I got up on stage and began to play the prelude. It went great, way better than I had expected and I was at least happy to not have run out of air. There was still quite some time before the offering, so I sat down and again tried to reassure myself that everything would go well. Church announcements came and went. Then it was the recap of children's summer bible school and a very adorable song, complete with stomping feet and clapping hands and flying up into trees (not literally but lyrically, mind you). All of this was completely enjoyable until the kids started to exit the stage.

My eyes were literally about to bulge from their sockets when I witnessed three kids work their way between the performance microphone and the music stand holding my clarinet and sheet music. The stand began to waver and had stopped completely when another person bumped into it. The stand fell backwards, sending the clarinet bouncing off the piano behind it and dropping to the floor with a loud thud. It took all the self-control I could muster in order not to yell "SON OF A %(@)$!". While someone else picked up the stand, I crawled behind the piano to pick up the clarinet and inspect that everything was OK. No broken reed- GOOD! No cracked plastic - GOOD! But wouldn't you know it, the only button that is absolutely necessary to play every note except one was jammed open and unmoveable. By the way, this was the second time an instrument of mine has been dropped on stage and broken. My saxophone was dropped in plain view of the entire congregation once. Now three of the notes won't play.Luckily at the time of this accident, the audience was being entertained with a summer bible school slideshow. They didn't see my face flush red, walk over to the accompanist now sitting at the organ and say "My horn won't play, you will have to come up with your own offering music". AAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How annoying! So the accompianist eventually just played the piano part for "Great is the Lord" by herself, while I sat there looking and feeling like an idiot while the entire congregation was wondering why another instrumentalist wasn't up there, as the bulletin had said would happen.

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!! Just want to get that out in the open.

So now my peice of crap instrument is totally incapacitated and in desperate need of repair. Fortunately, the church offered to pay any repair costs and to ante up for an actually professional clarinet stand. But let me say, just for the heck of it, one more time -

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
I'm going to eat an entire pizza now.