Most embarrassing moment at the piano

[janice]

I have an awesome (yeah, right! ) idea--let's talk about our most embarrassing moment at the piano, sort of like when you're playing in front of a thousand people and you have a long trail of toilet paper attached to your shoe and you don't know it until later.  Well, it's never happened to me personally, but I'm sure it's happened to someone, somewhere!  So let's talk about those bloopers!  Non-pianists wouldn't understand most of these embarrassing moments, so since we all can relate, let's talk!

[prformr77]

I have many embarrassing moments at the piano!!!  My most recent one, took place in one of the concert halls at the University where I attend..... I was accompanying a womens' choir in our annual winter concert, and I was wearing a dress which went down to my knees.  Well, I don't like to wear panty hose very much, so I decided to invest in some THIGH HIGHES.  To make a really long story short, the right one (the one facing the audience) slipped down during the performance, and as I bowed and walked offstage, the thigh high slipped more and fell down around my ankles!!

[robert_henry]

I tend to have a funny moment every few years, and they usually are in the form of making a HUGE mistake at the absolute climax of the piece.  One of the funniest you can hear for yourselves if you download the third movement of the Rachmaninoff third concerto from my site.  During the last cascade of chords three pages from the end, I miss the two low A's and play a B in the right and an A in the left.  Kinda funny at the time.

Another just happened at a competition.  During the final round I played two climactic chords exactly one whole step higher than written (I missed).  A friend of mine was in the audience and said I just kinda looked at the piano in disbelief for about a half a second as if shocked with electricity.  I wish I has a video of that.  It was the sixth Rachmaninoff Moment Musical, in case you were wondering.

I used to have my own musical ministry for a while, going around to churches and leading youth rallies.  When we were first starting out, we purchased a used amplifier for the main speakers and it had the annoying problem of overheating on a regular basis.  One time this happened in the midst of a performance, and that meant that our stage monitors were the only speakers working.  I turned around to fix the main amp while the rest of my band continued performing, and I was messing with the volume control (among other things).  I couldn't get it to turn back on, so I turned around to finish the song, but I had accidentaly left the volume knob to full blast.  So about thirty seconds later the amp finally cools down enough to turn back on, and you should have heard the roar of sound when it did.  I have never seen a group of people so startled in my life, including me...that scared the hell outta me.  The band was laughing so hard we didn't even sing the rest of the song and just let the track play...hey, we were teenagers. :p

Robert Henry

[janice]

Ok, I was the one who first asked the question,  so I guess that I should tell about what happened to me, huh?!  This is the SOOO AWFUL!!!  I accompanied the choir in college.  The auditorium was filled (or so it seemed!)  The last song was a capella.  The audience had finished clapping, and I was still sitting at the piano.  When there was COMPLETE SILENCE, I played a chord, then went to stand in my spot.  As I stood up (it's dead quiet in the auditorium remember), my robe caught on something and there was the loudest RIIIIIP!!!  I could've died!   Nobody said anything or laughed.  We were just in shock, I think!  Of course, I was to stand way over on the end, at the top.  That was the longest walk of my life!  One of my best friends was standing next to me.  She just held my hand during the whole song--as if that would somehow keep her from laughing!  After that number, we all filed out.  Of course, my row was last and I was on the end, so I had to try to keep a straight face for a long time.  Everybody else was already back in the choir room, and when I walked in, everybody just died laughing!  I can't remember if they clapped or not!  I went up to the director and said "I am SOOO sorry!"  He just stood there shaking his head.  

Part of the general education requirements is to take a certain number of fine arts credits.  Many of the jocks take Music 101 or whatever it's called.  Those who take this class must attend X number of concerts and report on them.  A bunch of football players were sitting in the back  The next day during lunch, I was up at the pop machine in the cafeteria and a football player came up.  He looked at me and said "Oh yeah, you're the one who ripped her robe last night, aren't you?"  I almost died!!!  

I guess that you just had to be there (but I'm glad that none of you were, or else I'd be embarrassed!)

[Colette]

Well, I had two pretty embarrassing moments. When I was nine I had to play at my cousins wedding. I really didn't want to and was sulking all the way to the bench. I sat down to play and got through my first piece, but by the second piece, I felt my dress slipping off my shoulders (it was too big for me). But, of course there was nothing I could do but keep on playing for the next five mins jerking my shoulders up and down to keep the whole top of my dress from not falling off, which made the music really jerky too. The best part was, I could hear my whole family laughing and taking pictures of me making a fool out of myself. I now see the pictures and laugh.....good thing I was only nine. The second one happened about a year ago. My teacher pushed me to learn the first mov't of the Rach 2 in 2 weeks and then wanted me to perform it in a master class with a famous teacher. I knew I wasn't ready, but stupidly enough I played anyway and totally screwed up. Not only was I not ready, but I had never practiced this piece with an accompanist before. The whole thing was so well planned that an accompanist was provided for me just as I was walking out onto the stage and banged on the piano like he wanted to break it. After my disaster was finished, I had to stand next to this teacher for a humiliating hour listening to my teacher translate, russian to english for the audience (who had paid) and me, how I should use different fingerings, and other meaningless stuff....next time I think I'll give myself more than 2 weeks!

[janice]

Ok, This isn't my "all time" most embarrassing moment (you absolutely must read it!  It's a separate entry.), but it's funny, nonetheless!  I was to play the Prelude at my church last Sunday.  My church has an electronic keyboard (time to pull out those barf bags!) A person has to turn it on from the back of the sanctuary.  He sits at some control panels and operates the whole sound system.  Anyway, people were starting to come into the sanctuary, and I looked all around for the sound man, but he wasn't there.  I was starting to get worried, because there wasn't any music for them.  I was looking for someone else who knew how to turn it on, but nobody was near me.  I wanted to keep my hands warmed-up in the meantime, so I played a bunch of scales and arpeggios.  While I was playing scales, I still kept on looking around for the sound man.  People were looking at me and smiling.  I smiled back, and kept on playing scales.  I thought "everyone seems to be in a good mood, they're all smiling at me!" I think I even waved at a few people! I kept on playing scales, while still smiling away like an idiot (and waving)!  All the while, I kept a lookout for the sound man.  I said to somebody, "I wish that I could find somebody to turn this thing on."  He said "It IS on."  I said to the peope in the front pew "Can you hear me?"  They all said "Oh yes".  I had no idea that the sound was on!  The whole congregation heard me play scales the whole time!  I never did see the sound man!  Next time everybody smiles at me, I'll wonder what's up?  Maybe I'll give them a friendly wave!!!--Janice

[selsa]

I have a question that can be addressed best by someone who also does musical ministry, someone like Robert Henry.

The question: would classical/romantic piano be considered ungodly? Since it's sometimes about anger, sadness, romance, etc, and m=not exactly written for the glory of God.

Any ideas from anyone? I hope this is an okay subject to bring up.

-Selsa.

[MzrtMusic]

Selsa,

I do most of the music ministry at my church, and I believe that what matters to God isn't what the notes sound like, but what's in your heart. Yes, Romantic music is often about anger or sadness. However, those emotions aren't sins; they are gifts from God. If you read the bible, you can see that Jesus, who was perfect, got angry. He got sad. I've played Chopin in church, among other things. I guess I beleve that what's in your heart is more important than the emotion generally interpreted with the music. I hope that this makes sense, and answers your question!

Love,

Sarah

[selsa]

Thanks Sarah / MzrtMusic. I am satisfied with the response you gave me, and it totally makes sense.

I guess it's okay to feel such things as romance, anger, sadness, courage, fantasy and dreams, and even to do things like play the Piano that bring about such emotions.

I do feel these things too when I listen to Chopin's music mostly, although I haven't been able to play with the required tempo. I hear that as you grow in music, you start to make sense of it and feel these emotions as you listen or play.

I don't know how much true it is, but I hear that some of Chopin's pieces make you feel so deeply that some even breakdown in tears. Such is the power of music, huh?

-Selsa.

[janice]

In reply to the "Is it appropriate to play classical music in church?" dilemma.  I have struggled with this also, to be honest.  Now, I feel exactly as Mzrt Music/Sarah does.  It's what's in the heart.  Even playing something like Bartok's music CAN be glorifying to God.  The dissonance that we hear can be thought of as the ongoing struggle of good vs evil in the world.  Dissonance is usually resolved, just as God will overcome in the end, because, as Scripture states that "He is the victorious warrior"!  The sections that are heavy and angry sounding, can be thought of as God's anger toward sin, and Christians should be angry at sin in the world.  I could give a sermon right now, but I'll spare you all!!  Hope this helps.  Pray about it though.

[ivanamaria]

hello
how are you?
where are you from?
My name is ivanamaria!

[thomas_williams]

I agree with Janice and MzrtMusic concerning the use of music such as that of Chopin, Bartok, etc. in church.  It can be well and good.  I have started a new topic along these lines as Faith and Music.

Now, as for that most embarrassing moment at the piano.  With the relatively little experience I have had in public performance, I realize that if I am serious about music (which I certainly am!) I probably will have more, and perhaps worse, embarrassing experiences than I have had so far.

But for now, let me tell you what I did when I was ten years old.  My family visited a small church one Sunday, and the pastor asked me if I would play a special as part of the service.  I somewhat reluctantly agreed and when my time came, I went forward to play "What a Friend We Have in Jesus."  But I was not in good practice.  I stumbled through it, and although the congregation appauded, I knew I had not done well at all.  No one from the church said any thing about it, but it was plenty humiliating nonetheless.

I made the big mistake that day of accepting an opportunity to perform without adequate preparation, but fortunately it was not publicized throughout the community and does not come back to haunt me anymore.

[OneHand10Fingers]

what is in my heart? blood.  lots of blood, and veins and arteries, thats about it.

[willcowskitz]

Hmm...

I read some posts about whether certain kind of classical music is "ungodly". I'm not here to judge anyone but what the Haydn...

What kind of music can be ungodly? Oh yeah, maybe some devil music where they have to announce their unholiness continuously. But classical? Maybe Wagner for his man-worshipping?

What about the whole era of renaissance? If something detached man from God it must have been that particular era. Wasn't that when the humankind discovered itself and started to nearly worship the human figure?

It doesn't matter what music you play since music is nothing without a human mind. As long as you know your feelings and FEEL honest in front of the God, you're doing the right thing.

I'm not a believer. In my opinion, music itself is neutral. What your mind makes of it, has to pick sides. Its up to the listener.

Romance, sadness, death, are all part of life. There's no black&white answer to these things, ever.

[Helen]

My embarressing moments usually all come in the form of wrong notes.  Once I played a whole piece through an octave higher than it was supposed to be!  Thankfully that was at the rehearsal and I played it right during the actual recital

[amee]

I have had lots of embarrassing moments at the piano!!  Usually I play wrong notes and once I was performing from memory and couldn't remember what the next chord was.  But I'd say my most embarrassing moment would be when I played an entire piece an octave higher than it was supposed to be!

[lea]

i was playing a duet wit mi younger sis in a comp and in the middle of it i turn round and whisper to mi sister and she stops,cos she doesnt knowwhat im going on about, and the audience thought it was really funny.


and i won all the stuff i entered into except 4 that one!!! and when i went up to get mi prize u werent supposed to but i went up anyway and stood up the front of the hall looking like an idiot and just standing there grinning!!!!

ps i was 6 yrs  old!!!! awwww how cute

[natasha]

i was actually playing the violin when i was 3 years old and in the middle of the piece, being so young i 4got wat came next and just stopped, and ran off the stage!! i still won a medal 4 mi effort!!

[chopinetta]

Since I am still young and fantasizing, I have one embarassing experience at the piano.

In my school where I am currently learning the piano we are required to perform in every anual recital.
My piece was Chopin's waltz in C#- opus 64 no. 2 or Chopin's Valse no.7

I listened to Vera Gornostayeva in ClassicalArchives.com a day before the recital playing that piece and it was pretty fast. I was determined to play it the next day like that.

On the recital day, I was seated together with the other 3 finales, which includes my brother, my best friend and her younger sister. When it was my turn I had second thoughts of playing it like Vera did, and I sat down on the piano seat trembling with nervousness from head to toe. My hands were sweating terribly and my strapless bra almost slipping.

I decided then to play try it as fast and on the fastest part my bra was halfway slipping, adding to my nervousness and my hands trembled fearing my bra might really slip now.

I thought if I made it faster I can escape the stage and fix my undergarment. So I did, with my fingers wet with sweat they slipped through the keys making horrible inaudible tunes. I could not control my trembling that I just turned the forte into pianississimo so as not to make the mistakes clear.

[amee]

A couple of years ago I played in a recital.  The piece I was playing had several bits where the melody recapitulated in the beginning and end.  Towards the end, I forgot the sequence of chords to the next movement!  I basically played in circles, trying desperately to remember the next bit.  In the end I finished with a really random chord, just to end the piece!

[emotionsickness]

at my 10th grade  high school variety show i played 'ballade pour adeline' and was extremely nervous.  nevertheless, i didn't make any mistakes until i heard some random ac/dc song blasting through the speakers instead of myself halfway through!  i got so frantic and started pressing random keys, but somehow saved myself at the end... it was pretty frightening at the time, though.

[ivoryplayer_amf]

I know this topic has not been talked about in quite some time, but I thought I would post mine anyway...I play the piano for a church and I have a fan that sits on top of the piano as well as music and everything (I'm very unorganized)...Well I was playing a real fast song and didnt notice the fan slowly creeping clost to me until it toppled over on the keys and then all the rest of the music came down with it.

The most ironic part about this?  I never stopped playing...just kept going like nothing happend.  It was quite embarrassing.

Also, there have been a few times when the pastor is praying and I'll be sitting at the piano waiting and messing around with books or whatever one of them will fall on the keys and people will just stare at me...argh lol

[maryruth]

Ah, yes, being a church musician can be dangerous.   I once put my music pages in the wrong order, so when everyone in the church was on page 3 I was on page 4!  Oops!!

[ahinton]

A substantial part of this thread seems quite rapidly to have altered course and veered into territory already covered in another recent thread about pieces that may or may not be appropriate for performance in church, as distinct from the very different matter of embarrassing moments at the piano; for what it may or may not be worth, neither thread has been especially clear about the kinds of church involved, for that matter, although one may reasonably assume that some kinds of Christian ones were involved.

Embarrassing moments at the piano? Well, I recently gave a complete performance of Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum and embarrassed myself by failing to play any wrong notes.

And yes, of course I made that up...

To be more serious, however, the earlier reference to books falling over one when at the keyboard reminds me that I did witness the full score of Sorabji's Fifth Piano Concerto falling off the piano's music stand onto the pianist's fingers during the world première of that work in Utrecht, Netherlands in full view of hundreds of people; the very able and unflappable pianist, Donna Amato, who had had the good sense not to try to give this performance from memory, simply flicked the whole thing back up again with extraordinary rapidity and the minimum of disturbance to the performance, with the effect that the embarassment was thus not that of the pianist but of the poor page-turner.

Another experience of embarrassing moments not so much at but near the piano was when the same pianist gave the world première of the first movement of the same composer's Fifth Piano Symphony at a venue where the front row of audience seating was placed far too near the piano, yet one listener in that row still insisted on following this performance with a score throughout; now the full significance of this may not be obvious until it is realised that this score was a ring-bound photocopy in A3 landscape format, the sound and sight of whose large oblong pages turning within less than a metre of the pianist's eyes must have been one of the worst distractions imaginable.

Now, finally, to a moment of embarassment originating farther back in the auditorium and which was most delightfully visited on the hapless audience member by the pianist. I don't know if what I'm about to recount is actually true, but I've heard it told enough times to encourage me think that it might be - and certainly more than enough times to make me at least wish that it was so. Towards the end of his long career, Shura Cherkassky was giving a recital at London's Wigmore Hall when, during one of the variations in Schumann's Études Symphoniques, the sound of a mobile ringtone was heard from within the audience; immediately Cherkassky leapt off the piano stool, stood up, stared straight at that part of the audience from which the sound had come and said "is that for me?". The applause he received for this probably exceeded that which he got at the end of the performance.

Best,

Alistair

[thorn]

umm... not exactly an embarrassing moment AT the piano, but piano related.

For my A-level music recital last year, there were practise recitals where we played in front of the class to get used to the audience and the college piano. We just played one piece of our recital per week rather than it all at once and the one time i played Liszt's La Campanella.

After the performance, during the applause as i went to sit down, someone in my class (an arrogant git who i really hated) was like:  "bar 52, beat 1, you played an F# instead of a G natural", and I quite loudly told him to... err... do something pretty vulgar to himself... and the whole class just stopped clapping and stared at me in shock 

[elgreco]

Embarrassing moments at the piano? Well, I recently gave a complete performance of Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum and embarrassed myself by failing to play any wrong notes.

Hats off! What an artful allusion to E.E.Cumming's famous poetic homage to Sorabji and indeed a fine example of intertextuallity. Now, let's see if I can recall its first lines correctly:


   any wrong notes and some right notes
   lived in a pretty how town
   (with up so floating many bells down)
   spring summer autumn winter
   he sang his didn't he danced his OC
   ...




(It's all fake, of course)






I can report an embarrassing moment from my days back in school. It was my first performance there with my family, friends and teachers among the audience and I was as nervous as one can be on such an occasion.

I had chosen to play two pieces by Henry Cowell after the break, The Tides of Manaunaun and The Aeolian Harp, in that order—unfortunately, in that order. The Aeolian Harp requires some fumbling and plucking inside the piano and one should mark some of the dampers in order to find the right strings to pluck during the performance. I had cut some sticky notes to size and had stuck them onto the dampers of the keys in question during the break. Now, while I was playing The Tides of Manaunaun with its gradually increasing clusters (in size and volume), and as more massive waves of sound left the instument those stiky notes left it too!

There was of course no time to put new marks inside the piano between the pieces. So, I did my best—which wasn't much, as I have to admit—to pluck the right strings, standing in front of the keyboard, with a deep red face, the right foot on the right pedal, the right hand holding chords, the left hand on the strings, with my right eye gazing on the keyboard and with my left on the strings, ...

Well, people must have been suprised to see that Aeolus, the god of winds, could not afford a decent harp tuner that evening, I guess.

—ElGreco

[ahinton]

Hats off! What an artful allusion to E.E.Cumming's famous poetic homage to Sorabji and indeed a fine example of intertextuallity. Now, let's see if I can recall its first lines correctly:


   any wrong notes and some right notes
   lived in a pretty how town
   (with up so floating many bells down)
   spring summer autumn winter
   he sang his didn't he danced his OC
   ...




(It's all fake, of course)

Ah! "cummings ist der Dichter", indeed!...

Best,

Alistair

[nanabush]

Not me, but a girl at one of my recitals.  She was playing the Beethoven Pathetique sonata.  The first chord in the grave I think was like one note lower than it should be... so the chord sounded totally messed up... So she plays the chord, lifts up her hands, yells "SH*T!" then continues with the second chord, which was played properly

[mike_lang]

I think my best moment was when I got stock on a loop at the end of on of the B sections during the Rondo of Beethoven's Op. 13 - it ended up that I just threw in a V7 chord and went on my merry way...

ML

[ivoryplayer_amf]

Not me, but a girl at one of my recitals.  She was playing the Beethoven Pathetique sonata.  The first chord in the grave I think was like one note lower than it should be... so the chord sounded totally messed up... So she plays the chord, lifts up her hands, yells "SH*T!" then continues with the second chord, which was played properly

I dont know why but this made me laugh SOOO hard.  I think its because we all WANT to do that, but most of us arent crazy enough to do something like that.  I would love to be able to do that with dignity lol