August, 1998, Montevideo, Uruguay -- Paolo Esperanza, bass-trombonist
with the Simphonica Mayor de Uruguay, in a misplaced moment of
inspiration decided to make his own contribution to the cannon shots
fired as part of the orchestra's performance of Tchaikovsky's 1812
Overture at an outdoor children's concert. In complete seriousness
he placed a large, ignited firecracker, which was equivalent in
strength to a quarter stick of dynamite, into his aluminum straight
mute and then stuck the mute into the bell of his quite new Yamaha
in-line double-valve bass trombone. Later, from his hospital bed he
explained to a reporter through bandages on his mouth, "I thought
that the bell of my trombone would shield me from the explosion and
instead, would focus the energy of the blast outward and away from
me, propelling the mute high above the orchestra, like a rocket."
However, Paolo was not up on his propulsion physics nor qualified to
use
high-powered artillery and in his haste to get the horn up before the
firecracker went off, he failed to raise the bell of the horn
high
enough so as to give the mute enough arc to clear the orchestra.
What actually happened should serve as a lesson to us all during those
delirious moments of divine inspiration. First, because he failed
to
sufficiently elevate the bell of his horn, the blast propelled the
mute
between rows of players in the woodwind and viola sections of the
orchestra, missing the players and straight into the stomach of the
conductor, driving him off the podium and directly into the front row
of the audience. Fortunately, the audience were sitting in folding
chairs and thus they were protected from serious injury, for the chairs
collapsed under them passing the energy of the impact of the flying
conductor backwards into row of people sitting behind them, who in
turn
were driven back into the people in the row behind and so on, like
a row
of dominos. The sound of collapsing wooden chairs and grunts of people
falling on their behinds increased logarithmically, adding to the
overall sound of brass cannons and brass playing as constitutes the
closing measures of the Overture. Meanwhile, all of this unplanned
choreography not withstanding, back on stage Paolo's Waterloo was still
unfolding. According to Paolo, "Just as I heard the sound of
the blast,
time seemed to stand still. Everything moved in slow motion.
Just
before I felt searing pain to my mouth, I could swear I heard a voice
with a Austrian accent say "Fur every akshon zer iz un eekvul un
opposeet reakshon!" Well, this should come as no surprise,
for Paolo
had set himself up for a textbook demonstration of this fundamental
law
of physics. Having failed to plug the lead pipe of his
trombone, he
allowed the energy of the blast to send a super heated jet of gas
backwards through the mouth pipe of the trombone which exited the
mouthpiece burning his lips and face. The pyrotechnic ballet wasn't
over
yet. The force of the blast was so great it split the bell of
his shiny
Yamaha right down the middle, turning it inside out while at the same
time propelling Paolo backwards off the riser. And for the grand
finale, as Paolo fell backwards he lost his grip on the slide of the
trombone allowing the pressure of the hot gases coursing through the
horn to propel the trombone's slide like a double golden spear into
the
head of the 3rd clarinetist, knocking him unconscious.
The moral of the story? Beware the next time you hear someone
in the
trombone section yell out "Hey, everyone, watch this!"