Top 5 Worst Gigs: No 2

I used to play with a fantastic big band that I will not name. It was lead by a brilliant trumpet player and lovely bloke (when not standing in front of the band).

I was playing second trumpet for this big band at the time. Everything was going in the gig until 8 bars before the lead trumpet solo in String Of Pearls the lead player says; “Quick can you play this solo (as he pointed at my part.)”

I nodded and went for this solo (which was written and I knew as it’s a standard thing you pick up as you grow up). However it didn’t sounding anything like how I knew it and to my horror I realised that the line that the lead player had pointed to was the optional harmony and the tune was on his part (that for some reason he’d decided not to play on the spur of the moment).

There was nothing I could really do.

But the band leader decided to shout and scream at me whilst I was playing in front of the audience and when we got to the end he continued to rant a scream.

Surprise, surprise the lead trumpet player kept quiet (until he apologised in a whisper to me).

I‘ve never walked out on a gig before and I’ve never taken so much crap before. In front of peers and the audience I look back and can’t believe that I managed to suck it up and stay to the end of the gig.

To his partial credit the leader called me up later after the gig had finished and I’d gone home, to say how sorry he was. But he didn’t do it in front of the band or face to face with me so I feel sorry for him.

I stayed with the band another month as to leave straight after that would have tarnished my reputation and that’s what I would have been remembered for. But that was a really terrible gig!!