So, Anyway, We Were Going To A Christmas Concert When...

[Cato]

I thought all of you fine people out there - and you are fine people, are you not?    0:)   -   (Remember who's "gonna find out who's naughty or nice"!) might want to regale each other with merry Christmas anecdotes involving Christmas music, Christmas concerts, Christmas parades, etc.

On the weekend I was in a moderate-sized Ohio city, and stood in the deteriorated downtown and waited for the local Christmas Parade to begin.  The town has 3 high schools, and so 3 marching bands were there, but at different points.  The route was very short: basically a 4-block "circle" so to speak:  and so when the bands began to play, one could hear simultaneously the most Charles Ivesian event one could imagine: Jingle Bell Rock, God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen, and The Ohio State Fight Song all mingled and warred in the air along with the canned music of Dean Martin singing White Christmas in the loudspeakers. 

Since Dean Martin was born in Ohio, I thought he and the OSU fight song sort of counterbalanced the Christmas carols!

Nobody seemed to notice anything wrong, but perhaps, as I told my wife, the entire crowd loved Charles Ives or even Stockhausen     and did not think anything was unusual!   

[karlhenning]

You see? If you don't tell them it's Ives or Stockhausen, they go for it!

[greg]

And let me guess- Stockhausen came and landed his UFO among the crowd and signed some autographs?

[Cato]

And let me guess- Stockhausen came and landed his UFO among the crowd and signed some autographs?

Dude!  Stockhausen IS the UFO!  The ultimate Soul Train to the Stars!   

Another Christmas music story from some years ago: for a high school Christmas concert at my former school (all-boys Catholic) where we had a new and completely incompetent choir director who pretended to understand how vocal harmony worked, the band director and I had to salvage things.  After hearing a disastrous men's chorus rehearsal and looking at the parts, the band director asked me to compose proper settings of the Christmas hymns chosen (thinking he was brilliant enough to do it on his own, the choir director had not found or ordered parts!), and the band director secretly rehearsed my version with the choir, and told them to ignore the choir director's version! 

At the concert the choir director turned red within seconds as he heard something that sounded quite different - and better - from the boys! 

We never said a word,    0:)    and the boys never did either, and to his credit the choir director never tried to compose his own settings ever again!   

[Szykneij]

Nobody seemed to notice anything wrong, but perhaps, as I told my wife, the entire crowd loved Charles Ives or even Stockhausen     and did not think anything was unusual!   

Well, I guess that's what you get when you hold a Christmas parade in November!   

At the concert the choir director turned red within seconds as he heard something that sounded quite different - and better - from the boys! 

At least he gets a few points for noticing there was a difference.