Spooky Performance Stories

We’ve all seen the clips on social media: the London Symphony oboist’s reed splitting mid performance, Ray Chen’s E-string breaking during the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, Buddy Rich breaking one of his drumsticks during a solo. These unforgettable and unexpected performance horror stories can sometimes torment us for the rest of our lives, but they make for quite an entertaining story. 

To honor Halloween and all the spooktacular festivities, we asked members of the CMA staff to share their most bone shivering, teeth chattering, and panic inducing performance stories that they will never forget. Here’s what they said: 

Orchid McRae, Associate Director of Marketing and Communications 

In 2016, I was setting up for a performance with a quintet performing some of my compositions. I had set up my snare drum and my laptop was open on the ground next to it. I guess I didn’t tighten the snare stand enough because when a gust of wind or something blew by it knocked my snare directly into my laptop screen and left the built-in display completely unusable. I needed my laptop for several moments in the performance as several of the pieces would be unperformable without the electronic elements. Thankfully, the venue had an additional projector, so I plugged my laptop into the projector and had my display showing on a nearby white wall. We got through the performance unscathed, but my laptop ended up needing an expensive repair following the performance. 

Kevin Kwan Loucks, Chief Executive Officer

In 2016, Trio Céleste embarked on a Northern California tour, brimming with excitement and a touch of terror, ready to perform Tchaikovsky’s monumental Piano Trio for the first time. This piece is a beast—a towering, emotional rollercoaster—and after weeks of individual practice and rehearsals, we felt ready to conquer it. 

The first concert was sold out. We took our places, the opening piano gesture set the stage, and… disaster. My trusty Bluetooth page-turning pedal, which had worked perfectly in rehearsal, chose this moment to rebel. I’d tap it to advance the page – nothing. Tap, tap, tap – still nothing. Suddenly, the screen decided to spring to life, leaping several pages forward, like a possessed e-book! My horror was only outweighed by the dizzying scramble as I frantically swiped back, trying to find my place. Tchaikovsky’s relentless piano part was tough enough, but this was now a musical horror show. 

I had to switch to manually turning the screen, but “manual” on a digital device was like playing whack-a-mole with a ghost. The whole performance became a bizarre dance between my left hand, my panicked right, and a pedal that seemed to have made a pact with the dark side. To this day, when I see a Bluetooth pedal, I shiver. The real horror of that night wasn’t Tchaikovsky; it was the fickle finger – or foot -of technology. 

Ofir Tomer, Development Associate 

A long time ago during my studies, a bass player friend of mine asked me to play a Dittersdorf piece on his recital. I was a stressed-out new violist, but he promised me the piece was super easy and that we’d put it together in a quick rehearsal and the time commitment would be low. Well, we ran the piece at the dress rehearsal, and everything was working out great, but about 2/3 of the way through we realized that weren’t using the same edition: the parts aren’t aligned, we have a different number of measures — IMSLP strikes again. 

He assures me that he’ll edit his part for his recital, and I could use my part as-is and we’d have no issues. Fast forward, recital time. Everything is going swimmingly. However, about 2/3 of the way through the performance I realize he’s playing the forbidden section!!! By the apologetic look on his face I understand he is hoping I make something up on the spot. I tried my best, but I had no idea how many extra measures he had — it was something outrageous like 40 extra measures. I guessed incorrectly, ending about 8 measures early, and respectfully looked at while he finished the duo by himself. We were able to laugh/cry about this months later when we watched the recording, but it felt like quite a catastrophe in real-time! 

Julia Filson, Director of Advancement

I have a curse: The curse of missing new music parts. When I was an undergrad, I lost an entire folder of new music ensemble horn parts – never to be found. I was on trial for a new job and the gig was an hour away, while the folder of all commissions rested peacefully at home. At a performance I discovered I had most of the quintet’s (I got the gig) encores memorized when we walked on stage and my music “disappeared” into thin air. Not to mention pretending to play when I didn’t have 2 pages of commissioned music. I wonder who the curse was passed on to when I stopped performing…watch out. 

Ben Schonhorn, Social Media & Digital Content Coordinator 

In the summer of 2022, I was playing in the orchestra at a summer stock theatre out in Massachusetts. It was a fairly shallow pit and there was always a high possibility for props to fall in the pit, but nothing ever did. So it’s the final performance of the season, and we start playing the song “A Romantic Atmosphere,” from She Loves Me; and the joke of the song is that everything needs to be the perfect ambiance at the café for people to fall in love, and if something is slightly off the owner gets very upset. The actors were doing choreography where they were passing around a metal serving tray that they stole from a waiter, and we had done this number plenty of times and there were never any issues. 

During the final performance of the season, there was a missed hand-off between two actors at the front of the stage and the metal tray fell to the ground and flung into the pit, landing on the keyboard player’s keyboard. Luckily, she wasn’t playing, but it startled everyone in the surrounding area. The actors needed the prop for the end of the song because the song ends with the owner knocking over the server’s tray so the pianist slides the tray onto the lip of the stage, and luckily an actor notices and grabs it when she had a chance, and the rest of the song goes on without a problem. However, the metal tray hit buttons it wasn’t supposed to without the keyboard player noticing and when she went to play quiet underscore it was loud MIDI brass, and it made all the actors break on stage.