The Incredible Adventures of the Short-Sleeved Tuxedo Avenger

(and his incredulous sidekick)

Last week I was called up on short-notice to play a gig at a mansion outside of DC. It turned out to be a private fund raiser for some political candidate, and the house was to be full of wealthy hand shakers. My duty was to play duets in the background, lending a certain aura of sophistication and elegance to the evening's affair. My partner in crime was a violinist that I had never worked with; we made plans to arrive at the house in plenty of time.

The drive through this wealthy neighborhood was gorgeous, the road slipping over the shoulders of wooded hills whose colors were just beginning to hit their peak. Nestled in between these trees were homes that warranted individual zip codes, since their surrounding property was roughly the size of Rhode Island.
I arrived at the house, an equally large (yet surprisingly new) manor which could only be reached by a slow winding driveway. Passing through their gate and finally parking my car next to the front entrance's fountain, I decided this could only be more grandiose if a trained elephant was working the valet.

Unloading his vehicle at the front door was a tuxedo-clad gentlemen. From the back seat came two full-size suitcases and finally, a violin case.
"Aha!" I thought, "I have my man."

We introduce ourselves (his name is Aaron) and park our cars around the back of the house. I then help Aaron with his luggage inside the house where we meet fourteen different people, each person deciding after a few moments of conversation to pass the Musicians off onto the next hapless victim who happened to be walking by.
Finally we are shown to the garage(?) which is where we are instructed to leave our cases and suitcases(??)

Next to the caterers' prepratory and storage space, we Musicians unpack our instruments and
Aaron begins to open up his suitcases. I watch with some interest.
The smaller suitcase turns out to contain (what had to be) Aaron's entire personal music library. Between tattered sheets of music theory homework Aaron began pulling out books of duet music. We could only have selected 15% of the contents of the suitcase. It made me wonder if Aaron always carried every piece of music with him where ever he went.
Aaron started to unzip the larger piece of luggage.

Out of the big suitcase he pulls a music stand. And then another. And another. And another. But not flimsy wire stands. These collapsable stands look like they are designed to be hurled at oncoming battle tanks when your ammunition runs out. These particular stands looked rather war weary. One of them even looked like the tank had won once or twice.

I asked Aaron why we (as two musicians) would possibly need four music stands. Aaron then proceeded to lay out his master plan: rather than dragging our instruments, music and music stand with us around the house when we moved from one room to the next, we could strategically place stands around the house where we wanted to play, and save ourselves the frustration of having to lug one of the poor battle weary stands with us.

Well gee, maybe Aaron is pretty smart about this whole -

My train of thought is derailed as I begin to notice Aaron's clothing. We're both wearing tuxedos, (more or less) but I begin to notice that Aaron's tuxedo is a bit more less than the average suit.
His jacket suits him fine in the shoulders, and the length of the coat is suitable, but I notice that the sleeves of his jacket only come down to about four inches below his elbows.
Perhaps in an effort to prevent further confusion, Aaron is wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt, so there are no white cuffs protruding from the end of his jacket sleeves.
The over-all effect of his clothing was of a 25 year-old crammed into the suit of a 12 year-old.

All musicians know to buy performance clothing that will permit the freedom of movement necessary during a concert. A jacket that is too tight in the shoulders or across the back will make playing uncomfortable. Sleeve length is usually exaggerated as well, since the sleeves normally get hiked up during the course of playing.
Aaron's tuxedo, already having such a dramatic advantage with hiked-up sleeves, went from being a three-quarter length to a genuine short-sleeve during the course of our performance.

For the next three hours we played dull-minded duets which all sounded remarkably similar, moving from one carefully selected corner of the room to the next, doing our best to drown out the conversations taking place near us. The clientle had the advantage of alcohol, steeling them in their efforts to immerge victorious, but we put up a valiant fight.
Every hour we took a short break and were allowed to drink and eat our fill of various hor'dourves.

Whenever our break time was drawing to a close, I would notify Aaron that we were about to begin playing again, and this was the time when he would set off in search of additional sustenance. So, at the appointed time, when we were supposed to begin playing, I had to wander through the house, viola in hand, looking for my counterpart. I would then find him, glass of juice in one hand, crackers in the other and a mouthful of cheese.

"Are you ready?" I ask. "It's time for us to play again."

He nodds and runs off to the garage to retrieve his violin. I set the music down on the stand and flip it open so that we don't have any time to begin a conversation about what to play.

"Do you want to play some Beatles' songs out of my fake book?" Aaron asks (his biceps peeking out from his coat.)

No.

The fake book is a giant volume of every pop/rock song that was popular during the last thirty years. I can imagine countless bar hacks employ such a book when someone asks for "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and in order to not reveal their musical stupidity, flips open the fake book and is able to quickly read melody, words and chord progressions.

When Aaron asks if I want to play Beatles' tunes, it isn't from a organized four-part manuscript. Rather, we have a one-line melody with loosely translated rhythms with little letters symbolizing C, G, F or A minor chords, whichever one is to play along with the melody.
Aaron would dutifully blast through the melody, and I was stuck with improvising some accompaniment that stayed within the boundaries of the key signature.

Hence my reluctance to "play a Beatles' song."

Finally, however, I relinquish.

The fake book comes out and Aaron pulls out a handwritten list selecting his favorite Beatles tunes from the book.

"So which one do you want to do? Ina Goda Davida or Unchained Melody?"

Both of them, I reason, are equally great, well-known Beatles tunes.

We play, and we're horrendous.

Poor John.

I'm still waiting for the check to arrive.