What happens when you yell "FIRE" in a room full of musicians?

March 30th, 2005

So last night I had an interesting quintet rehearsal. We had a late-night practice because we had to play for a professor today, and we really didn't have much prepared. 20 minutes into the rehearsal, the school's fire alarm went off! There were strobe lights flashing, high pitched beeping...it was like a dance club in there! But we really had to rehearse. Who cares if we were in danger of being engulfed in flames, we had to learn the music!

So we ended up taking all our things and attempted to rehearse outside, amidst the cops and the firefighters running around, as well as all those sickos waiting to see some gore. I was reminded of a scene in the movie "Titanic" (not my favorite movie, but I did enjoy the fake immigrant accents). Anyway, in this scene, the ship is sinking and everybody is running around and everything is in chaos EXCEPT for the suicidal string quartet musicians who decide to play while the ship sinks. It was really kind of eerie having classical music playing while all this chaos was going on. It felt kind of like a dream. And as an aside, we kicked butt at our coaching today.

So the question you should ask after reading this entry is: If you yell "FIRE" in a room full of musicians who don't listen to you, are you still making a sound?