You are compelled to read this. You can’t look away
Walmart Phoebe Briidgers, Opinion Editor
Let’s be real: music kids have always been…odd. There’s something so unreachable about them, with their constant gabbering about tri-tones and tuning. Don’t even get me started on Tchaikovsky’s affair with his nephew. Bottom line: musicians are weird. Strange. Straight up freakish.
Up until recently, it’s always been thought that they were regular, run of the mill high school characters. However, on March 15, during the spring orchestra concert, the weirdness took on a whole new level.
I arrived at Barnum at 6:30, ready to sit through the lengthy ordeal I was assigned to review. The concert proceeded as usual: the lower orchestras clambered onto the stage, churning out short, peppy pieces inspired by the typical themes (lullabies, Spanish dances, fantasy). Note: I’m going to talk a lot of trash about the orchestra due to the experience I had at the concert. However, I will say this: these students work hard, and it shows. Even though not all of the groups had the most advanced players, each one was a joy to hear. That is, until Symphony mounted the stage.
The program for Symphony was exciting, as always. Shostakovich and Dvorak were both featured. Straight away, I noticed something odd about the performance. As the music crescendoed, so did Mr. Aiello’s forceful breathing. Even from my seat high in the mezzanine, I could hear him grunting and huffing along with the booming of the timpani. He was certainly into it, I’ll give him that. But what a distraction it was! His percussive airwaves were so loud they pulled me completely out of Dvorak. They reverberated through my skull, they were all I could hear.
While I sat and cringed at Aiello’s unnaturally rhythmic hyperventilation, I began to notice something strange about my fellow audience members. Five minutes ago, the seats were filled with the subtle movements of people who had been sitting too long- a woman thumbing through the program, a young boy kicking the chair in front of him. Now, everyone sat stock-straight in their seats, utterly motionless.
Suddenly, a woman sitting towards the front made her way to the aisle. For a moment, she stood still, her eyes transfixed on the stage. Suddenly, her body jerked, and she kicked her leg up high in the air. She was a flurry of motion! She dropped it like it was hot, she shook her tuckus and fell into the splits. Soon the rest of the audience joined her. Butts were shimmying, knees were bending, and suddenly I realized what was happening. The audience was doing the Wet A*s P*ssy (WAP) to classical music.
I ran from the theater, utterly terrified at the prospect that I, too, would be shakin’ my thang. I got home and immediately crumpled to the floor, absolutely shocked by what I had witnessed.
The following day, I ran into the principal of the cello section, Lorelei Deutsch (’23). Deutsch explained the situation to me in great detail.
“Orchestra enrollment is falling, and frankly we sound like crap. We figured anyone who didn’t want to be forced to do vulgar TikTok dances would join the orchestra,” Deutsch said.