Wedding Music Tip #4

In early December my flute quartet (that's flute, violin, viola and cello) played for a wedding in the Skylight Ballroom at the Puck Building. Downtown Manhattan, near NYU. It's a cool loft space, and the wedding couple's event team had put together a chic look of high tables with bar stools, various sized ottomans which seemed to work equally as tables and chairs and millions of candles. Designers probably have a name for this like "posh" or similar.

What the event team had not incorporated into their look was the four chairs the quartet required for performance. They were not told about it, they said. They couldn't help, they said. Alrighty. We needed to be playing in roughly ten minutes, so something had to be done and fast. The ottomans were too low to the ground (absurdly designed for hobbits) and the bar stools were far too high, especially for playing cello. I heard some talk of sawing off the legs of a few bar stools and decided to find building maintenance to see if they could produce four folding chairs. I mean, the Puck Building is a big place. You can't tell me there aren't four chairs hanging around there somewhere.

The front desk was equally unhelpful, sighting that those renting the space should provide chairs. They couldn't part with four chairs under any condition. I begged; I pleaded. The Lord of the Chairs finally gave in and told me I could take one of their desk chairs to the ballroom. That's all they had to give. I wheeled my treasure into the elevator and up we went. At least there would be one normal-sized chair for me (playing cello) and if all else failed, which seemed very likely at this point, the others could stand and play.

By the time I pushed and shoved the desk chair to our set-up area, the other musicians had arrived, and I had the ghastly task of explaining to them there were no chairs. It wasn't my fault, I said. Would they be okay...standing? The flutist suggested they just haul over three stools and blend in with the rest of the decor. They were okay sitting on bar stools. Thank the Lord! We proceeded to play the event sitting on one desk chair (with rollers--very hard to control while playing cello) and three very tall stools.

Wedding Tip #4: Don't forget to arrange for the correct number and size (!) chairs the musicians may need for performance purposes. In addition, most musicians require chairs without arms.

Until the next wedding,

Alice Hamlet, Director
www.tenstringsmusicstudio.com