The Tragedy of Store Bought Reeds
For every reed player, there exists the potential for truly tragic moments during their professional careers. I'm not talking about botched solos or malfunctioning keys - of course those are always risks. What I'm referring to is the potential to forget an essential, nay, THE ESSENTIAL , genesis piece of what they do: The Reed Box. Every traveling musician has pulled over countless times within the first 5 miles from home to do the panicked re-check. Seat strap? Music? Concert Black? etc etc etc More often than not all is well and you continue on. Every once in a while you discover you have left something behind and you return home, retrieve the item and, with a sigh of relief, congratulate yourself for remembering in time. Then there are the truly tragic moments that happen ONCE and once only during a musician's career. In my case, I drove over 200 miles from home for my monthly residency with the Billings Symphony. Having taken this trip many