Word: oompah
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Showstopper: a wacky session in which tiny Ballerina Melissa Hayden piccoloed about on her toes, and lanky Jacques d'Amboise bounded around in great, oompah leaps to the Liberty Bell and El Capitan marches...
...from the B-flat tenor (10 Ibs., 151 in. of tubing), which is hugged to the player's chest and sometimes goes pah-pah, to the large, economy-size B-flat bass (29 Ibs., 387 in.), which is often worn somewhat like a life preserver and mostly goes oompah. One thing that tuba players have in common is a fear that audiences are laughing at them. To many nonmusicians, indeed, the tuba appears absurd -there is always some fellow in the audience who hopes to see a pair of pigeons flutter wildly out of the bell at first blast...
...musical world knows Amsterdam for its topflight Concertgebouw Orchestra; Amsterdammers' own musical affections center more mundanely on their pierementen, the oversized (10-ft.-high), richly painted barrel organs that trundle through the city streets from dawn to sundown. They furnish the common man's music: the oompah of his visions, the clanging of his troubles, the tra-la-la of his frolicking loves. Some notable feature of design or decoration gives them distinctive names: "Big Belly," "Buffalo," "Water Jug," "Rug Beater," "Cement Mixer" (for an oversized grinding wheel...
...Russians had heard once, were not hearing any more. Leopold Stokowski. and the New York Philharmonic-Symphony performed the U.S. premiere of Sergei Prokofiev's Sixth Symphony. The first movement was dark but thematically appealing, the slow movement harmonically and rhythmically as dull as dishwater. The fast finale oompah-oompahed along in Russian style until about 30 bars from the end. Only then, for about a dozen bars, did listeners hear the powerfully dissonant Prokofiev they had known in the Scythian Suite and the first violin concerto. After that the Sixth Symphony oompahed its way to an ending...
...clambered out to address swarms of schoolkids, talked to S.R.O. audiences in small-town theaters. His target was the Administration's foreign policy: "We must not allow a weak, incompetent and wavering Administration to bungle us into war." In Milwaukee, where he posed with the leader of the oompah German band, no one missed his jab at MacArthur: "This is not a war crisis-it is a peace crisis. Military genius, no matter how excellent, is not the answer." At Eau Claire, he leaned back against a table and talked with cracker-barrel familiarity to local farmers about mastitis...