Word: oompahed
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Oompah! Oom-pah!" muttered the tympanist as he lashed about in a semicircle, flailing out a solo on his five kettledrums. Then he took a cue from Conductor Howard Mitchell, launched a new flight that moved him to rumble out a profound "Ye-e-a-ah!" For all its appearance of a tribal dance the occasion was a regular concert of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington. The piece, entitled Concerto for Five Kettledrums and Orchestra, was an answer to a tympanist's dream: being liberated from his exile at the rear of the orchestra and placed out front...
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...