Anecdotally, it is often said that brass players – often overwhelmingly male orchestral sections – drink the most.
Brass sections have always been rather laddish….and "anecdotally" they used to travel with rather more cases than they had instruments to put them in so as to get the alcohol moved around.
Indeed, Sir Georg Solti used to call one of the pubs around the back of the Albert Hall the Gluepot because he found it so difficult to get the trumpeters out of it after the interval….
4 responses so far ↓
1 RobtE // Feb 28, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Anyone who’s hung out around musicians for any length of time knows that certain instruments tend to attract certain personality types. Trombonists tend to be “class clown” types. Oboe players are neurotic. Drummers are thick. And trumpeters are lads.
2 El Draque // Feb 28, 2009 at 5:55 pm
There’s a legend, urban myth if you like, that the in-flight drinking record from London to Sydney was first set by a plane-load of Australian soldiers, then broken by a London symphony orchestra.
Quite an achievement if the brass section did the largest part of the record.
3 Little Black Sambo // Mar 1, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Playing brass instruments is also thirsty work.
4 The Remittance Man // Mar 1, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Pobs round the back of the ALbert Hall? He couldn’t mean the Queen’s Arms could he?
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