Strangest Venue You've Ever Performed In/At

[JohnL]

Gigs are where you find them. Good venues, poor venues, and everything in between.

Then there are the strange venues.

I'll start it off with a concert I played a few years back in Palm Springs, California where the band was set up under a giant statue of Marilyn Monroe, in her classic "The Seven Year Itch pose.

[Burgerbob]

I played a billionaire’s birthday party near Palm Springs. I’m talking GIANT mansion, people dropping from helicopters into the pool, that kind of thing. Definitely an awful gig but a good story.

[Kingfan]

it wasn't the venue but the gig that was strange - I played in a big band that was backing up a Christian rapper.

[Pezza]

I did christmas carols at a maximum security prison!

And to be clear, I was a visitor, not an inmate.

[Kingfan]

Which reminds me - Indiana Women's Prison in Indianapolis. I for sure wasn't an inmate!

[BrassSection]

Playing a French horn duet with my daughter to accompany the Christmas caroling group in a senior citizens home many years ago. Only instrument music we had available for duet. Wasn’t so adept at transposing then as I am now. Not sure who enjoyed it more, the ones that could or the ones that couldn’t hear anything!

[chouston3]

I did a gig in a mental hospital with voice and piano. I thought I would have to dodge the patients as we did our music but I did not. They had the wild ones in the back. They ushered them in and out as needed during the performance.

After the performance they took me on a tour. They had a calm down room that was the coolest thing. It was full of bean bags and had low lights. It also had glass columns full of water that had bubbles going. Some day, I will make a room like that in my own house.

[walldaja]

Brass quintet playing for Elwood Haynes birthday celebration (scion of Haynes Apperson autos). No one in attendance to hear us play but ir was a paying gig. I guess a gig is c a gig when you get paid.

[AndrewMeronek]

Strange mostly due to the historical relevance:

When I was in the Army I ended up playing some ceremonial music (small ensemble/trombone quartet kind of stuff) in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces.

[AndrewMeronek]

I'll start it off with a concert I played a few years back in Palm Springs, California where the band was set up under a giant statue of Marilyn Monroe, in her classic "The Seven Year Itch pose.

Better hope promotional pics didn't include you looking up!

[Doug Elliott]

I played with a Salsa band at a huge outdoor fund-raiser party that was a circus-like atmosphere with all sorts of acrobats and various performers from Brazil and Europe.
In Angola, the capital city Luanda.
Had to get a Yellow Fever shot and malaria prevention pills. Spent a week there to play one set. The charter flight we were on only flew once a week.

[Pezza]

Just got reminded of a gig at a psych hospital, again as a guest not an inmate.
All went well until a few band members forgot to bring their ID to get out! Very funny, for those that had ID!

[tbdana]

I played Frank Sinatra’s 65th birthday party at his home in Palm Springs.

When in the Army, we did a concert at a school for the deaf.

[JohnL]

I played Frank Sinatra’s 65th birthday party at his home in Palm Springs.

That's a heck of a place; never been there in person, of course, but I've seen a video tour shot in 1999 (less than a year after Frank's passing).

Did you get a chance to mix with the guests?

[JohnL]

I'll start it off with a concert I played a few years back in Palm Springs, California where the band was set up under a giant statue of Marilyn Monroe, in her classic "The Seven Year Itch pose.

Better hope promotional pics didn't include you looking up!

I suspect there are pics of that sort someplace, but the galleries on that band's website are currently in limbo. All I've got is a thumbnail.

946598_4818364618068_1322396205_n.jpg

[Matt K]

I got a call in 2022 from a band based in NYC that they were doing a gig in rural WV and needed a trombone player. So I think, cool, I haven't done a gig in a while b/c of Covid, so maybe it's time to come out of my shell. (My family basically did not go in public from March 2020 to like September of 2022).

I get down to this festival, and the band and I are going through some charts, making sure I have the roadmap, soundcheck, etc., when suddenly a group of completely naked people casually walk down the path next to the venue, buy some beers, and casually walk off. The band (and I) thought that was strange but didn't say anything. Then it happens again... several times. The venue coordinator shows up to check on us, and we're like, "What's with all the naked people?" "Ohhhhhhh my gosh! Did nobody tell you?"

Yeah, it turns out part of the festival was some nudist/exhibitionist/swinger party.

[Trombo]

About 15 years ago I went to Lake Balaton in Hungary. There is a brass band festival there. There is a tradition of playing waist-deep in water. It seemed rather strange to me, but the local audience really likes it.
It is not us here, but a Swiss brass band "Bieranjas":

[harrisonreed]

I played a brass band gig on a trash island in the bottom of a polluted quarry that had been converted from a dump into a kind of art installation that was in the middle of the largest ger district (Yurt neighborhood) in Ulaanbaatar.

https://www.jamogrand.com/post/_lake

https://maps.app.goo.gl/p7mEdaAMhptbUXV69

Mongolia is absolutely wild in a good way, and their musicians are incredibly talented -- I will never forget playing with the State Big Band in the main theater downtown there. It was packed beyond capacity with people sitting in the aisles and windows, the lobby was full as well.

[TomInME]

it wasn't the venue but the gig that was strange - I played in a big band that was backing up a Christian rapper.

Similar thing, but not a rapper, thank God.
We were on an aluminum stage by the ocean when a thunderstorm rolled in, and they waited WAYYY too long to pull the plug. Thunder and lightning hit simultaneously - I've never packed up so fast before or since.

P.s.: great stories here, I have nothing close.

[LeTromboniste]

Thinking about it my good strange stories are not at all linked with the strange venues, but oh well.

One odd venue was a circus school in LA, where I conducted an interdisciplinary concert of new music premieres, while there were also visual artists creating artpieces on the music in real time. The audience was just sitting on the floor and on gymnastics mats, with all sorts of trapezes and aerial acrobatics ribbons hanging all over the place.

More recently, we did a performance of polychoral wind music with my students. The university where I teach owns a ship (!), the MS Dauerwelle. It's a former river cruise ship that they completely gutted and left an empty shell (but still sailable) that is used as an exhibition space for visual, electronic and performance arts and occasionally available as a music performance venue. The floor is below water level. We played from the facing catwalks above the audience.

And a last one, not so much the venue itself being strange, more it being completely unexpected to find that venue in that location. Last month my chamber group did a residency and mini-tour in Arizona. Our first concert was in Patagonia, a tiny town of 900 souls about 20 minutes north of the Mexican border. The only pictures of the venue I had seen were outside pictures of a nondescript brown square building. I expected a village auditorium with a heavily curtained scene, a carpeted floor and a non-existent acoustic. Had the pleasant surprise to find out it was a recently-built hall specifically intended for chamber music, designed with the spirit and proportions (double cube) of an old world 18th or 19th century salon, and with some of the most comfortable and pleasant acoustics I've ever experienced.

[heldenbone]

I have two to offer.

The first was the last time the Seventh Army Symphony alumns gathered for the last time. The organizer Mel Ponzi asked me to sit in with the trumpet section as a ringer. As I recall, he claimed Malcolm McNab was a late cancellation. Dunno if that was true - I thought Malcolm was Canadian, but if so, it's humbling to sub for Malcolm.

The other, also for trumpet, was the Wild Turkey Convention. It was for hunters of wild turkeys (the birds). I'll note parenthetically that Wild Turkey (the adult beverage) was a sponsor of the event. They wanted Morning Colors played to open the day.

[NotSkilledHere]

I mostly play just for myself and my own enjoyment nowadays so i dont have anything really super out there, but back in high school, i used to play lead/1st chair from freshman to senior year in the concert, jazz, and football bands. we were a small school so everyone is pretty tight nit. we didnt march or anything. we just sat in the stands at football games and played fun songs throughout the games.

the oddest thing that happened was our school's lacrosse coach REALLY wanted us to play at a lacrosse game. Challenge: name another time a band has played at a lacrosse game. That's all fine and dandy, but he only requested that we play Sweet Caroline. he REALLY REALLY loved that song. So we played it like 9x throughout the lacrosse game. the refs gave us some weird looks but nothing too weird. it was wet, cold, and the saxophones really couldnt play much because of the wet so it kinda fell to me and the lead trumpet to carry everything. In return, he ordered us all a bunch of catered food fit to feed a stadium. we werent ones to turn down free food.

compared to yall definitely not the weirdest, but certainly something different.

[JohnL]

And a last one, not so much the venue itself being strange, more it being completely unexpected to find that venue in that location. Last month my chamber group did a residency and mini-tour in Arizona. Our first concert was in Patagonia, a tiny town of 900 souls about 20 minutes north of the Mexican border. The only pictures of the venue I had seen were outside pictures of a nondescript brown square building. I expected a village auditorium with a heavily curtained scene, a carpeted floor and a non-existent acoustic. Had the pleasant surprise to find out it was a recently-built hall specifically intended for chamber music, designed with the spirit and proportions (double cube) of an old world 18th or 19th century salon, and with some of the most comfortable and pleasant acoustics I've ever experienced.

Small towns can sometimes be home to a surprisingly vibrant arts scene. Sometimes it's just one person with a vision (check out the Amargosa Opera House in Death Valley Junction, California). In other cases, a small cadre of artistic types will "discover" a small town.

[Doug Elliott]

Like the Opera House in Manaus, Brazil. I see it's officially called the Amazon Theater. Played there with the Airmen of Note. Our first stop in South America and I got sick, I suppose from the water.

[officermayo]

Julia Tutwiller state prison for women in Alabama - in the gym - with no A/C - in July.

I'll bet you can smell it, can't you?

[DaveAshley]

I played with a civil war-era brass band in a hot air balloon.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/ikdj3YDXj1bmgecL/

[andym]

I once performed on a shake table (used to simulate earthquakes) that was installed into a pit in a small town near the San Andreas fault. It was not moving while we played. The piece was for trombone, cello, voice, and sonified seismograms. We also performed next to it with a piece that also included the shake table which is noisy when it moves.

I also once played solo on a sailboat as we started a race. Neither the race nor the playing was serious. Excellent use for a pbone.

[VJOFan]

I did christmas carols at a maximum security prison!

And to be clear, I was a visitor, not an inmate.

Til I read this I forgot about doing the same thing, but it was when I was in about grade 2 and it was with my church children’s choir. Glad I didn’t know to be scared at the time. I remember feeling very appreciated actually.

[hyperbolica]

I've performed on the deck of an aircraft carrier, on top of a submarine on the runway at a Blue Angels show, on a 4x8 sheet of plywood... Military musicians...

[JohnL]

I've performed on the deck of an aircraft carrier, on top of a submarine on the runway at a Blue Angels show, on a 4x8 sheet of plywood... Military musicians...

I assume that both the carrier and the submarine were in active service? I've played on the deck of a carrier (USS Midway) and on the fantail of a battleship (USS Iowa) a couple times, but both were decommissioned museum ships at the time.

[Mikebmiller]

One of the trumpet players in my quintet used to own a really nice horse barn where they stabled about 20 horses. They had a Christmas party for all the horse owners and we ended up playing Christmas carols in a horse stall.

[hyperbolica]

I assume that both the carrier and the submarine were in active service?...

Yeah, they weren't launching F14s at the moment, but they were active, tied up at dock. We did a lot of change of command ceremonies. We commisioned the USS Lincoln CVN72 in 88 or 89.

[andym]

If we are taking Navy vessels, I did perform on a Liberty Ship during San Francisco Fleet Week. While not on active duty, it is working and we sailed under the Golden Gate bridge and back and there was a promotion ceremony done while under the bridge. Then we positioned at one end of the area where the Blue Angels were doing a show. They paid us special attention with some very close by passes. A lot of fun. My father-in-law shipped out of San Francisco on a Liberty Ship near the end of WWII. So helping support this ship is important to us.

[Kingfan]

One of the trumpet players in my quintet used to own a really nice horse barn where they stabled about 20 horses. They had a Christmas party for all the horse owners and we ended up playing Christmas carols in a horse stall.

Before or after they mucked it out?

[Mikebmiller]

One of the trumpet players in my quintet used to own a really nice horse barn where they stabled about 20 horses. They had a Christmas party for all the horse owners and we ended up playing Christmas carols in a horse stall.

Before or after they mucked it out?

After, but it still had a unique smell.

[tbdana]

A few months ago I performed at a memorial service for a local man who had been a trombone player. So why was this a strange gig? Because the guy was still alive! He has Alzheimers and his wife and friends wanted to celebrate his life while he was still around to appreciate it, so they held a wake for him with him as the guest of honor.

It was strange, but also incredible.

[mbarbier]

A chamber orchestra I'm in played with a rock band at the Natural History Museum in one of the exhibit spaces. Totally beautiful but also an unbelievably loud wash of sound and were joined by the drum line from the USC Marching Band as well as the Museum's life size Trex puppet that roars. Totally out. Had our own bar tender in the green room who served all drinks in lidded coffee cups so they could go into the museum.
It was a weird night.

On the less over the top side, played a solo show at this place called the Cow Shed in Berlin years ago that's on Humbolt University's campus. Used to be a barn as part of their veterinary school- entirely concrete with built in concrete troughs. Incredible reverb. Could play chords with yourself. Also unheated in winter in Berlin. Glad I didn't have to play in tune with anyone else.