Programs · Episode

Outdoor Concerts Puppy

Aired: Sunday, December 10, 2017 @ 9:00 am
Hosted by Miles Hoffman

Outdoor concerts can be delightful, especially when the music and natural surroundings make a perfect mix. When you’re playing outdoors things sometimes happen that wouldn’t ever happen in a concert hall.  In this episode Miles recounts when a puppy made an unexpected appearance during an outdoor concert. 

Full Episode:

Outdoor concerts can be delightful, especially when the music and natural surroundings make a perfect mix. When you’re playing outdoors things sometimes happen that wouldn’t ever happen in a concert hall, and I’m not just talking about thunderstorms.

Many years ago I played a concert at a festival in France.  The setting was beautiful, we were in a valley in the Alps, and the music was Schubert’s Trout Quintet—what could be better? The performance received an unexpected interruption, however, when a Labrador retriever puppy decided to run up on stage and say hello to all the musicians, wiggling his cute little hindquarters at the audience the whole time.  Not perhaps what Schubert had in mind, but everybody laughed and it certainly made the concert unforgettable. Well, not everybody laughed actually, the puppy made his entrance in the middle of a cello solo and our cellist was a terribly serious chap as I recall and he was not amused.