In college, I was part of the early music group that did a Renaissance dinner-theater show once a year after Christmas.

Once, during a dress rehearsal, the conductor stood on her hands and conducted with her feet. . . .

At one choral concert, the conductor queued the alto section at one tricky point

A regulator you all know told me the following joke this past weekend.

The phone rings in the front office of a symphony orchestra and the receptionist picks it up. The voice on the other end says “May I please speak to the conductor?” “I’m sorry” she says, but the conductor died this past week.” The caller hangs up.

Five minutes later the phone rings again. “May I please speak to the conductor?” the caller again asks. “Sir, I’m sorry, but the conductor died this past week.” The caller again hangs up.

Five minutes later the phone rings again. “May I please speak to the conductor?” “Sir, i’ve told you twice now that the conductor died last week.”

“I know,” the caller says. “I just get so much pleasure hearing you say it.”

When I was living in France ions ago, I lived with a French family for a while and both the husband and wife were professional musicians. My French was awful at the time, and one day the wife was telling me about the gig she had played the night before and the awful conductor. She said that he kept screaming at the orchestra “Regardez la bagette!! Regardez la bagette!!!” I knew the word bagette as a long thin loaf of French bread, and only realized then that bagette really meant ‘stick.’ But I had this image in my head of a conductor standing in front of the orchestra conducting with a loaf of French bread. I still get that image when I think of that story.

I heard Leonard Slatkin tell this joke:

A man walks into a butcher shop and looks over the meat in the case. He sees a platter of meat and a sign that says ‘Calves brains- $2 per pound.’ Next to it is another platter with the sign ‘Conductors brains-$200 a pound.’ Mystified, he ask the clerk why the conductor’s brains are so much more expensive. ” Do you know how many conductors it takes to get 1 pound of brains?”

Then there’s the one about the cafeteria in Heaven. All the angels are standing in line, tray in hand, waiting patiently to get their food when a very old man with a long white beard pushes, shoves, and elbows his way to the front of the line. One of the younger angels says to an older one “Who the heck is that??” The older angel responds, “Him? Oh, that’s God. He thinks he’s a conductor.”

The conductor was ranting at the side-drum player who did something wrong and finished off with something like – “well no wonder, whenever a musician can’t measure up to scratch, they take his instrument away, give him 2 sticks and put him at the back of the orchestra”.