In 1916, The Georgia Tech football team, coached by John William Heisman (after whom a trophy, not for sportsmanship, would be named), beat Cumberland College 222-0. It is said that one of the Cumberland backs, after fumbling the ball in the backfield, yelled at a teammate to pick it up, whereupon the teammate yelled back – “you dropped it, you pick it up.”

Byron Stripling, conductor of the Grant Park Orchestra for the evening, told a story, he swore was true, of a concert where a man in the front row started snoring. Stripling stopped the music and asked the man’s wife to wake him, the wife responding “you put him to sleep, you wake him up.”

True or not, it made this wide-awake audience laugh, as did his introduction of himself, “for those who did not know,” as Wynton Marsalis, helping to exhibit why Stripling is a quadruple threat, as he also sang, scatted and played a mean trumpet while leading a night of beautiful music.

My enjoyment actually started at the morning rehearsal, sitting in the choral seats behind the orchestra, where I uncovered the secret of how horn players prepare when they aren’t playing – texting, emailing and reading on their cell phones.

I also got to see three union reps quietly storm the stage to inform Stripling that it was break time, whereupon the orchestra was asked to vote whether they wanted to first finish the song they were working on. (Democracy in action.) They did, though the harp player, with nothing to do at that point, and situated near the exit, snuck off.

As Jim Rupp, the drummer for the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra and the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, was brought in to do his thing for the concert, the regular percussionists spent a lot of time out of sight, mentally preparing for their highlighted moments that included a whistle blow and a single strike of the triangle. Good thing all the sound shields in front of them were in place.

Jazz pianist Bobby Floyd was also brought in to wow us, as was vocalist Sydney McSweeney, who earned a standing ovation from the audience shortly before Stripling politely kicked a confused orchestra off the stage, thereby averting another visit from their union reps, to finish the program with Rupp and Floyd in a jam session of, appropriately, Summertime, wherein he held a note so long on his trumpet that I researched, wrote, edited and rewrote this whole blog before he moved on.