Orchestra's Annual Retreat Ends in Tears After Team-Building Exercise Requires Playing Each Other's Instruments

The Westfield Philharmonic's annual team-building retreat concluded in emotional disarray on Sunday after a well-intentioned exercise requiring musicians to perform a simple chorale on instruments other than their own revealed what the orchestra counselor described as 'deep-seated insecurities about musical identity.' The exercise, designed by organizational psychologist Dr. Patricia Teamwork, was intended to 'build empathy and cross-sectional understanding' by having each musician spend twenty minutes playing a colleague's instrument. The results were catastrophic. 'I gave my violin to the principal tuba player,' said concertmaster Viola Pitch. 'He held it like a sandwich. He put the bow on the wrong side of the bridge. He produced a sound that I can only describe as what my instrument would sound like if it were dying. I had to leave the room.' The brass section, given string instruments, fared no better. 'They had no concept of bow pressure,' Pitch continued. 'None. I watched a French horn player draw the bow across the string with the force one might use to saw a plank. The sound — I cannot describe the sound. I will hear it in my sleep.' The strings, meanwhile, struggled with brass instruments. First violinist Helena Tremolo was unable to produce any sound from a trombone despite twenty minutes of sustained effort. 'I blew until I saw spots,' she said. 'Nothing came out. The trombonist told me I was buzzing wrong. I don't know what buzzing is. I am a violinist. We don't buzz.' The percussionist, assigned a harp, sat in front of it for the full twenty minutes without touching it. 'I was afraid,' he admitted. 'It's enormous and it has too many strings and I didn't know which ones to pull. So I sat there. I think I learned something about myself, but I'm not sure what.' Dr. Teamwork has described the exercise as 'a qualified success in that everyone now has a deeper appreciation for how difficult their colleagues' jobs are.' Next year's retreat will feature a less traumatic activity. 'Possibly trust falls,' she said. 'Though knowing this orchestra, someone will find a way to turn that into a sectional dispute.'