Don't do this!! Audition stories are funny when they happen to someone else. Ben Ramirez was kind enough to tell this one on himself. Ben is Timpanist in Columbus and this summer he is playing with us in Tanglewood. Apparently he was auditioning once down in Florida when a fly started to not only buzz him but actually dive bomb him throughout his whole audition. Of course he was playing behind a screen and the audition committee couldn’t see what was happening, but the personnel manager, who was conducting the audition with him, saw the predicament. Not having a fly swatter , the personnel manager tried to swat the fly in mid air with his clip board. You can imagine how Ben attempted to keep his concentration while trying to dodge not only the fly but the clip board. At the end of the audition Ben who is normally a relaxed kind of guy decided that this was too much and he asked for another chance to play later on in the day. With the help of the personnel manager it was decided to do that. GUESS WHAT!.............IT HAPPENED AGAIN! Ben decided that this job just was not in the cards for him and from then on he carries a can of RAID in his stick bag. (NOT) Ben must be a nature lover however because he did mention another concert when he was playing a rather exposed and delicate passage in the Sibelius Violin Concerto....a music loving moth flew by and decided to land on his glasses for about 16 bars.