Absolutely Reliable News & Rumors.

Busch Gardens Trumpet Player Sets Sights on Met Opera Orchestra

Following what he called his "totally dominating" performance over the first weekend of Busch Gardens Williamsburg operations, Starlight Orchestra Third Trumpet Steve Cupples announced his future plans to enthusiastic observers. "I'm way too damn good for this sorry-ass gig," said Cupples, a first-year Music Therapy student at Christopher Newport University. "I'm ready to ditch these lowbrows and let the rest of the music world feel my thunder."

Next month, Cupples will be taking off from work for the weekend to take the Principal Trumpet audition for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, considered to be among the finest orchestras on the planet.

"Those bitches didn't know what hit 'em," said Cupples. "I was bustin' out those triple high C's, ripping off those solos like the unholy love child of Maynard and Miles. Not a single splee-ya, no fracks, no cracks, just a smooth, awesome tone that blasted the horn players over like fields of wheat. The audience loved my ass, yo."

Experts report that the trumpet audition for the Met will likely draw over four hundred candidates, half of whom will be eliminated by tape audition before several high-pressure rounds of solos and orchestral excerpts determine the finalists. Dozens of professionals and students fresh out of Juilliard, the Peabody Conservatory, and the Eastman School are expected to compete for the job considered one of the most difficult in the classical music business to win. But Cupples is unconcerened.

"Those bitches can't keep up with me," he says. "My weekend of experience as a real professional, working as third trumpet in an amusement-park big band show, will intimidate those conservatory punks into submission. The only thing I need to decide is whether to just accept the Met job when I win it, or whether I should wait until the Cleveland Symphony and Vienna Phil make better offers, so I can play all those stupid bitches off each other for more dough."

"Generally, orchestra musicians with decent jobs practiced for hours a day from a very young age and went to top music schools," said Amy Schwartz Moretti, Florida Orchestra Concertmaster and frequent solo artist, in an exclusive interview with ARN&R. "I've never heard of some guy winning a major orchestra gig after one weekend of playing whole notes for a band at an amusement park, but I guess it could happen. Heck, it sure would've saved me a lot of time if I'd done it that way!"

When asked to comment on Cupples's chances at the upcoming audition, visitors to the Italy section of Busch Gardens Williamsburg reported that the third trumpet player was "pretty loud," "had a high, piercing tone quality," "made weird farty sounds more than actual pitches," and "blended poorly with the trombones."

--JCK