Photo by cruffo

Photo by cruffo

Last Friday evening, the skies above Washington were practically apocalyptic. Explosive thunder rattled the ground, lightning forked in the horizon and a torrential downpour was on its way. And oh, yeah, there was that tornado warning.

Not surprisingly, Friday’s game between the Nationals and the Atlanta Braves was called off, but not before the officials took their sweet time in making the decision. At least the smattering of fans who actually made it out to Nationals Park in the horrible weather weren’t left to suffer in silence.

Before Friday’s non-game, a group of 372 trombonists organized by Arena Stage and the Foundation for the Advancement of Music and Education assembled on the warning track to bellow out a rendition of “76 Trombones” from The Music Man, which is currently being performed at Arena. (For anyone who cares about the arithmetic, that’s 296 more trombones than the song calls for.)

Friday’s ensemble—Arena Stage and FAME recruited as many as 575 before the weather thinned the herd—became the largest recorded group of trombonists to play “76 Trombones,” a statistic kept by the Guinness Book of World Records.

But the trombonists probably also set another mark—or came awfully close—for being a group lightning rod. Trombones are large and metal, and having 372 of them clustered on an open field seemed like an easy way for an amateur musician to get fried:


Brass is plenty conductive, although we could find no reports of a trombone player ever being struck by lightning.

Anyway, enjoy the sound of 372 trombones blasting “76 Trombones”:

The news that followed the performance—that the game was indeed postponed—required the somber notes of only one trombone:

Filed Under: arena stage, nationals park, the music man, tornado warning, trombones,