Two nights ago at the Karnatic Lab I played a piece by Steve Horowitz on the contrabass flute.

But during the rehearsal that afternoon, there was something not right about the flute. Some of the middle octave notes were wobbly and I could barely get the lowest notes out. Strange, because I just had the thing in for a mini-overhaul last week and it played fine on a concert a few days ago.

It can be quite disconcerting when your instrument doesn’t behave like you are used to it behaving. But after checking for leaks and finding none, I continued on and did my best to get the notes out that I needed to. Concert went fine, considering the weakness of the normally strong and rich tone this flute has.

Then yesterday during the sound check for a concerto with the Dutch Flute Orchestra, I realized that I was at least a good quartertone flat. And there was no way I could play the fat low B in my piece we had to play that night. I was already starting to plan for some last minute octave changes to get me through the concert, but first I wanted to really figure out what was going on. No leaks in the keys were apparent. The flute was adjusted correctly. I cleaned the headjoint to make sure there was a clean path for the air - no difference. Finally I started taking it apart and sure enough, I found the culprit. A fortune cookie in a wrapper had lodged in between the headjoint and the body of the flute. A friend had given it to me and I put it in the gig bag with the flute. Then when carrying it around, it must have fallen into the flute.

I could not believe it, having played the concert the night before with a fortune cookie lodged in the middle of the pipe.

My shock was short lived because then the flute played wonderfully after that and my relief was immense! Apologies to Steve. Next time I play the piece, the low E will be like a fog horn!