[Dixielandjazz] RE: Dystonia

[Shortuba at aol.com]

Hello all -

A few years ago, we had Paul Krzywicki, long- time Principal Tubist of the 
Philadelphia Orchestra come to our William J. Bell Tuba Day event (where we have 
jazz clinicians from time to time - that's the specific OKOM content).  Paul 
was a student of Mr. Bell, and was compelled to retire because of Focal 
Dystonia.  He gave a talk both there and at the University of Northern Iowa about 
his own struggles with this malady.  Quite a number of professional classical 
tubists (five or six names jump to mind, including a former teacher of mine), 
but it's not limited to only tubists - horn players suffer from it, and some 
trumpet and trombonists (like Dave Gravatt on the list, unfortunately). Pianists 
also suffer, such as Leon Fleischer, who has not been able to straighten his 
hand in 40 years and has had to play the "One hand" repertorie.  

There is some specuation that the tubists suffering from this were good 
"natural" players, who really did not warm up sufficiently before performing, but 
we're not sure.  Paul K. did some botox treatments, which immoblized the 
muscles for about six months, and then he "re-taught" the muscles to play the tuba 
again.  Expensive in dollars and time.

A few years ago, I saw on the CBS Evening News a story about golfers who get 
the "yips", something I had not heard of, but apparently causes good driving 
golfers to screw up their putting.  So it took golfers missing putts to cause 
the Mayo Clinic to put a division of the hospital to researching the problem, 
and if they find a solution, maybe it will apply to musicians.

Shows where WE are on the social scale....as if we didn't already know.

Mike Short
Party Gras Classic Jazz
Des Moines, IA