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Ballistics At The Ballet

A Musical Murder Mystery

by B. J. Bowen

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Ballistics at the Ballet (A Musical Murder Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
2nd in Series
Setting – Colorado
Camel Press (September 14, 2022)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 248 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1684920329
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1684920327
Digital ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09X3M6ZVL

When temperamental conductor Felix Underhayes is killed before a rehearsal of the Nutcracker ballet, everyone realizes the show must go on. At an already crazy time of year, things become more complicated when Emily Wilson’s nephew, percussionist Charlie McRae, is accused of the crime. Emily’s sister, Kathleen, and their mother arrive to help prove Charlie’s innocence, but in spite of their best intentions, their efforts do more to hinder the police investigation than to help. To secure justice for her nephew, can Emily juggle performances and family dynamics, while she dodges a demented killer who wants to silence her?

About B.J. Bowen

B.J. Bowen is a musician and free-lance writer whose love of music was awakened by her mother, who played the flute. After discovering her lips were the wrong shape and failing miserably as a flute player, at the age of eleven Ms. Bowen began studying oboe, and has since performed and recorded on both oboe and English horn with professional symphonies and cham[1]ber groups throughout Mexico and Colorado. Her inspirational articles have appeared in Unity Magazine and Daily Word, and she won Honorable Mention in the 2018 Focus: Eddy Awards for her article, “Letting Go with Grace,” published in Unity Magazine. Drawing on her quirky fellow musicians and orchestral experiences, she created the mystery series, “Musical Murders.” She lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with two canine friends, and has a song for any occasion.

Author Links: Website / Facebook / BookBub

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EXCERPT

As I opened the stage door, I heard Felix shout, “No!” followed quickly by a shot. My ears rang with the sound. It had to have been close…

A few fraught seconds later the exit door slammed, the ensuing silence broken only by Felix’s moaning. I decided the threat had gone and moved across the entry and down the hallway, toward Felix’s dressing room.

The prima ballerina’s door was closed. Next to it, the premier danseur emerged from his dressing room. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know.” I crept cautiously forward, the dancer following.

The next door, Felix’s, stood open. He lay on the floor, groaning. And bleeding.

The danseur turned ashen and his chin trembled. “What . . . what . . .”

I spotted a cummerbund hung over a chair. “Take that cummerbund and press it over the wound on Felix’s chest. I’ll call 911.”

I pulled the phone from my pocket. “Send an ambulance and police to Fleisher Hall. A man’s been shot.”

The danseur knelt on one side of Felix, pressing the cummerbund to the conductor’s chest. I knelt on the other, holding Felix’s outstretched arm, his hand in mine. “It’s okay.” I tried to reassure him. “Help will be here soon.”

Felix whispered, “Tell her she’s the only one . . .”

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Author Guest Post

Many Musings, Mostly Musical: The Show Must Go On

By B.J. Bowen

 

    Every performing artist knows the show must go on. Partly, it’s a financial directive. The group would go broke if the performance were canceled and ticket money refunded. But partly, too, it’s an existential motive. Artists exist to share their talents, inspiration, support, and vision with the audience. Whatever the reasons, in the second of my Musical Murders series, Ballistics at the Ballet, the symphony is accompanying the ballet in performances of the Nutcracker. When conductor Felix Underhayes is murdered before a rehearsal, the show must go on.

    How do I know this is what would happen? Because it happens in real life.

    Probably the most extreme example of this is the band of the Titanic, which, according to accounts of survivors, assembled on the deck of the doomed ship and played the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee” as it sank. Accounts of performers working around glitches, malfunctioning props, and unexpected occurrences are legion. Even during the pandemic, theatre groups were giving performances virtually.

    I spent nineteen years as a symphony musician. In my own experience, too, the show has gone on. In one instance, the orchestra had just begun the third movement of Mahler’s Symphony #4, which is a beautiful, elegant, singing example of the composer’s art. We had just gotten to the oboe solo when a horrible, bone-shaking roar erupted. The conductor thought a bomb had gone off and stretched his arms out to protect the violins, which were on either side of him. But the oboe? He went on playing until the conductor cut him off and began the movement again. The show went on, although I, and probably many of my colleagues, were shaking. The cause of the sound? Feedback like you’ve never heard. Feedback amplified several times through the error of a recording engineer, and frightening in its intensity and power.

    The show went on, too, the night of 9-11. Yo Yo Ma had been contracted to play a fundraising concert with our orchestra. He had, fortunately for the symphony, flown in a day earlier. After the attacks happened that morning, the Symphony Board met with Mr. Ma and the conductor and determined that we would play the concert. But the program changed. We played elegiac pieces and dedicated them to the victims and first responders of the tragedy: Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber,

and Air on a G String by Johann Sebastian Bach being the most memorable. I was playing English horn in that concert, sitting next to the back of the cello section. At one point I looked up and recognized Mr. Ma, sitting anonymously in the back of the section, playing alongside the orchestra’s cellists. Unheard of. He later played his concerto in the second half. His comment—“It felt like I needed to be beside my fellow musicians.”

    So Emily Wilson and her colleagues are following a time-honored tradition and path when performances continue under the Assistant Conductor. Do you understand the thinking in taking this route? Would you have done the same? Answer below.

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