During the 1947-48 season with the Pittsburgh Symphony, William Zinn shared a room with the orchestra’s piccolo player. They hung out together, and wherever they went, his friend carried his piccolo in his jacket pocket. Whenever the spirit moved him, he would pull out his piccolo and play a passage from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4, or Sousa’s The Stars and Stripes Forever.

One evening they sat in the balcony of the local cinema, watching a mystery movie, and pulled of an impromptu prank: at the film’s climax, a balcony door slid open near the seated victim and a hand holding a long knife appeared, ready to strike. Zinn’s friend quickly pulled out his piccolo and began to play the solo from Richard Strauss’s Don Juan, double forte. The woman seated in front of him screamed in terror, and ushers quickly ran up the balcony with flashlights. The movie stopped, the houselights came up, and Zinn and his friend sat there looking innocent until the search was finished and the movie resumed.

The next day, at the Symphony’s rehearsal of the Strauss tone poem, conductor Fritz Reiner stopped the orchestra right after the piccolo solo. He said to the soloist, “You played it better last night.”