The Hatto scandal may have stumbled to a premature close (Geoff Edgers has a nice summary in today’s Globe), but the thievery bug seems to be spreading: according to a report in the El Paso Times, someone absconded with percussionist David Cossin’s notes after a performance of Tan Dun’s Concerto for Water Percussion with the El Paso Symphony on Saturday. (That’s Cossin there, getting his hands wet in Germany last year.) The article isn’t clear, but it sure sounds like the pilfered loot was Cossin’s marked-up score, which would be a pretty egregious loss indeed: I’ve hung on to piano music that’s barely readable and being held together with three kinds of tape solely because they’ve got fingerings and markings from Professor Paperno (including the dreaded green marker for when I missed something more than two weeks in a row). It may look like chicken scratches to you—it’s autobiography to us.
The silver lining? According to the Times, Saturday’s concert was sold out.