Music: The Rivals

What coughers in the audience are to indoor concerts, honking horns, backfire, the drone of airplanes, the crash of thunder and squirpling crickets are to summer concerts. Most audiences and musicians have learned to take such incidental orchestration in their stride. But at Vancouver B.C.'s open-air pavilion, Baritone John Charles Thomas encountered one alfresco sound too many—a persistent bullfrog in a nearby pond. Every time Baritone Thomas began to sing, the bullfrog answered. Thomas hit a low note, the bullfrog followed him. At last Thomas was about ready to holler "Uncle." Before...

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