Butterfly Lands on Flutist’s Face During Flute Competition: The Show Must Go On

Last Mon­day, Yukie Ota, a Japan­ese born flutist now liv­ing in Chica­go, was per­form­ing in the first round of the Carl Nielsen Inter­na­tion­al Flute Com­pe­ti­tion in Den­mark, when a but­ter­fly flit­ted across the stage and land­ed, rather incon­ve­nient­ly, on the bridge of her nose. Not miss­ing a beat — er, a note — Ota took a quick glance at the crit­ter, and played on, unfazed. On the mer­its of her per­for­mance, Ota made it to the final round of the com­pe­ti­tion held on Sat­ur­day. She even­tu­al­ly lost out to Sébas­t­ian Jacot, who appar­ent­ly played the entire com­pe­ti­tion with a dam­aged flute. In oth­er news, you can check out Vladimir Nabokov’s delight­ful but­ter­fly draw­ings here.

via NPR H/T Mike S.

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