Life Expectancy of Classical Musicians Suprisingly Low.....

Liverpool, UK-Long thought to be a low-risk lifestyle, classical music is slowly coming to be known as one of the more dangerous occupations according to a new study out of the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool's John Moores University, and published in the prestigious Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

"Most people associate early death with rock and roll stars and not classical musicians," Lead researcher Dame Shinga Salisbury explained in an emergency press conference held today in the family room of a local Judy Dench's Fish and Chips. "Between 1956 and 2005 there were 100 deaths among the 1,064 musicians we examined. What we are trying to do is expose the sordid underbelly of the industry in the hopes that a number of future casualties might be avoided."

The study found that classical musicians were most at risk in the first five years after being named first chair in their respective orchestra, with death rates more than three times higher than normal amongst woodwinds and up to 5 times higher in the brass section. But Dame Salisbury discovered a suprising correlation between stringed instruments and premature demise. "The violinists in our study seemed to drop like flies. And while the brass section deaths typically resulted from blunt trauma to the skull, the violinists often went down with a bow to the neck, severing the jugular vein."