Jane Little, world’s longest-serving orchestra musician, dies on-stage while performing ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’

'Everyone who ever attended a concert was amazed to see this tiny woman with that huge instrument!'

Jane Little played bass in the orchestra for 71 years (Atlanta Symphony Orchestra/Facebook)

A bass player who had been with the same Atlanta orchestra for more than seven decades has died after collapsing on stage during a rendition of There’s No Business Like Show Business.

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra confirmed that Jane Little, who was 87, passed away in hospital after collapsing during the concert on Sunday, just three months after being identified as the longest serving member of a single orchestra by the Guinness Book of Records.

“We can truly say that Jane Little was fortunate to do what she loved until the very end of her storied life and career,” Tammy Hawk, the symphony spokeswoman, commented. While at the symphony, Ms Little played under the baton of several world-famous guest conductors including Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Pierre Monteux, Sir John Barbirolli and James Levine.

Ms Little, widely thought of as the longest serving orchestra musician in the world, fell to the floor close to the very end of a Sunday pop’s concert in Atlanta called Broadways Golden Age.

The Irving Berlin tune, There is No Business Like Show Business, was the encore number. She was carried from the stage by her fellow double bass players but never regained consciousness.

“We can say that Jane was fortunate to do what she loved until the very end of her storied life and career,” the symphony said in a Facebook post. “The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra was truly blessed to have Jane as part of our family for the past 71 years and we all miss her passion, vitality, spirit and incredible talent.”

Growing up, Ms Little had wanted to be a ballerina but, as she told Atlanta Magazine, her feet “weren’t right”. Although she measured less than five foot in height she was later encouraged to take up the double bass. She would later joke that she was glad that the man she married, Warren Little, played the flute, which meant he was able to carry her bass to concerts for her.

She joined the Atlanta Youth Orchestra, the forerunner of the current symphony, when she was sixteen years old. She played her first concert with them before World War II was quite over.

Ms Little saw her chance to take the Guinness Book of Records crown when a violinist with the Utah Symphony in Salt Lake City for seventy years, Frances Darger, announced she was retiring. “When I heard she was retiring, I said, ‘I’m going for it,’” she told Atlanta Magazine.