Re: [Finale] Performance/recording
Just adding fuel to the fire: from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, as quoted on Orchestra-L: RBH - Musical hits sour note with unions By Marylynne Pitz Pittsburgh Post-Gazette January 30, 2005 In the musical Oliver!, pickpockets on the streets of Dickensian England show the orphaned lad how to steal. You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two usually amuses audiences. But local musicians are not laughing. Instead, unionized musicians will be distributing leaflets outside the Benedum Center this week to tell theatergoers that this non-Equity (the actors' union) touring production of Oliver! is picking the pockets of local musicians. In addition to nine live musicians, the production uses a virtual orchestra called a Sinfonia. Among those passing out leaflets will be Jeff Mangone, a string bass player from Ross who has played in the orchestras for local and touring shows for 27 years. Mangone's wife, Jennifer Gerhard, who plays viola and violin, could have earned $1,000 with the show. If you count the touring production of Oklahoma! that played Heinz Hall in December and earlier this month, also with a Sinfonia, the couple could have earned roughly $3,000. Most touring productions hire local players in each community to complement the show's handful of traveling musicians -- The Producers, closing today, hired 21 here -- while some make do with a Sinfonia. This new technology has the potential to completely displace entire orchestras. It can displace everybody except someone who is called the conductor, Mangone said. In England, a production of Miss Saigon is using a Sinfonia on its tour of smaller United Kingdom theaters that could not accommodate a large-scale production. In the United States, the battle climaxed in March 2003, when New York musicians, supported by other theater professionals, went on strike for four days in a dispute over the minimum number of players required for musicals in Broadway theaters. Before the 2003 strike, said Michael Manley, director of touring, theater and booking with the American Federation of Musicians in New York, producers presented the union with a very aggressive proposal to do away with all house minimums. Despite the producers' assertions to the contrary, the union saw that as a first step to creating musicianless pits. Eventually, both sides agreed to a compromise minimum of 18 musicians in the largest Broadway theaters and 15 in the smaller houses. David Lennon, president of Local 802 of the AFM, which represents New York musicians, is proud of the union's record since that strike. Since the beginning of 2004 we have achieved over 20 agreements with producers and theatre owners banning the use of this machine in New York City, Lennon said, adding that includes Off Broadway theatres. The strike left lingering questions. Would this technology be used in good faith or was there really an agenda to get rid of musicians entirely from the pit? When does the use of an electronic device cease to become an enhancement and start to become a karaoke machine? Manley asked. The ultimate arbiters of this battle will be ticket buyers, who are paying between $20 and $55 to see Oliver!, most as part of the PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh subscription package. It's not going to be the musicians who get this technology out. It's going to be people and audiences who don't want to be shortchanged. You pay top-dollar prices and you expect to see the real thing, Mangone said. The Sinfonia, which was designed to enhance the sound of a live orchestra, is equipped with musical and computer keyboards, a notebook computer, screen monitors, samplers and a stand for a musical score. Jeff Lazarus, chief executive officer of Realtime Music Solutions in New York City, which rents Sinfonias to touring productions, said the device is played by a musician who reads a musical score, plays a keyboard and follows a conductor. Unionized musicians are targeting the Sinfonia nationwide, Lazarus said. There's a been a very active campaign of misinformation at every stop of 'Oliver!' over the last three to four months, Lazarus said. There's the suggestion that this is somehow the signal of the death of live music, which really gets me mad. The Sinfonia, Lazarus said, is played in real time and it requires extensive training and practice. The fallacy, he said, is that if Sinfonia were not on this tour, there would be more musicians in the pit with 'Oliver!' And that's just not true. When Lionel Bart composed the music, Lazarus said, he scored the production for 13 musicians. 'Oliver!' would not have 24 musicians under normal touring circumstances. It wasn't scored that way, Lazarus said, adding that, All we're doing is taking the place of other compromises such as click tracks, prerecorded audio or an over-reliance on multiple synthesizers. Ken Gentry, chief executive officer of NETworks Presentations, which is taking Oliver! on the road, said the Sinfonia is not used in every show
Re: [Finale] Performance/recording
At 03:22 PM 1/29/05 -0500, A-NO-NE Music wrote: In my life, I have three live concerts which my tears couldn't stop coming out during the show. [...] Then you are at concerts for a different reason than I am. All I want is the music, not personalities of performers in the way. (And I did say that improv-based music is different -- the music is re-invented in the performance.) What interested me about the discussion was talking about replacements for musicians ... so far I'll trade all your tears for recordings where the notes are actually right. And it won't be long before virtual orchestras have every bit as much contouring as pro performers have, but (to my taste, fortunately) without all that performer stuff in the way. :) Don't get me wrong. I have performed and conducted and still do, but only because no one else does the material I did. Early American choral before the renewed interest created a body of recordings, free medieval and Renaissance concerts in an urban community without access to it, and post-Fluxus performance art and extended vocal work even today. But once a piece is done and recorded, it's done. Maybe somebody wants a different take. That's fine. But the hundreds of undifferentiated classical performances of the same stuff are to my mind just plain stupid. Save your $40 ticket and go buy a bottle of wine, some spicy take-out, and a $2.99 CD and have a better-sounding copy you can hear anytime and relive the moment. At 10:33 AM 1/29/05 -0800, Mariposa Symphony Orchestra wrote: BUT: to have that communal experience with a great orchestra under a great conductor in a great hall with great acoustics: Yeah. Easy choice. I've been to concerts in great halls with great orchestras and great conductors. Maybe not as many as most here because I get bored quickly by concerts. And I just don't remember anything about them except the extra-musical part -- Bernstein hopping up and down during some Mahler, Stravinsky's plain conducting in Sacre, Copland's microscopic motions during something of his, the demeanor of the Czech Chamber the night their country was invaded, Kubelik at Carnegie switching conducting hands during a Martinu piece to mop his brow, some painfully bad male singing in Lulu (the earlier truncated version) at the Met, the yawning horn player during something Chailly conducted at the Concertgebouw... but the music itself? Nothing. All better on recordings. At 09:49 PM 1/29/05 +0100, Daniel Wolf wrote: The upshot of all this has been that I've had no enthusisasm about producing recordings of my own music, and have really begun to think of my music as tailored for concert, live broadcast, and private playing. I think that the greater possibilities of electronic play-back from scores will change this somewhat, but the ramifications of this are still pretty vague to me. The de facto way of hearing music today is on recording. I'm not going to try to convince you that's good -- though it would be nice to hear your music more than by chance someday, somewhere. But likely I'll never hear you in concert except by accident. Most composers whose work I've come to know and love has been via CD (or downloads now). The way things are set up today, going to a concert means getting ready, dealing with getting there, paying a bundle for one play and all its mistakes, listening through other junk you didn't want to hear, probably getting bad seats since so few are really good, being around noisy people, and worst of all -- having no reverse-scan button, which I can't live without. :) I appreciate the private playing part. There is a communal nature that's fun -- but that's not performance. That's a physical exchange with its own rewards. Performers do what they do, and get fulfillment from it. And I enjoy sitting in on rehearsals of my music (moreso if the rehearsal is for a recording). As far as score playback goes, that's on the way. And the effect will be dramatic. I look forward to it. At 08:10 PM 1/29/05 -0500, David W. Fenton wrote: But were it not for repeated live performances before audiences, it would not be possible to get recorded preformances that hold up under repeated listening. If the music is played correctly, the recording will hold up just fine for me. I have shelves of recordings by third-string groups that are completely listenable. In any case, I'll pass on those idiosyncratic emotional readings that 'hold up under repeated listening' for other people. All I hear is the conductor and the players getting in the way of the music after a while -- very, very annoying. (What comes to mind immediately is the ten bucks I wasted on a recording of Casals snorting through Mozarts EKN.) Perhaps all of this is one of the reasons composers are often dissatisfied with first performances of their pieces, precisely because it's impossible in any first performance to accomplish more than just scratching the surface. If new music works could get 15 or 20
Re: [Finale] Performance/recording
Wow. If it's just about 'getting it right' then we can all go home. No live performance - no CD, no matter how many takes it's been mastered from -- no account can ever be perfectly perfectly dead-on absolutely-as-it-can-be right on the money perfect. Or -- merely be'gottenright.' But that's not really what it's all about, at lenot ast in my book. I've got a community here (and I hate to generalize, but why not?) which -- for the most part -- was musically naive before I put together this little community orchestra of 50. Really -- it's very rural; many old-time families whose genealogy traces theiranticedents back 150 to the gold rush days (time immemorial for California) and in many ways this area hasn't been touched byprogress. There's of course influence from outside; I mean they do got real runnin' water and indoor plumbin', but there wasn't much -- if anything in theway of live classical performances. Sure, I've been told Les MarsdenFounding Music Director and Conductor, The Mariposa Symphony OrchestraMusic and Mariposa? Ah, Paradise!!! http://arts-mariposa.org/symphony.htmlhttp://www.sierratel.com/mcf/nprc/mso.htm - Original Message - From: Dennis Bathory-Kitsz To: finale@shsu.edu Sent: Saturday, January 29, 2005 6:33 PM Subject: Re: [Finale] Performance/recording At 03:22 PM 1/29/05 -0500, A-NO-NE Music wrote:In my life, I have three live concerts which my tears couldn't stopcoming out during the show. [...]Then you are at concerts for a different reason than I am. All I want isthe music, not personalities of performers in the way. (And I did say thatimprov-based music is different -- the music is re-invented in theperformance.) What interested me about the discussion was talking aboutreplacements for musicians ... so far I'll trade all your tears forrecordings where the notes are actually right. And it won't be long beforevirtual orchestras have every bit as much contouring as pro performershave, but (to my taste, fortunately) without all that performer "stuff" inthe way. :)Don't get me wrong. I have performed and conducted and still do, but onlybecause no one else does the material I did. Early American choral beforethe renewed interest created a body of recordings, free medieval andRenaissance concerts in an urban community without access to it, andpost-Fluxus performance art and extended vocal work even today.But once a piece is done and recorded, it's done. Maybe somebody wants adifferent take. That's fine. But the hundreds of undifferentiated classicalperformances of the same stuff are to my mind just plain stupid. Save your$40 ticket and go buy a bottle of wine, some spicy take-out, and a $2.99 CDand have a better-sounding copy you can hear anytime and relive the moment.At 10:33 AM 1/29/05 -0800, Mariposa Symphony Orchestra wrote:BUT: to have that communal experience with a great orchestra under a great conductor in a great hall with great acoustics: Yeah. Easy choice.I've been to concerts in great halls with great orchestras and greatconductors. Maybe not as many as most here because I get bored quickly byconcerts. And I just don't remember anything about them except theextra-musical part -- Bernstein hopping up and down during some Mahler,Stravinsky's plain conducting in Sacre, Copland's microscopic motionsduring something of his, the demeanor of the Czech Chamber the night theircountry was invaded, Kubelik at Carnegie switching conducting hands duringa Martinu piece to mop his brow, some painfully bad male singing in Lulu(the earlier truncated version) at the Met, the yawning horn player duringsomething Chailly conducted at the Concertgebouw... but the music itself?Nothing. All better on recordings.At 09:49 PM 1/29/05 +0100, Daniel Wolf wrote:The upshot of all this has been that I've had no enthusisasm about producing recordings of my own music, and have really begun to think of my music as tailored for concert, live broadcast, and private playing. I think that the greater possibilities of electronic play-back from scores will change this somewhat, but the ramifications of this are still pretty vague to me.The de facto way of hearing music today is on recording. I'm not going totry to convince you that's good -- though it would be nice to hear yourmusic more than by chance someday, somewhere. But likely I'll never hearyou in concert except by accident. Most composers whose work I've come toknow and love has been via CD (or downloads now). The way things are set uptoday, going to a concert means getting ready, dealing with getting there,paying a bundle for one play and all its mistakes, listening through otherjunk you didn't want to hear, probably getting bad seats since so few arereally good, being around noisy people, and worst of all -- having noreverse-scan butto
Re: [Finale] Performance/recording
Mariposa Symphony Orchestra wrote: Wow. If it's just about 'getting it right' then we can all go home. No live performance - no CD, no matter how many takes it's been mastered from -- no account can ever be perfectly perfectly dead-on absolutely-as-it-can-be right on the money perfect. Or -- merely be 'gotten right.' But that's not really what it's all about, at lenot ast in my book. Besides which, right varies from performance to performance. What works tonight with this audience may not work tomorrow with that audience. Music is more than just the notes, after all. cd ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Performance/recording
Dennis Bathory-Kitsz / 05.1.29 / 09:33 PM wrote: Then you are at concerts for a different reason than I am. All I want is the music, not personalities of performers in the way. (And I did say that improv-based music is different -- the music is re-invented in the performance.) When I said 'I was moved by trombone section blew into my face', I meant the power of the emotion traveled in the air to me. When I first experienced Berliner Philharmoniker in London, my jaw dropped by the beauty of single held note from the entire violin section. It was nothing like what I used to hear on CD. I still don't get it how you can expect to feel the organic instrument sound in the air from speakers. I can't. This is also why I need acoustic piano when I write. On the other hand, my studio does a lot of mixing those which type of music are often performed live amplified, and that's a totally different story, that I have no problem listening with speakers. Last year I performed jazz improv for CIMP Record who capture the live performance (not public show but controlled environment) unedited/ unmodified. Irony, the end product made me feel I would had used compressor, micking this and that solos, etc, instead of being that organic :-) -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
