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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000051.txt from 2003/11
From: BssnRX@-----.com
Subj: Re: [DR-L] Opera Co. of Brooklyn Does it Again!
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 12:58:37 -0500
In a message dated 11/12/2003 10:57:54 AM Eastern Standard Time,
onlyocelot@-----.com writes:
I guess I'm more and more disturbed about the kneejerk reactions to this
whole matter.
I take exception to the statement that OCB 'could care less about live
musicians'. The fact that they have found a way to found a new opera company in an
economy like ours is rather laudable: they are employing and paying many opera
singers who might never get a chance to be heard. They are doing it in a way
that can be managed, with budgets, apparently, that not only allow them to
expand their program (thus more greatly employing their singers), but allows them
to foot free concerts.
Etc Etc ad nuseum.
Knee jerk??? Tell that to all the pit musicians that have lost their gigs
to virtual orchestras. As for budgets, if they're having financial troubles
they can go to the musicians and enter into a cba for less money or they can use
some of the reduced scores that are out there.
<<How much damage are they doing to music? Apparently not a lot. (I wonder if
anyone has looked seriously at the sales of live-performance recordings of
Bach's music following the release of Switched-On Bach?)>>
Huh? Not even the same thing.
<<How much damage are they doing to musicians as a whole? They've taken a
bunch of vocalists who might not have had a job using their talents in the way
they've trained for (opera) and given them a venue that didn't exist before.
They haven't given the same major boost to instrumentalists, yet, but the release
quoted does say that they are including an opera with Murray Sidlin's
13-piece live accompaniement orchestra: Aaron Copeland's Tender Land. (Copeland also
wrote small-orchestra versions of his large orchestra music. So did other
composers. Are they to be condemned for giving jobs to the forces they had, rather
than letting them all starve because they didn't have enough to do the big
versions?)>.
Virtual orchestras are doing a whole lot of damage to musicians as a whole.
Theater management will use any way and excuse to line their pockets with more
money. There are plenty of shows on tour now that use virtual orchestras and
plenty others that use student or recent graduates (paying them crap) and
augmenting them with virtual machines, putting local union musicians out of work.
<<And once established, the OCB is now starting to ramp up live musician
participation. They are employing instrumentalists that they could not afford last
year. Isn't this good?>.
What are they being paid? Are they union musicians? Are there pension fund
contributions being made?
<<Should the performances held decades ago, by the fellow who programmed all
the printers to play in harmony on stage, have been boycotted by live
musicians? I think it's safe to say that he disemployed no single musician in his
presentations. What's more, he brought to the attention of a large number of
people that electronics, sometimes in ways no one would (want to) have thought of,
could contribute to the world of music.>>
Nobody is complaining about electronics which bring different sounds to the
mix.
<<After all, musicians whining about being underemployed and underpaid is
nothing new. It's been going on for years. And as the number of performances have
decreased and the price of tickets have gone up, the number of people who are
not musicians who are willing to turn a favorable ear to the complaints have
dwindled to the point where the biggest orchestras in the country are running
deficits worthy of Congress.>.
You a repug or what?
<< I do know that in our small corner of new england, we are just recovering
from the worst backlash against the arts I've known of short of the French
revolution.>>
Backlash against the arts in New England? In which state are you living?
There isn't a backlash. School administrators have never figured out the
importance of the arts in schools. Orchestras are having troubles because they depended
so much on corporate giving in the past and that has dried up in the past
couple of years due to the economy. How is that a "backlash" against the arts?
<<When my 23-year-old son went to the local public school for a year for
fourth grade, his 'music class' consisted of a teacher putting a rap CD into a
bro-box, and the kids all 'dancing' >>
Wow! 23 years old and in fourth grade. You must be very proud of him.
<<In our area, some amateur groups have been going out of their way to make
themselves available to schools and even colleges to expose their students to
real music played by real people. >>
Ah, something we can agree on. Exposing students to the arts.
<<(Unlike Hartford Symphony's bleet of a decade ago, it didn't take 'real
money'.)>.
Ah yes, the Hartford Symphony. The group that undercut local musicians so
they could tour with the michael bolton of opera, andrea bocelli, and still pay
their musicians crap. Wonderful group of people.
<<(You see, even non-union groups aren't your enemy.)>>
Who said they were? What you fail to understand is that the union isn't your
enemy.
<<If people don't know that opera is worth paying to hear, they won't pay to
find out. But once they find out... It could be that the OCB's free
performances this year, financed by the hated synthesizer-reinforced small orchestra, is
responsible for the Met, in five years, having a black bottom line. The
fallout from this could even reach the NYPO's bottom line. It could cause parents
to refocus schoolboards in NYC from facetiously-painted 'Gay schools' to "Where
are the arts in our schools?">>
Oh please. Do you really believe this?
<<Shall we destroy that now?>>
Unfortunately, if this is let go, other groups will follow suit and use
virtual orchestras instead of live musicians. It is the nature of the beast.
