 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2008-09-11 13:37
Last night there was a segment on the show 20/20 which talked about looks and how good looks open doors. It used Music Auditions as an example of how looks don't matter as most auditions are behind a screen.
Huh?? Could they be that clueless???
Has nothing to do with looks, it has everything to do with not knowing who the applicant is so that political connections won't happen (hopefully - we all know that still they do happen).
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2008-09-11 15:11
DavidBlumberg wrote:
> Huh?? Could they be that clueless???
>
Or could you be that clueless? Looks _do_ matter, along with "political connections".
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2008-09-11 15:23
DavidBlumberg wrote:
> But that's not at all why the screen is up.
It's one of the reasons, either explicitly or implicitly.
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Author: Nessie1
Date: 2008-09-11 16:12
Surely "screened" auditions are an attempt to make things fairer in several ways - "political" connections i.e whether a member of the audition panel knows the candidate or whether the candidate is the major sponsor's grandson or someone with a reasonable reputation in the profession are, hopefully, kept to a minimum. Then there is the question of "looks" in the sense of a person who might be considered generally more attractive than another person. Thirdly, there is the question of avoiding any bias the panel might have towards or against a candidate who happens to be white/black, male/female, younger/older, disabled/able-bodied - which is another kind of "looks" if you think about it.
Vanessa
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Author: Katrina
Date: 2008-09-11 18:20
If it's not _at all_ for looks, why do they use a carpet for the players to walk on presumably to mask the sound of male vs. female footsteps?
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Author: William
Date: 2008-09-11 19:20
Any audition I've every done "required" a whole lot of "qualifing" information--experiance, education, awards, etc--that can pretty much identify you to "those who know" for all practical purposes.
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2008-09-12 06:16
"If it's not _at all_ for looks, why do they use a carpet for the players to walk on presumably to mask the sound of male vs. female footsteps?"
It could also mask the sound of a limp.
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2008-09-12 08:47
Yeah, without a screen these two guys would never made it principal and second clarinet over at the Armpit Symphony.
(and I tend to think that if Sabine were ugly as sin, her stellar playing alone would not have been good enough)
--
Ben
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2008-09-12 12:11
Great photos!
>>and I tend to think that if Sabine were ugly as sin, her stellar playing alone would not have been good enough)>>
I'm not sure audiences are quite that clueless. I think curtained auditions are a great idea because, when these musicians (whatever they look like) go before the general public, I trust the audiences to be wiser than judges and juries sometimes fear. One of the world's great young bass singers is a dwarf. Audiences are not rejecting him--far from it. Violin virtuoso Itzaak Perlman is not handsome. His face contorts distractingly while he's playing. He plays seated and he walks with great difficulty due to polio. He's also one of the world's most successful soloists, not only because of his playing but because he's earned a reputation as a good colleague. He's helped the careers of other musicians who don't meet fashionista modelling standards, including a young woman violinist severely disfigured in an accident.
I don't think audiences and musicians deserve any special credit for allowing these fine musicians to succeed, but we'd certainly deserve special condemnation if we'd let a superficial standard of beauty stand in their way.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: rtmyth
Date: 2008-09-15 16:24
When the fat lady and fat gentleman can and do sing magnificantly , the audience throws flowers at their feet, and applaud wildly, and for good reason. In opera talent trumps appearance, every time.
richard smith
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2008-09-15 18:42
>>In opera talent trumps appearance, every time.
>>
Although I think that's true when the singer advances far enough to reach the public, many judges are fat-phobics. An obese relative with a glorious voice (coloratura soprano) got sent home from Santa Fe about a quarter of a century ago with the advice to go home and sing in her church, because the opera world was no longer the place where "the fat lady sings." Her daughter, a superb singer but moderately overweight, is now struggling to get work on Broadway. The only jobs she's getting are backstage. Same reason, as she's been told, bluntly, in audition after audition. She's even been told that since "everybody" has seen her at her present weight, she might as well go home, because even if she slims down, "everybody" will assume she's going to gain back every pound.
It's always been common in films of Broadway and London musicals for a real singer to loop the singing while a more photogenic or well-known actor plays the role (Marnie Nixon singing for Natalie Wood in WEST SIDE STORY, for example), but it's now nearly as common for opera films to star the most photogenic singers rather than the best singers for grand opera roles--and tales of "Memorex" Verdi and Puccini have started to circulate as well.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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