[Dixielandjazz] Recorded vs. live music

[Stephen G Barbone]

How on earth did that quartet of Izhak Perlman, YoYo MA, Anthony  
McGill and Gabriela Montero perform so well with no coats, to say  
nothing of their fingers, during the  very cold Inauguration day last  
Tuesday?

Simple, It wasn't live. In case you wondered, the music by Izhak  
Perlman, YoYo Ma, Anthony McGill and Gabriela Montero was mimed to a  
pre-recorded track.

Se it again at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDUTM3NViHc

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

NY TIMES - January 23, 2009 - by Daniel J. Wakin
The Frigid Fingers Were Live, but the Music Wasn’t

It was not precisely lip-synching, but pretty close.

The somber, elegiac tones before President Obama’s oath of office at  
the inauguration on Tuesday came from the instruments of Yo-Yo Ma,  
Itzhak Perlman and two colleagues. But what the millions on the Mall  
and watching on television heard was in fact a recording, made two  
days earlier by the quartet and matched tone for tone by the musicians  
playing along.

The players and the inauguration organizing committee said the  
arrangement was necessary because of the extreme cold and wind during  
Tuesday’s ceremony. The conditions raised the possibility of broken  
piano strings, cracked instruments and wacky intonation minutes before  
the president’s swearing in (which had problems of its own).

“Truly, weather just made it impossible,” Carole Florman, a  
spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural  
Ceremonies, said on Thursday. “No one’s trying to fool anybody. This  
isn’t a matter of Milli Vanilli,” Ms. Florman added, referring to the  
pop band that was stripped of a 1989 Grammy because the duo did not  
sing on their album and lip-synched in concerts.

Ms. Florman said that the use of a recording was not disclosed  
beforehand but that the NBC producers handling the television pool  
were told of its likelihood the day before.

The network said it sent a note to pool members saying that the use of  
recordings in the musical numbers was possible. Inaugural musical  
performances are routinely recorded ahead of time for just such an  
eventuality, Ms. Florman said. The Marine Band and choruses, which  
performed throughout the ceremony, did not use a recording, she said.

“It’s not something we would announce, but it’s not something we would  
try to hide,” Ms. Florman said. “Frankly, it would never have occurred  
to me to announce it. The fact they were forced to perform to tape  
because of the weather did not seem relevant, nor would we want to  
draw attention away from what we believed the news is, that we were  
having a peaceful transition of power from one administration to the  
next.”

Anthony McGill, a principal clarinetist of the Metropolitan Opera, and  
the pianist Gabriela Montero joined Mr. Ma and Mr. Perlman in “Air and  
Simple Gifts,” a piece written for the occasion by John Williams.  
While not all music critics agreed about the quality of the piece,  
some took note of the frigid circumstances for the performers. And the  
classical music world was heartened by the prominent place given to  
its field.

Mr. Perlman said the recording, which was made Sunday at the Marine  
Barracks in Washington, was used as a last resort.

“It would have been a disaster if we had done it any other way,” he  
said Thursday in a telephone interview. “This occasion’s got to be  
perfect. You can’t have any slip-ups.”

The musicians wore earpieces to hear the playback.

Performing along to recordings of oneself is a venerable practice, and  
it is usually accompanied by a whiff of critical disapproval. Famous  
practitioners since the Milli Vanilli affair include Ashlee Simpson,  
caught doing it on “Saturday Night Live,” and Luciano Pavarotti,  
discovered lip-synching during a concert in Modena, Italy. More  
recently, Chinese organizers superimposed the voice of a sweeter- 
singing little girl on that of a 9-year-old performer featured at the  
opening ceremony of last summer’s Olympic Games.

In the case of the inauguration, the musicians argued that the  
magnitude of the occasion and the harsh weather made the dubbing  
necessary and that there was no shame in it.

“I really wanted to do something that was absolutely physically and  
emotionally and, timing-wise, genuine,” Mr. Ma said. “We also knew we  
couldn’t have any technical or instrumental malfunction on that  
occasion. A broken string was not an option. It was wicked cold.”

Along with admiration for the musicians’ yeoman work in the cold,  
questions had swirled in the classical music world about whether Mr.  
Ma and Mr. Perlman would use their valuable cello and violin in the  
subfreezing weather. Both used modern instruments. Mr. Ma said he had  
considered using a hardy carbon-fiber cello, but rejected the idea to  
avoid distracting viewers with its unorthodox appearance.

“What we were there for,” he said, “was to really serve the moment.”