Another attempt at classical "Reality"

Thanks to Kenneth Woods from A View from the Podium (Edit: his post on this topic has been removed from his blog) for sharing this link from the Guardian about the latest in Music Reality TV.

It seems the majority of the classical music world will likely shun this latest attempt to bring classical music back into the mainstream. I, on the other hand, wish I had a direct satellite feed from Western Canada to the BBC so I could watch every episode of this! I mean, it can't be as bad as NBC's Clash of the Choirs, where celebrity "conductors" worked with "choirs" (I keep both "conductors" and "choirs" in quotations for a reason there - if I could visualize using two fingers on each hand to emphasize the value of the quote sarcasm, I would). I posted about this last reality show earlier, which received the most comments on my blog to date from the half-dozen or so of you who read this regularly.

Here's a few of my observations about the BBC Maestro reality show that will differ significantly from NBC's Clash of the Choirs. First off, it seems that the celebrity conductors are actually going to work with a REAL orchestra, and the winner will conduct at the Proms! They are also going to receive coaching from conductors, or as the Guardian puts it "young conductors" (I wonder how I can apply to be one of the mentors?). Whereas Clash of the Choirs had nothing to do with conductors, or, amazingly enough, Choirs.

The only thing that irks me about the article are the "Reasons" behind the production of this show, which come in the last paragraph:

The BBC insists that both Classical Star and Maestro are vital in their aim of bringing the classical genre to fresh viewers. Of Maestro, a BBC spokesperson said: "This programme is still in the pipeline at present, but if it does go ahead we hope that by following different people's journeys in learning how to conduct, it will succeed in opening up classical music to a completely different audience."

I'm not sure what the obsession is with groups trying to "open up classical music to a completely different audience". There are quite a few great posts about this around, none greater than that of Ron Spieglman's on Sticks and Drones about a month ago. How is a show like this is going to help? If anything, it might put a false sense of reality on what Classical music is all about. Those who watch the show might end up buying tickets to a symphony concert expecting to see a battle on the podium between the second horn and some celebrity conductor, and instead might be treated to a Shostakovitch Symphony - which will no doubt be great, but may not be the thing to bring that person back to another concert. People who enjoy classical music go to concerts. People who don't like classical music, don't go to concerts. It's pretty simple.

I always laugh at the marketing strategy where an audience at a concert is "polled" as to why they came to the concert, and what is it that they enjoyed, or didn't enjoy about the concert in an effort to bring more people to the next concert. It's like polling people at a Star Trek convention about why they are at the convention in an effort to bring people who know nothing about, or don't like Star Trek, to the next convention. You're far better off polling the people who DIDN'T go to the concert and find out why they didn't, and what would bring them to the next concert, although, we probably wouldn't like the answer.

The bigger question is - is classical music really in trouble? Have the average numbers in audiences really dropped drastically across the globe in the last hundred years? I actually don't know the answer to this - but if it has dropped, I'm not convinced this type of programing is going to help it any.

I, however, would be setting my PVR nightly to watch it!

fifty minutes of my life that I can't get back

Last night, while channel surfing, my Wife and I came across the newest in reality TV viewer-vote-in talent contest Clash of the Choirs on NBC.

The whole thing reminded me of a story that was relayed to me by a friend many years ago who was trying to come up with a reason for why we just can't seem to turn our heads away from something that we just don't want to watch. Imagine someone coming up to you and saying "Hey, there's a dead body over by the train tracks, wanna come and see it?" Of course, your instinct tells you that you don't want to see this, but there's that voice inside you that says "I've never seen a dead body before, maybe I'll just go and take a peek". Well, Clash of the Choirs is something like this kind of temptation. After seeing the previews for it, there was little doubt that I didn't need to watch this show, for just from watching the preview I knew it first of all had nothing to do with "Choirs" and watching Michael Bolton trying to resurrect his career by teaching a "choir" how to "sing" didn't really sit well with me.

My wife and I watched the whole show, well, the last fifty minutes of it, as we did tune in late - (just not late enough unfortunately).

Here are my observations:

1) there is nothing about this show that demonstrates "choral singing" as it is traditionally defined. It is more about a few lead singers, and a bunch of back-up singers. It should be "Clash of the Back-up singers", "Clash of the Gospel Groups" or even "Clash of the pretty good Karaoke stars" (more on this in #3).

2) Stage presence and song selection makes up about 95% of the attraction of the contest. The other 5% is the popularity of the "choir conductor" The winning "choir" will likely not be the best musically, but the most attractive, .

3) Sorry if this deflates all the preconceived notions of the business of televised live-music shows, but the performances, with the possible exception of the leads (and even that's in question in my mind) are pre-recorded. Yes, the mics on the stage are just props. Don't believe me? You try running around on stage in formations, turning your head away from the mics, jumping up and down, and produce a seamless steady volume of sound. Some are obviously not even singing because they are so out of breath from the movements they have to make. The band is miles away from the "choir", lead singers and "conductors" wear ear monitors, allowing them to sync themselves to the click track, the choir is set up in formations across the stage which makes singing close harmonies correctly pretty much impossible. By the way - 90% of all music productions you see on TV are pre-recorded, this includes most late-night show music guests, the majority of super-bowl style half-time shows, and just about all live music telethons. Anything that can reduce the margin of error on timing of a show, or preventing possible technical goof-ups will be done now a days. My father was in this industry for many years - Every live telecast they did was just another air-band contest, with the exception of complicated live instrumental solos, and most of the vocal leads.

4) If the group that sang Garth Brooks' "I've got friends in low places" goes on to the next round, it has nothing to do with the performance, as it was horrid, and everything to do with putting the girl with the rather large, um, lung capacity, in the front row.

We'll be testing the "dead body" theory to its fullest tonight, as we are in for the evening - and it runs for a full two hours from 9-11 tonight. And America's Top Model is done.

PLEASE let the writer's strike end soon!