Friday, January 23, 2009

What Do Milli Vanilli, Yo-Yo Ma, Ashley Simpson, and Itzhak Perlman Have in Common?


They're all big, fat phonies! It turns out the live inaugural performance by the quartet including Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma wasn't so "live" after all. The music you heard was a recording they had made of the piece earlier, and at the event themselves, they simply played along to the recording, but none of them were actually being recorded or broadcast.

Obviously, these guys (and gal) have nothing to prove as far as musicianship goes, I just found it amusing. To be honest, my first thought when I was watching the performance was how they were keeping their instruments in tune and their fingers limber in such cold weather. And now we know!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I kinda wondered just from understanding acoustics, but at least the piece was moving. If you wanna get technical John Williams did most of the work anyway ;)

Anonymous said...

and i'll bet that wasn't a strad perlman was playing on in that temperature

cool blog!

Anonymous said...

You know, that's blows. I agreed with a Washington Post article about the piece not being that great either... but I guess it was functional. But that blows.

Yeah... cool blog!

Tom said...

Glad you enjoy it! I was kind of iffy on the piece too. Granted, it is far beyond my abilities to create anything near as good, but it felt emotionally ambivalent to me. Then again, it's hard to imagine coming up with something that could truly capture the emotion and history of the moment.

Derek said...

this doesn't surprise me, trying to make something sound that good when micing in a place that size with so many people and variables. cool to know.

Bob's Country Bunker said...

Scott B: that does NOT blow. you are very ignorant. it is impossible to perform with (gasp) acoustic instruments at near zero tempoeratures or in any environment where the temperature and humidity are unstable. i've personally worked sound checks at the Greek (in Hollywood) where the instruments were in tune at 4pm and totally screwed within the hour because it started getting dark.