Posted on 01/23/2009 8:18:46 AM PST by Schnucki
It's not exactly Watergate but Barack Obama's inauguration was back in the dock today after it emerged that the quartet of classical musicians who ushered him on to the steps of the Capitol were faking it.
In a report headlined "The Frigid Fingers Were Live, but the Music Wasn't", The New York Times said that the four, including the violinist Itzhak Perlman, had already recorded their contribution two days earlier and played along just for show.
A spokeswoman for the congressional committee, which organised the inauguration, the biggest and most costly in history, told the newspaper that the musicians could not have played live in Tuesday's sub-zero temperatures because of the risk of broken piano strings and cracked instruments.
“No one’s trying to fool anybody. This isn’t a matter of Milli Vanilli," said Carole Florman, referring to the lip-synching pop duo stripped of a Grammy in 1990. “Truly, weather just made it impossible."
Ms Florman said that the use of a recording had not been made public beforehand but the producers overseeing television coverage of the event had been warned that it was likely. All other musical contributions on the day were performed live.
“It’s not something we would announce, but it’s not something we would try to hide,” she added. “Frankly, it would never have occurred to me to announce it."
Joining Mr Perlman for a rendition of Air and Simple Gifts, a, new work by John Williams, was the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the clarinetist Anthony McGill and the pianist Gabriela Montero. Their performance immediately preceded Mr Obama's swearing-in, in which he uncharacteristically managed to mangle the oath of office.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
They would have nailed Bush to the wall for something like this.
This is oly a big deal to idiots.
You cannot leave it to chance when millions of people are watching.
Even the superbowl half-time show is pre-recorded.
And that poor girl on stage in the Olympic opening in China was put through heck because of morons.
One of the best performances I have ever seen.
As a musician let me tell you how much of a disaster it could have been with the body temperatures changing the instruments.
It was one of the only good things that came out of the event.
Celsius ...
It’s like that little Chinese girl at the Olympics. What do you expect from a Marxist?
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LOL. You are kidding, right? Have you ever played a stringed instrument in 20 degree weather? Obviously you’re not a musician at all. Those guys play rare and expensive instruments. Do you know what the cold would do to those masterpieces? Again, obviously not.
Attributing this to Obama is simply absurd. Read the article, the musicians were directly involved in the decision, and in their minds, it was the only decision.
Perhaps, Zero’s Milli Vanilli moment?....
Ain’t Celsius in DC, YET.
Everything around and about Obama is fake.
It is in London, where The Times is published ...
The temperature was not below zero. But that aside, I don’t see anything wrong with recorded music - but to pretend that it’s live is just tacky. No one would have cared if they had been unfront about the weather problem - this is inappropriate. obama’s team is not off to a good start.
I was at Dollywood before christmas, and watched their Appalachian band (string quartet) struggle through live performances in 25-degree weather. They did it though, live, without breaking their instruments or their fingers.
oh but the military band could play in the cold..and all marching bands....but not these performers..???
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Would you take any of your most precious possessions into an environment that could ruin them. I thought not.
Brass, woodwinds and the rest of the band instruments are not nearly as sensitive to the cold as are very delicate wooden instruments.
All news accounts say it was a new or original composition by John Williams. As I listened to it I thought the main part sounded familiar. It turns out that much of the composition was lifted from an old Shaker song called “Simple Gifts” or the more modern version called “Lord of the Dance”. So, not only was the performance faked but much of the song was unoriginal.
LOL Greg Craig is the REAL President. He is the one running things while Milli Barak Vinilli Biden just act out their parts.
Unless the oath was on a teleprompter, I wouldn't use the word uncharacteristically to describe the mangling. While he reads speeches on teleprompters very well, his extemporaneous speaking skills don't match his reading skills. (And, no, I don't consider memorized sound bites delivered in scheduled debates to be extemporaneous speaking.)
Guess I should have watched it, I just assumed it was going to be held in DC. How much did it cost us to ship all the revelers over to London for the inaugeration?
The Right is loading as much crap on BO as the left piled on Bush until the crap-pile overwhelmed his presidency.
They’re hoping the same thing happens to BO. Sorta like the last piece of crap that broke the Presidents back.
The piece was actually called “Air and Simple Gifts”
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