Washington – The classical music played for millions of people watching President Barack Obama’s inauguration was not the live performance it appeared to be.
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Unless you were one of the fortunate few sitting within earshot of the celebrated performers, what you heard was a recording made two days earlier.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Gabriela Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill made the decision a day before Tuesday’s inauguration to use a previously recorded audio tape for the broadcast of the ceremonies.
Carole Florman, a spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said the weather was too cold for the instruments to stay in tune.
“They were very insistent on playing live until it became clear that it would be too cold,” said Florman in a telephone interview Thursday night.
People sitting nearby could hear the musicians play “Air and Simple Gifts”, written for the inauguration by John Williams, but their instruments were not amplified.
“It would have been a disaster if we had done it any other way,” Perlman told The New York Times, which first reported that the music was taped on its Web site Thursday. “This occasion’s got to be perfect. You can’t have any slip-ups.”
well, we know that the inauguration was not real either, that’s y he had to be sworn in again the next day.
If China can generate fireworks, why can’t we fake music (especially if it would sound bad)?
In respect the musicians -it was very cold and the music had to be pefrfect. they were in deed playing , along with the recording in realtime which they heard on the earpieces. Yitzchak Pearlman was interviewed that night when he came back to nyc and said that it was tough to play with frozen fingers turning numb (and on cold metal strings is not an easy thing to do, even for the best musicians in the world like Yitzchak and Yoyo)
This should come as no surprise to any musician. Not only was it too cold to stay in tune, but it’s too cold in general for their nicer instruments.
And they paid what???
For a music CD???
Reminds me of Washingtons infamous $6,000. toilet seats.
Sounds like a Millie Vanillie stunt…….
Lock & Load
No wonder that Chinaman was smililing so much by the music!!
yup as a musician, i could have betted on this… as i began reading the article i said, that’s the only way to do it. it would have been a disaster otherwise.
The bottom line is, they fooled all that there, thinking they were hearing live music. shame on them!
We call this in washington “change”.
a phoney inaugaration ceremony for phoney people. They could have put up a marquis or tent to keep the instruments tuned.
People People. it was an amazing performance either way. they still played and i bet it was just as masterful, despite the fact that they had to keep their gloves on and off before playing.
Take a look if you will at the array of cultures the grand musicians come from instead of mocking them. This group, in a sense, playing at the inaguration is “America” – and we have only to be proud of our own world famous Israeli inspiration to disabeled people aroudn the world, Yitzchak Pearlman.
(Most people dont even know that Peralmans disabilities are due to his contracting Polio at the age of 4)
We should at least learn from them and start using prerecorded music for our weddings and save some $$