Faking it with Perlman and Ma

Faking it with Perlman and Ma

Posted on January 24th, 2009 by Christopher Guerin

To my knowledge I am the first and still the only male honorary member of the U.S. Synchronized Swimming Team. In the early 80’s in Colorado Springs, I worked on behalf of the symphony with several Olympic groups. I helped with something called “Classical Splash” — poolside concerts featuring swimming synchronized to a live symphony orchestra — and produced events that included Olympic skaters and the Olympic Torch. All a lot of fun.

Fifteen years later I interviewed for the number two position with the Atlanta Symphony. My chief interest in the position was being involved in the upcoming Olympics and its opening ceremony, in which the orchestra was to have a major role. I turned down the job for personal reasons and watched the ceremony from my couch in Fort Wayne, thinking, “I could have been there.”

So, it was with a kind of relief that I heard from an impeccable source, the chairman of the board, that the orchestra had lip-synced the entire performance. I was appalled to learn that between weather concerns and the TV producer’s desire to perfectly synchronize the orchestra with the ceremony, the players had literally gone through the motions with cheap instruments and that the harp was made out of cardboard!

In advance of the Inaugural Ceremony I read stories about Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman planning to perform on carbon-fiber instruments because of the cold. Later, I was surprised to see them actually holding what appeared to be real instruments, though I assumed that they were not valuable. Wait a minute! I realized, they aren’t really playing! Then this story in the New York Times revealed the truth. Their “performance” had been recorded days before. (Actually, they were playing, they just weren’t playing what we were hearing, hence the occasional lip-sync slips.)

What does the US Syncro Swim team have to do with any of this? Symphony orchestra instruments are very fragile indeed. I remember the varnish on violins growing tacky in the hot sun at the Broadmoor Hotel pool during rehearsal and, that night, the musicians huddling under a canopy shielding their instruments from driving rain as the crowd broke for the hotel lobby. “Classical Splash,” alas, was short lived.

Certainly the country’s two most famous classical musicians could not be expected to take similar risks. And, you had to give them credit, they sawed away with brio. And, yes, it was the Inauguration, an event I watched with chills, and who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? Still, as for the performance itself, what was the point? A faked rendering of reworked Copland. I’d have preferred a less perfect performance, with bad notes and poor intonation, but something real.

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Christopher Guerin

Christopher Guerin is the author of two books each of poetry and short fiction, a novel, and more than a dozen children’s books. If he hadn’t spent 26 years as an arts administrator, including 20 years as President of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, perhaps he’d have worked a little harder getting them published. His consolation resides in his fiction and poems having been published in numerous small magazines, including Rosebud, AURA, Williams and Mary Review, Midwest Quarterly, Wittenberg Review, RE: Artes Liberales, DEROS, Wind, and Wind less Orchard. His blog, Zealotry of Guerin, features his fiction and poetry, including his sonnet sequence of poems after paintings, “Brushwork." He is the V.P. of Corporate Communications at Sweetwater Sound, Inc., the national music instrument retailer.