Faking It, MMXII: Don't Have a Cowell, Symphoney!

Here we go again with another round of Faking It at a major event. We saw in Peking four years ago Faking It during major Olympic opening ceremony events (singers replaced with fakes that look better), and later with the RNC, along with the ceremony marking the deification of The Whammy.

I've written checks to musicians, paid a college student accompanist both cash and a home-made pumpkin pie that I made myself, and have walked out of karaoke events at church. But it still does not matter. As classical music fans, we who pay our money for these spectacular concerts, play the instruments or sing in choral events these masterpieces have become highly offended by the trend towards faking. When $200 DVD's replace the church musician, something's awfully fishy. We do not support the awful trends of music, something a friend noted, "Now they spend half their seasons doing pops concerts with geriatric groups like Styx and Sha Na Na so they can afford to play a little Beethoven or Mozart, forget Mahler or Bruckner, that would cost more money for a bigger orchestra."

It's no longer a church problem. A recent concert in Winnipeg with a well-known symphony whose "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" from Carl Orff's massive Carmina Burana (Dr. Cornwell, that still is one piece that has such powerful) was used for many years by Sean Hannity to open his radio programme turned nasty when it was revealed that the group was faking it. They were allegedly the backing group for a Simon Cowell prefabricated pop group. Instead of performing, while they were faking it live, the sound system was playing prerecorded accompaniment, effectively making the symphony a glorified fake. Now who are the divos? The group that demanded singing to prerecorded music? It's as bad as the church singers who sing almost exclusively to the can, claiming it sounds better than the real thing. Don't tell me that. If I'm paying for Mary Lee, Jennifer, Mori, or other musicians to play in a concert, I want to hear them. I don't want to hear a recording! Real musicians are not Powerade bottles. Here's the article. ◙