Great to know. And it all makes sense!
@michele-b @UnkP is right and it doesn’t just include their coverage of the war in Iraq. But NPR has improved since Trump.
I think they had trouble trying to appear objective and got confused with what objective means. Objective doesn’t mean you give voice to liars and thieves, it means you report the truth. And since the Republican party has become a party of liars and thieves NPR has struggled with How to represent them.
NPR is mainstream not liberal although republicans think its leftest because anything that isn’t extreme right at this point is leftest.
I think they’ve done a reasonably good job with covering Covid, and they have started to be more on the side of objective truth in covering Donald Trump. But you can’t trust everything they say.
Remember when baseball started back up this summer?
Well, Covid appears to have hit the Marlins pretty hard. Maybe the Reds too. Better watch it while you can.
Here are the posts of Cancellations from the last two days that got deleted:
I have a friend who just conducted a concert with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra in Japan. Might be the only place doing live concerts right now.
Posted by: @michellepazicni
I just joined to be able to post, but I've been reading this site for years! Maybe this isn't the right place to ask this? Any ideas when music concerts will be back in the US? I really miss them :(
Many professional orchestras have either canceled through the end of 2020, or have canceled their entire 20-21 seasons. It is unclear how orchestras can be brought back onstage in a safe manner. Every classical musician I know is really hurting right now.
@lovendures The disconnect is really big here in my neck of the woods.... it's still a hoax to cover the sex trafficking and people voting for a Q Anon follower that Trump just fawns about *sigh* and so so much more. I am
I am amazed at the following particular disconnect.
1 on 1 college music lessons (with an instrument that doesn't require blowing anything so you can wear a mask) are online but k-12 music teachers are expected to teach in person, (with kids who can't figure out how to blow their noses) seeing 500+ students a week?
Someone please explain this "mad world" we live in. There is no rabbit hole big enough for all the disconnect going on in the world.
In the U.S.: Greed, politics led by the Republican Party. As for other countries - authoritarianism in countries led by right wing greed - Lebanon, Russia, Brazil, etc. Although there are exceptions, it isn't chaos, and it makes sense. They are out for themselves. They do not care about decisions that affect people's welfare, only decisions that affect their profits and their ability to stay in power for more profits.
My college daughter just got word that she will not be having any in person classes, including private lessons or ensembles until at least the end of September. As of yesterday she was still supposed to lessons in person and small ensembles.
I totally understand but I am amazed at the following particular disconnect.
1 on 1 college music lessons (with an instrument that doesn't require blowing anything so you can wear a mask) are online but k-12 music teachers are expected to teach in person, (with kids who can't figure out how to blow their noses) seeing 500+ students a week?
Someone please explain this "mad world" we live in. There is no rabbit hole big enough for all the disconnect going on in the world.
@jeanne-mayell Houston and Detroit Symphonies have given recent performances with a reduced number of masked musicians. I think Atlanta Symphony will be playing a modified season as well.
I know nothing about this issue so forgive me if I'm naive, but when Covid shut downs first happened, some music groups posted beautiful online performances where everyone performed separately but together from home using zoom. Is that too difficult for professional symphonies to pull off? People would enjoy watching that.
@jeanne-mayell Here are a few: :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG29VFMphpo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4YIquBE208
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XneZmO3_Acs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XneZmO3_Acs
These are obviously not entire orchestras, but they are professionals, and there are enough of them to make it sound pretty good, so it's possible, just not easy. There are a lot more. Just go on Youtube and search for "social distance orchestra" Enjoy. :-)
@tgraf66 Oh man, those were wonderful. Loved Ode to Joy beyond words, and the 1812 Overture with one woman pounding the inside of the bath tub and a man sitting on the floor playing a child's xylophone and another woman sitting on her apartment window playing the triangle. Pure delight.
Zoom is VERY difficult to do with music. There is a time delay. Try signing Happy Birthday on your next Zoom call and you will hear everyone doing different starts and stops.
The virtual performances you have seen where people are performing from home or some other location alone and then put together on a screen like a zoom meeting are a totally different animal. They are individually recorded first and then put together. This is difficult as they need to be in time. We did a few recorded choral projects during COVID with our church. Our church recorded some hymns to be played during services of our young adults singing. They recorded at home and a professional put everything together. It was a nice project to do so they could actively participate in church while not being able to be there physically. They were not filmed, just voice recordings.
I know nothing about this issue so forgive me if I'm naive, but when Covid shut downs first happened, some music groups posted beautiful online performances where everyone performed separately but together from home using zoom. Is that too difficult for professional symphonies to pull off? People would enjoy watching that.
I have taken part in four such videos. Lovendures is correct, they are not done by zoom. In fact it is impossible for even two people to play together via zoom due to the lag. I have been teaching private lessons through zoom since March and it’s frustrating not to be able to play along with my student, though sometimes I ask them to mute themselves and play with me.
if you look closely at the musicians in those videos, you will see people wearing earbuds or headphones. That is because each of us had to record our own part separately, alone in our home, either to a metronome or to a click track. In the four videos I took part in, one was to a metronome set at a certain tempo, two were to click tracks provided to us in advance, and for one we were asked to play along with a prior performance of the same piece. None of that is easy, though playing with the metronome was less difficult to do than using the click tracks or matching a previously recorded performance.
Absolutely nothing about the process of making those videos is enjoyable. It takes an hour or more to come up with 10 minutes of usable video. Furthermore, I had to turn off the air conditioning because the noise was audible on the recording so I was hot and uncomfortable along with tired and frustrated by the time I had a good video I could submit. Multiply that by the number of participants in the finished video and you will see how ridiculously disproportionate the effort is to the result.
Once every participant has submitted their video, the producer requires dozens to maybe 100 hours additional work editing the videos and sound together. This is for a video which may last not longer than 10 minutes.
These videos do serve a purpose: aside from the novelty factor, they keep us in front of our audience and donors and can inspire financial support. But they are not a viable path forward for classical music.
@2ndfdl and @lovendures, thank you for explaining all that is involved. Appearances are quite deceiving. :-)