I remember when the Army pledged to contribute the backup professional choir for Jessye Norman at Clinton’s second inauguration after she declined the community choir originally scheduled. Conveniently forgetting that the professional singers of the U.S. Army consist of a large male choir (sort of a counterpart to the famous Soviet Red Army male choir) and a tiny madrigal choir! After she asked at the rehearsal where the women were, the sergeant major in charge decided to send in the (mostly female) strings! Embarrassing, but at least I can say I’ve sung at an inauguration!

Let’s see, what else…oh, yes, playing a medley of “German Dances” to welcome the Austrians, and insensitively forgetting that the Argentinians had specifically requested that we not play “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” to welcome their diplomats and head of state…

Whoever is at fault, it’s the kind of stupidity and publicly seen (or in this case, heard) incompetence that is one of the hallmarks of the Bush Administration and his appointees. Whether or not the groups were military or not is irrelevant. This was another little embarrassment in a long string that stretches eight years. Even third-world nations can manage the playing of music in one key for a visiting dignitary. This performance was in the key of FUBAR, a term the Military District of Washington should be familiar with.

Linda -
I got the chance to play some Ives in school in Cincinnati and particularly remember a performance of ‘Central Park in the Dark’ where I got to bang out (on the piano) some clusters in a different rhythm and tempo from another group. It was great fun, but initially a hard thing to manage (kept wanting to smooth out the crunching of the gears that seemed out of whack).

I wouldn’t worry too much about the bands. I don’t know what happened to these guys, but given the way people have been reprimanded (not – see ‘Heckuva job’ Brown formerly of FEMA)by the Bush administration, they could very well get the ‘Medal of Freedom’.

Having lived in Danbury, CT, I had opportunities to play Charles Ives (and his grandaughter’s) compositions…as odd as those were, at least they were INTENDED to sound that way. I know that no bandmaster wants his band to look or sound like this mess.

As a musician (and married to a military bandmaster as well), I felt quite badly for both groups. With something as highly exposed as this, there will surely be a LOT of fall out…you know the guy who gacked a note in TAPS during President Kennedy’s funeral was relieved of his position…..wonder which of these guys is gone?

See my entries of March 9th, 28th, 30th and 31st, as well as April 1st and 3rd. The CBC is getting rid of most of the Classical Music programming (including the superb Music and Company with Tom Allen) except for the hours of 10AM to 3PM, when just about no one listens to the radio (in other words No Commuter or Wake Up Classical Music, no Evening Classical Music, and next to no Weekend Classical Music. The current crop of CBC executives like Jennifer Maguire (How I hate that woman!) clearly sees that stuff as ‘elitist’ fare that must make way for ‘more broad representation of Canadian music’, which for her and the rest of them means pop music. CBC2 will, in September, become an ‘Easy Listening’ network.

Complain as much and bitterly as you want, but it will fall on deaf ears. My letters, protests and emails have been met with cheery form letters. I’m so sad about this that its almost like a death in the family. I will cherish the relatively few years I had waking up to the incomparable Tom Allen. In the next few weeks, I plan on a lengthy blog entry praising him to the stars and decrying the morons running the CBC who are essentially trashing a cultural treasure.