Last night Scott and I were having a drink and a nosh and the subject came ’round to concert music and reality TV, as these things have a way of doing. Okay, okay, it was actually that we were comparing the TV we seemed to be consuming of late, and while I have been watching sub-par dramas, Scott copped to the fact that he’d been thoroughly enjoying the reality series Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team. What he seemed to like about the show was that it wasn’t about the trappings of the contestant’s lives, but pretty well focused on the goals they had their eyes on: learning routines and getting through uniform fittings and other tests of pro cheerleader skill. These people were fighting to succeed at something they wanted to do professionally very badly, and it made for some knuckle-biting drama. (In cute outfits, but I let that part slide.)
From there we started imagining what it would be like if they pulled the curtain back on musicians from the X orchestra and got into the real working lives of the people behind the black wall o’ performers: study, auditions, rehearsals, unions, politics, performances. I knew from experience that, if done well, a pretty colorful picture would emerge and yes, that would most definitely shake up people’s perceptions of the industry. But two major road blocks lay in the path of this “new slant on a classic program model” coming to fruition:
1) Viewers have to care about the people in the abstract already, and by and large they probably wouldn’t care about orchestra musicians. But wait, isn’t that just feeding into the self-defeatist perspective we in the industry tend to lug around on our backs? People melt when amateur contestants reach for classical repertoire (think Paul Potts on Britain’s Got Talent). I can see a trailer made up of clips from my own orchestral experiences that would have everyone tuning in. Pure drama.
2) We couldn’t make the show ourselves in-house. This one I think we can’t surmount. The frame is super important and a major network would have to make the show on their own if it is to have any chance of being popular in the same way and having a similar cultural impact. Repeat, this is not an audience development move the orchestra can engage in. I mean, they could, but it would not have the same result. It needs an outsider, a team of creative people who know nothing about this world, so that what they find is not balanced, not tempered–it’s just raw reaction. The things that would strike outsiders we may no longer even notice. What would they see in us?
Silly conjecture, yes, but there’s something inside this fantasy that I can’t shake. On top of the practical impossibility of knowing all 70 people in your local symphony, there’s also a certain amount of subsuming the players into the ensemble, supposedly in service to the music. But if that’s so, why are athletes never asked to remain so anonymous for the good of the game? If there were 10 members of an orchestra that the nation started to really feel invested in, wouldn’t the stock of all orchestra members rise?
I love the idea and would find such a reality show fascinating – but while you are able to dismiss the real appeal of the Dallas Cheerleaders: “In cute outfits, but I let that part slide” the jiggle factor does count. That and the bare knuckles, down-to-earth sort of back stabbing and immature emotional outbursts that are so often captured on tape.
But as we all know, orchestra musicians are not allowed such luxuries.
When I worked with various performing artists I found the actors to be the most interesting, the dancers the nicest, the musicians the most reticent and the visual artists the strangest.
But you know, I loved each and every one of them.
Molly adds: Hi, Larry. Welcome to MTG. I didn’t mean to diss the cheerleaders at all, more…coyly acknowledge (?) that they are offering prime time viewers a bit more than a musician probably would in certain areas. Your artistic stereotypes match my own pretty much exactly–but yet I’ve been a musician myself, and I’m certainly not reticent as an individual, so how does that happen when it comes to the “group mind” I wonder…
Larry’s right about the jiggle factor. I really think physical beauty is the key to TV success. (I mean, for gosh sake, The Hills!) For this show to work, the musicians would all have to look like Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
Kremerata Baltica maybe?
I’ve had similar ponderings about how the orchestra world and the reality world could mix. My dream idea is to have the designers on my favorite reality show…Project Runway…design concert wear for a small chamber ensemble…perhaps Orpheus or some other small group in NYC…certainly there are plenty to choose from. The clothing would have to be in black, be comfortable, cool, couldn’t get in the way of the instruments, wrinkle free, look stylish for the headshots and the bow. It would be a great opportunity for general audiences to get that backstage glimpse of an ensemble…and hopefully listen to some music too?
Any ensembles in NYC up for reaching out to Project Runway? Hopefully it will get itself out of its court battles and get back on the air.
Molly votes: Oooh, that is a good one. I’d watch that.
Comic writer Harvey Pekar recently collaborated with musician Dan Plonsey on an opera that features Harvey and Dan playing themselves along with their wives and a cameo (via a telephone call) by Robert Crumb. You can read about the production here http://www.leavemealoneopera.com/
“What would they see in us?”
“They” would select and groom the most “colorful” musicians in said orchestra and encourage their grossest most self-delusional behavior in order to give the show an “edge.” There would be no ambiguity what so ever as that upsets the typical TV viewer and (more importantly) prevents them from truly enjoying the products advertised during the show.
You’d have the overweight, balding, and angry tuba player who insults everyone else in the orchestra; the willowy, painfully shy flautist who becomes a tiger when she (or he) is playing the solo flute passages in performance; the bitter, bug-eyed composer desperate to bend the will of the orchestra’s conductor to the tempos indicated in his score; and the recently out of the closet bi-racial percussionist with a green and pink mohawk who dreams of conducting his own orchestra while eating sandwiches in between those few notes he gets to tap out on the timpani.
yes, the jiggle factor does play into it, but i believe that the american public also responds to heart and talent (i.e. the biggest loser and top chef series). personally, i believe it would be ideal to follow an organization such as the new world symphony. here you have relatively young musicians, most of whom are just out of college and looking to land that big gig with a major orchestra. plenty to work with there if you ask me. they’re guaranteed to have some cuties, they can follow individuals as they go on auditions, they’re in miami, all sorts of good things.
Molly adds: And it also makes me think of Hire My Husband–a fun, stand out from the crowd strategy, post-show.