Looking For A New Classic
Last night, the NHL's Minnesota Wild opened their 2008-09 season at home against the Boston Bruins, a fact which was noted in eye-rolling fashion by our principal trombonist, Doug Wright, during the stage-setting break between the first and second works on our Saturday night program, when he walked into the musicians' lounge to find five musicians plus Osmo clustered around the TV, checking the score before we had to rush back onstage for a piano concerto. (Doug, who doesn't play the concerto, had the right to make fun of us. The hockey obsessives in this orchestra do tend to be fanatical, even by sports fan standards, and I noticed that Osmo had one of our personnel managers reporting the score of the game to him as he came offstage for intermission, as well.)
Later, at the end of intermission, principal cellist Tony Ross had to literally drag Osmo out of the lounge by one arm when the "on stage" call was heard, lest he plant himself permanently in front of the game, where the Wild had jumped out to a 4-1 lead. This, of course, is why Osmo doesn't have a TV in his private dressing room.
Meanwhile, up in Canada, a music-related hockey drama has been slowly unfolding over the past several months, ever since the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation somehow managed to lose the rights to the theme music to Hockey Night in Canada.
Let's understand the seriousness of this. Those of us who live south of the 49th parallel and have no connection to our neighbors to the north probably can't really grasp just how famous the Hockey Night theme is. The closest we can probably get is the Monday Night Football theme, but even then, I'd wager to say that a far higher percentage of Canadians can sing you the hockey theme than Americans can sing that pumped up NFL jingle. It's a major cultural touchstone for a proud hockey-loving nation, and it's now gone from the airwaves of the national broadcaster.
(That's not to say it's actually gone completely. The reason CBC lost the rights is that it was outbid for them by commercial broadcaster CTV, which owns TSN, Canada's version of ESPN. TSN broadcasts multiple hockey games to the entire country every week, and the hockey theme now prefaces each of them. But to a lot of Canadians, that's just not the same thing.)
So, CBC was in a spot. Obviously, it wasn't going to cancel Hockey Night in Canada, a Saturday tradition that still draws some of the highest ratings anywhere. So it needed a new theme, and it turned to the public to get it. Culling 15 finalists from over 15,000 entries it received from across the country, the network spent a ridiculous amount of time over the past month or so flogging its viewers to vote for a winner. Last night, they revealed the winner live just as Hockey Night in Canada went on the air...
The winning composer is Colin Oberst from the western province of Alberta (note to Bright Eyes fans - that's Colin Oberst, not Conor - no relation as far as I know,) and I have to say, while his theme isn't the classic that the original theme was, I like it a lot. It's up-tempo, innocent, and a bit old-fashioned, which is just so Canada, and the Celtic pipes that open and close the song are a distinctive nod to Atlantic Canada's roots in the British Isles. And all in all, despite the fact that many will likely never forgive the CBC for letting the original theme get away, the whole contest strikes me as a great way of involving the audience in something they care passionately about...
Later, at the end of intermission, principal cellist Tony Ross had to literally drag Osmo out of the lounge by one arm when the "on stage" call was heard, lest he plant himself permanently in front of the game, where the Wild had jumped out to a 4-1 lead. This, of course, is why Osmo doesn't have a TV in his private dressing room.
Meanwhile, up in Canada, a music-related hockey drama has been slowly unfolding over the past several months, ever since the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation somehow managed to lose the rights to the theme music to Hockey Night in Canada.
Let's understand the seriousness of this. Those of us who live south of the 49th parallel and have no connection to our neighbors to the north probably can't really grasp just how famous the Hockey Night theme is. The closest we can probably get is the Monday Night Football theme, but even then, I'd wager to say that a far higher percentage of Canadians can sing you the hockey theme than Americans can sing that pumped up NFL jingle. It's a major cultural touchstone for a proud hockey-loving nation, and it's now gone from the airwaves of the national broadcaster.
(That's not to say it's actually gone completely. The reason CBC lost the rights is that it was outbid for them by commercial broadcaster CTV, which owns TSN, Canada's version of ESPN. TSN broadcasts multiple hockey games to the entire country every week, and the hockey theme now prefaces each of them. But to a lot of Canadians, that's just not the same thing.)
So, CBC was in a spot. Obviously, it wasn't going to cancel Hockey Night in Canada, a Saturday tradition that still draws some of the highest ratings anywhere. So it needed a new theme, and it turned to the public to get it. Culling 15 finalists from over 15,000 entries it received from across the country, the network spent a ridiculous amount of time over the past month or so flogging its viewers to vote for a winner. Last night, they revealed the winner live just as Hockey Night in Canada went on the air...
The winning composer is Colin Oberst from the western province of Alberta (note to Bright Eyes fans - that's Colin Oberst, not Conor - no relation as far as I know,) and I have to say, while his theme isn't the classic that the original theme was, I like it a lot. It's up-tempo, innocent, and a bit old-fashioned, which is just so Canada, and the Celtic pipes that open and close the song are a distinctive nod to Atlantic Canada's roots in the British Isles. And all in all, despite the fact that many will likely never forgive the CBC for letting the original theme get away, the whole contest strikes me as a great way of involving the audience in something they care passionately about...
posted by Sam at
1:49 PM
5 Comments:
I hope this is an appropriate question given the spirit in which you related the hockey story. There have been many concerts in my city where we've asked ourselves if our MD was fully engaged with matters at hand or would rather have been elsewhere.
Your comment about your MD being fixated on a hockey match during a concert makes me wonder if this is a larger phenomenon. Shouldn't someone in that position be reasonably expected to have his or her mind fully engaged for the relatively short duration of a concert? At what point should the chief ask the youngster in the wings to step in while he goes off to the bar to watch the game?
I wondered if anyone would ask this, and like any other musician, I've been frustrated in the past by conductors who either seemed less than fully engaged with the concert, or seemed to be listening more to the music in their heads than to what's actually going on in front of them.
That having been said, I don't think there's anything wrong with musicians or conductors taking a mental break between pieces on a program, so long as it doesn't have an effect on one's onstage focus. And anyone who's ever seen Osmo conduct knows that you could never accuse him of being any less than 100% focused on the music, whether in rehearsal or performance. He's one of the most fully engaged conductors I've ever worked under, and I've never seen him bring anything but full energy to the podium.
I know some musicians and conductors who treat the whole concert experience as a solemn occasion during which their personal musical trance must not be disturbed. On the whole, these people annoy me...
I kept waiting for Tom Jones to start singing on the old one. :)
On a research trip to the Seattle Symphony, I was both dismayed and highly amused to learn that a group of musicians had an on-going poker game backstage during their season. (They invited me to join them that evening.) I saw another musician pull out a bag of knitting to work on backstage. It's not just the MD who takes a break between music during a concert.
Having said that, I tend to think Osmo's fanatical interest in the Wild and hockey as absolutely wonderful. It's a boring person who doesn't have interests outside of work. Especially considering how totally immersed and focused Osmo can be.
Those people who have the "artiste" thing going and must reach a higher plane or altered state of consciousness before walking onstage can also be fine musicians, however full of themselves sometimes....
Thanks for the responses. I didn't mean to say that musicians should focus on music to the exclusion of all else. Given the demands on your time to practice, rehearse, teach, and win/retain your slots I expect that outside interests are mandatory to keep from cracking up.
As a concertgoer I'm interested to hear that poker games, knitting, and score checking happen during the couple of hours of a performance evening. Perhaps this ability to switch on and off is part of what separates you that play from us that watch.
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