Lip Syncing The Opening Games
Filed under what the hell were they thinking..
The famed conductor of the Grammy-winning Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, slammed the 2010 organizing committee for asking his orchestra to pre-record a performance for the opening ceremonies of the Games — and then planning for another conductor to “mime” his part of the soundtrack during the internationally broadcast show.
Saturday, after Tovey and the orchestra received a two-day, standing-ovation-like response for turning VANOC down, 2010 officials issued a statement apologizing “for putting the orchestra in an untenable position regarding the opening ceremonies.”
VANOC said technical requirements were to blame.
“For international televised live spectacles of this size and scope, it is standard practice to pre-record the musical segments to ensure the integrity and security of the broadcast transmission,” said David Atkins, executive producer of the 2010 ceremonies.
Tovey responded by calling the proposal for musical miming a type of plagiarism that was “non-Olympian in spirit” and “on a par with Ben Johnson’s [steroid-enhanced] fraud” when he won a gold medal at 1988 Olympics.
