Last year at NDK 9, a local college band director took the initiative and started a group called the Symphonic Anime Orchestra. Comprising Nan Desu Kan attendees, they played music from anime and several video games.
This year on Sunday was their second concert. Like last year, there was a decent crowd of about 200 listening to them play. But like last year, they only sounded OK. It’s hard for me to criticize these musicians when I consider all of the aspects of the event, but even so, they sounded good at best.
Most of the problems are not fixable, unfortunately, because they are a result of the nature of this particular beast. As I mentioned, the SAO wholly comprises con attendees, which means they see each other once a year. This doesn’t give them much time to practice together. While they apparently received their music to practice in February, they had to all practice solo and bring everything together at the last minute. Not even the London Symphony Orchestra would sound very good working under those conditions.
But even worse than not being fully synchronized, there were at least two bad musicians in the group. I don’t want to point out anyone in particular, so I won’t say what sections these musicians were in. But watching them play, I could easily recognize who was hurting the group more than they were helping it. Again, this isn’t something that will likely change in future years primarily because of the composition of the group. Being a group of attendees, most of them paid their way into the convention and they weren’t being payed to play in the SAO, which makes it both difficult and rude to ask someone to leave because they aren’t very good. Were this a group of professional musicians, it might be easier to cut someone from the team, as it were.
Still, despite the problems, I enjoyed listening to the SAO play. They only played for about 45 minutes and I found myself disappointed that the concert didn’t last longer.
3 responses so far ↓
Teg // November 15, 2006 at 5:14 pm |
Not to sound terribly creepy but I found this via Google search (while trying to re-find the SAO webpage). I was the flute!Hakkai in the orchestra.
The group that I was in consisted of about 6 people, and we all made fun of ourselves after the performance- we knew that the violins were off *at least* half the time (and listening to the recording, they, along with brass [minus tuba] were off). And you have a good ear for pinpointing how many unprepared musiscians were in the group! We even had two people kicked out because they simply didn’t show up to rehersals or flat out lied on their applications. >_* The one trumpet had to step up to First Part when the other chick was kicked out on stage; the guy was already struggling with Second Part. ¬¬
Gah. And there was one flute person that showed up the night before the performance. Granted, she was a music ed major I’m a music therapy major currently) so she knew what she was doing *glee* but it was a hassle to to synch with her style.
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But thank you for coming and seeing us! :D
Elena // March 6, 2007 at 11:03 am |
Hey, looks like I wasn’ the first orchestra member to find this. *pokes the flute* I was the first alto sax player (dressed as Gojyo).
First and foremost I’d like to thank you for the feedback, even if we knew we sounded pretty wierd is some places, it’s hard to be truly objective when trying to critque yourself.
I’d also like to reiterate that you have a very good ear for what was really, really off. None of our sections seemed to want to get along as far as tempo and where we were in the music went (and any discord within the brass, string, and woodwind sections themselves didn’t help much either).
The decision to ask a few of our members to just suck it in, pack it up and leave was extremely difficult. Most of us knew what we were in for (at least, those of us who really knew what we were doing) but the hope that the newbies would step up was always there. That is, up until we had to ditch one of the trumpets and an alto sax because she lost her goose-neck IN HER CASE. By then we just kind of hoped that we didn’t completely crash and burn and be subsequently lynched by the audience for butchering the music.
But in the end, it’s good to know that we didn’t completely fail at our main objective (which was entertainment) and that for the most part, all the people we’ve gotten feedback from so far have liked what we did.
(Especially since our first thought upon getting up on stage was “Wait, is this crowd actually here to see US or was there some sort of terrible mistake?”)
Katie // July 18, 2007 at 1:57 pm |
Hey, thank you for the review. I can’t find a way to contact you on your website. I would like to quote you in a promo packet. Here is the quote I would like to use.
“…I enjoyed listening to the SAO play. They only played for about 45 minutes and I found myself disappointed that the concert didn’t last longer.”
Thank you also for coming to the concert!