Hello,Some directors seem to have an attitude of "any publicity is good publicity", but my take is this: "Sister Act" wasn't a documentary. This is kind of like taking a bunch of sports journalists and giving them each a couple months to recruit and train a football team from the bozos in their home towns, then expecting NFL players to be interested in the outcome. Possibly it's very good television, but kind of irrelevant to professionals in the field.
I work for NBC and we are preparing an exciting new four-night special, "Clash of the Choirs", that will begin airing on December 17th. The show features 5 celebrity musical artists assembling a choir of 20 singers to compete each night.
As a special promotion, NBC is reaching out to choirs everywhere with an opportunity to be featured in a special “Holiday Moment" promo that will air during Clash of the Choirs. We’re asking choirs across the country to perform of one of several selected songs and upload the taped performance onto our web site for a chance to be featured during one of the nationally televised broadcasts. Information can be found here:
http://www.nbc.com/Clash_of_the_Choirs/
This is a great opportunity for your readers to be featured on national TV. In that regard, I was hoping you could pass this opportunity along either via your web site or through an e-mail. Since the deadline for entry is December 10th, we would need to act quickly.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Choirs do more than clash
A lively debate has been proceeding on ChoralTalk about the impact of NBC's upcoming show Clash of the Choirs, in which a half-dozen celebrities (mostly pop singers) recruit and train a choir in their hometowns for an American-Idol-like face-off in December. Here's a letter I received from NBC recently on the topic, inviting other choirs to submit videos for use on promos of the show:
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3 comments:
I agree with the majority of what you wrote, Allen. My take on these requested submissions is that this is the only opportunity during this four-day run for the average TV viewing public to hear what a real choir sounds like. The preselected songs are basic carols (with the exception of "Amazing Grace" (Christmas...really?)), so a good arrangement could knock the judges' socks off. Now, granted, the judges will probably not want to put anything on the air that would upstage their "star choral directors", but it's worth a shot.
Congratulations Allen, your last paragraph was one of the most brilliant rebuttals I've ever heard! I hope that your response to NBC included it. As a word smith like that have you ever thought of for political office?
I felt the same way about the celebrity choir directors... Kind of a mockery of real art. With that being said, I also a saw this as an opportunity to do something fun (not to mention to show America what real choirs sound like, as the other post stated)and gain some exposure to those who are interested in choral music. I arranged a new piece the other day that has made it to the semi-final round thus far, so I am interested to see where that goes. It's not my choir, just my music. Though, now that I think about it, if I had something better to do on the 17th, I'd probably do it.
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