14
May
Air and Simple Gifts (from Barack Obama’s Inauguration)
Posted by sandman49
Maestro John Williams arranged a piece based on Aaron Copeland’s arrangement of the old Shaker Tune “Simple Gifts” as “Variations on a Shaker Melody”. Yo-Yo Ma performs along with Itzhak Perlman on violin, Gabriela Montero on piano and Anthony McGill on clarinet. Simply beautiful and amazing!
July 24th, 2009 at 1:02 am
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July 25th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
omg they play so good i play cello and i performed this for my strings class but i wosent as this good
July 28th, 2009 at 1:36 am
yo yo ma is the man
August 3rd, 2009 at 5:33 pm
This old lady says, I wish I could play such beautiful music. Thank goodness for the Arts and for our new leader of these United States of America. Bless this first family and keep them safe and in your most glorious hands.
August 15th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
The composition is great, however the performance is staged. They were faking the motions over a recording. It was a made for TV moment. The excuse is that it was too cold, and their instruments would have gone out of tune. I think a country who can put a man on the moon should be able to enable these musicians to have played for real. And these are supposed to be the world’s best in their fields. What a tragic loss, of what could have possibly been a great, heoric, American moment. Sacrificed.
August 16th, 2009 at 12:13 am
CromwellClassical, sure the performance is staged, but you should know that you cannot escape the laws of physics. These are professional players, and they have very expensive professional instruments that are very sensitive to humidity and temperature. I am a musician and I KNOW that this is true. Pitch, tone color, and just quality are sacrificed in cold weather.
August 16th, 2009 at 11:04 am
You all accept this easy excuse that there was no possible solution. There are many recorded instances of Eastern European musicians playing in the cold during the time of WWII. The fact is, that there was not enough creativity and ingenuity employed to invent a proper solution. Accepting a fake performance as the only solution is defeatist, and weak of spirit. A bad, real performance is better than a fake one.
August 16th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
a bad performance is not better than a ‘fake’ one. I would rather hear the musicians playing at their best under ideal circumstances, even pre-recorded and fake played that hearing a performance that is out of tune. There is nothing worse than hearing an out of tune performance. And yes, while performances may have been recorded in eastern europe in cold weather… the instruments were probably played regularly in cold weather and thus seasoned and tuned.
August 16th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
The instruments that are played by YoYo Ma, Itzak Perlman and the clarinet and piano players… are NOT played normally in cold weather. ANY musician would know about the dynamics of temperature on instruments.
And cut it out with your ‘defeatist’ talk. So the performance was prerecorded, at least it wasn’t a Milli Vanilli thing and performed by other artists. The pre-recording was done by the people ‘acting’ during the inauguration. Get a life and enjoy the moment.
August 28th, 2009 at 1:30 am
Everyone needs to calm down. I usually just close my eyes when i listen to this kind of music anyways, all that fast hands stuff just gets me all distratcted, or like that guys hair is really puffy, or hey look that asian mans hair go crazy in the air, or the black man has no hair. just enjoy the music…..
August 28th, 2009 at 4:06 am
Robert Gibbs appears to have been Gabriela’s page turner.
September 22nd, 2009 at 11:45 pm
whether or not it is so-called fake or for-real is not the issue. this piece is simply amazing! i love ‘simple gifts’ and this arrgmt is stunning… john williams is a band god!
October 5th, 2009 at 1:45 am
LOL the only reason i knew this was prerecorded (before i read some of the comments) was because yo yo ma’s eyes were open O: normally when he plays they’re closed and he makes this kind of funny face. (:
October 25th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
only GREAT/FANTASTIC/AMAZING part of the entire inauguration!!!!!
November 8th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
It is flabbergasting that such esteemed musicians who charge skyhigh fees for their concerts sell out when the world is watching and play-back. PLAY BACK. And badly. It is a disgrace..
November 8th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
It reminds me of the movie WAG THE DOG..
November 16th, 2009 at 2:53 am
are you a musician by any chance? no you’re not. because if you were, then you would know that because of the temperature that day, it would have ben physically impossible to get those intruments in tune. i have heard all of them play live, and let me assure you, they are all of great skill.
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:22 am
I agree, if you are in 30 F then it’s hard as crap to be in tune, trust me, marching band in 8th grade, we had a Christmas parade, most of the valved instruments froze, so we couldn’t press our fingers down, trust me IT SUCKED!!!
December 31st, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Your don’t make any sense.
December 31st, 2009 at 2:37 pm
you know nothing about perlman
January 5th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
yeah. It’s why he’s so much fun to watch!
January 30th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
were playing simple gifts in my school band and i remember watching this last year, if only i knew thats was one of the songs they played at the time
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:02 pm
probably the best performers of our age right there
March 21st, 2010 at 12:42 am
You’re such a dumbass. Get a life Kid.
April 14th, 2010 at 11:33 pm
@blakebritton1976 they only prerecorded it so that the instrument did nto have any technical difficultites during the performance. in my opinion though, it still is amazing that they played it with the recording, and it still sounded absolutely amazing