I'm truly upset, for once in many years. Our choral group (Lagun Onak) is a prestigious one, we give concerts organized by ourselves and we are also hired by Colón Theatre and others, every year, for major choral masterworks. (Last month it was Haendel's The Messiah with the Buenos Aires Phil.Orchestra). It happened that the production team from Odeon called us to record some choral parts for the most famous folk singer, Mercedes Sosa, and offered 20,000 (twenty thousand !) dollars for four songs. Our association is non-profit, and we are not registered professionals, so this money will be used for improvement of our activity, and was very welcome.
The surprise came out when we were informed that Mercedes had sung and gone, as well as the orchestra, so we were supposed to record on top of them synchronyzing our voices with the original tracks, then were gathered in a large studio where the major part of the room was dedicated to mics, cables and operators passing, while 60 persons crowded against a wall with NO chairs, NO air-conditioning NOR ventilation, NO place to hold clothes or music sheets, NO single bottle of water, full of cables on the floor, on feet for FOUR LONG HOURS with a 10 min break.
We gently asked for chairs for the next session, while leaving the room, absolutely exhausted, and with the convincement that our job was bad, senseless, and stupid, anything except an artistic event.
The second session was identical, except for 12 chairs for 60 persons. It started at 10 PM. At 2:15 AM, I said "good night" and left, forever. I know this may mean my total separation from the choir, even if the director doesn't fire me, I think this is the consequence.
Tonight they are at the third session, I'm at home.
Is this the same in US and UK, for popular music CD making ? Is it possible that a director accepts such an humilliation of his people ? Is it my fault, for being so intolerant ? What kind of junk music do they pretend to obtain from a crowd of tired and upset singers ? Are they only interested in the sampling of human voices for further robotization ?
Please tell me that not all popular production is the same.
Yours, Andrés Magré (future soloist)