10,000 in Japan perform "Ode to Joy"

Does anyone know who planned this event?

Two years ago, I was involved in doing sound in an event much like this - only bigger! It was in a soccer stadium in Germany with about 50-60,000 people singing all your favorites from Ode to Joy, Habanera, Hallelujah to Land of Hope and Glory. Pretty amazing to be there! We had an orchestra in the middle and about 5000 choir singers on the playing field who were all miked, together with about 50,000 people in the stands singing along with the conductor on the big stadium screen. Getting everyone in sync was a concern, and we solved it by using a shitload of speakers and putting them as close as possible to each section of the audience, so you wouldn’t have twice the delay.

Here’s a video of Bobby McFerrin doing an improvisation with the audience, here’s Habanera with Vesselina Kasarova.

According to the description on YouTube, the performance was in Osaka and Sendai, linked by video.

I gotta say - I love me some Ode to Joy music, but I’ve never been a big fan of the singing that was grafted onto it. This performance with the ex-tra hard con-so-nant e-nun-ci-a-tion did not disabuse me of that sentiment.

Grafted? Have you ever heard an Ode to Joy without singing? It’s kinda built-in.

I know what you mean about consonants, but I think that’s pretty standard and not just this performance. In my recording, in the end section by the 4 soloists, the “T” at the end of “flugel weilT” really pops.

Ah yes, the Day of Song concert! Looking for the webpage, I see that it’s being repeated this year:

So if you are in the area on June 2nd, you can join in again.

Thanks for the info - although it looks like they will repeat everything but the big concert in the stadium. Bummer!

I’d really love to hear it where the soloists used natural voice rather than classical. That vibrato sounds terrible to me.

Daniel Barenboim (the conductor famous for starting the East-West orchestra, where young Palestinian and Israeli musicans play together in Europe) has started a Beethoven for everybody project. Everybody, whether choir or single person, can download the MP3 for Ode to joy, record a video of singing it, and upload it to the website. Then snippets from all videos will be edited together to one grand video. He does it because he says that music connects people across borders all over the world.

For one project that was already done, there’s a dance video of the Maus dance edited together from fan videoshere.

I totally agree! So incredibly amazing!
When I see this kind of cooperation to produce such beautiful music, I long for the day when we all, on this earth, can cooperate to produce much more. If we could just stop fighting and see the beauty instead of our differences! I would love to have been a part of that performance…

Thanks for sharing. :smiley:


peace and joy to all http://www.plushcomforters.com

Please tell me I’m not the only one waiting for Nakatomi Plaza to blow up. It is pretty cool though, and just think, no one will notice if you screw up.