Mozart in the Jungle, the new Amazon series starring Gael García Bernal and Malcolm McDowell, focuses on the highs and lows of classical musicians trying to make it in New York, but they may not be practicing what they preach. A recent article in the New York Times reveals the show is outsourcing the music used in the program.
The Amazon series is based upon oboist Blair Tindall’s 2005 memoir Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music, which focuses on her time as a classical musician in New York. While the show details how classical musicians struggle, the musicians in the show may be in the same boat.
As technology changes and overseas orchestras provide cheaper competition, soundtrack recording work for American musicians has grown scarcer. According the New York Times, some scenes that were filmed for the series show real orchestra musicians — those who were hired to play members of the fictionalized New York Symphony mimed playing their instruments. Instead of their own playing, pieces of Mahler and Berlioz were recorded for the show in Bratislava, Slovakia. Even an orchestra arrangement of the popular indie song “Lisztomania” by Phoenix was recorded in Los Angeles, separately.
During the time when Tindall was performing in the 1980s, recorded scores were a profitable way for classical musicians to make money.
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