Faking performances for big events is not just for the Chinese. Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman played live at the inauguration, but the speakers and media didn’t broadcast their live music — instead they played a recording made two days earlier. The inaugural committee did this in case the players slipped up as a result of the cold weather.
A spokeswoman gets all defensive with the NYT:
“It’s not something we would announce, but it’s not something we would try to hide,” Ms. Florman said. “Frankly, it would never have occurred to me to announce it. The fact they were forced to perform to tape because of the weather did not seem relevant, nor would we want to draw attention away from what we believed the news is, that we were having a peaceful transition of power from one administration to the next.”
