The guest conductor confidently strode to the podium, respectfully acknowledged the audience, and prepared his baton for the first downbeat.   The holiday audience sat at rapt attention waiting for orchestra to break into the program’s next selection “Sleigh Ride”.

Sounds like just another one of hundreds of predictable holiday pops concerts across the world, right? 

Hardly.

This conductor had a considerable edge on most other conductors – namely a height edge (of about a foot-and-a-half).  He also outweighs most conductors by at least 150 pounds.

In case you missed it, Shaquille O’Neal, the legendary basketball center, took the stage last week to conduct the Boston Pops Orchestra and the Tanglewood Chorus in three selections.  Shaq hammed it up, boogied a bit to ‘Can You Feel It’ and left the stage to a rousing ovation, high-fiving players on his way out.

I first learned of this event watching ESPN during my morning workout at the YMCA.  I must have seen the same video clips four days in a row on ESPN and on other networks as well.  In fact, ESPN is still airing clips this week.   

Is this just the latest in a series of gimmicks designed to prop up shrinking orchestra budgets, or is the work of marketing genius?  

The answer, as with most things, lies somewhere in-between the extremes.

Upon viewing the highlights initially, I thought to myself, “What a joke!”  Shaq has no sense of tempo, and the orchestra, made up of professionals is essentially keeping itself together.   And the by-product will be, of course, “See, anyone can conduct!” 

Conducting, in it, of itself, takes a whole lot of skill, not to mention the ability to interpret a score and rehearsal techniques. 

But overall, I think the plusses of this event far outweigh the minuses.  Consider, in my four half hour workout sessions in front of the TV, I saw this replayed on four separate occasions.  How many other times was it played throughout the week?  ESPN has a wide audience for sure, but how many of those viewers had even thought about an orchestra in the past five years.  Maybe a few them thought, I wonder if there’s an orchestra in my town I could see?  Still others thought, you know, I’ve been meaning to get to a holiday orchestra or choral concert anyway, let me see if there’s something going on this week.

The orchestra itself wasn’t demeaned in anyway by this appearance, in fact, they sounded great.  If their season ticket sales increase and they are able to stay in the black for one more year in this tight economy, more power to them.  Let’s face it, orchestras have to do some of these things to make lots of money on a few concerts, so they can support the remainder of their season.  

Some people like pops, some people like something a little more serious, but with these sort of approaches the orchestra can provide some of both and most importantly….

They can keep the doors open.