Some older online articles

xotic · Last edited by xotic on Thu Jul 27, 2006 9:41 pm; edited 1 time in total

Here are a couple of online articles and reviews about The Ten Tenors. They are not really up to date, but I think they are interesting anyway. Very Happy

The Ten Tenors
Reviewer John Slavin
August 29, 2005

Hamer Hall
August 27

IN HIS recent broadcasts on fashion in classical music, composer Andrew Ford suggested that it was the emergence of the Three Tenors at fashionable pop opera concerts that spelt the beginning of the end for serious music. I wonder what he would make of the Ten Tenors?

They come on like the Blues Brothers in immaculate three-piece suits and the evening is sophisticated show biz, its style mirroring the big showcases of rock idols. Cheekily, they draw attention to this similarity. "Anything you can do to make us feel like rock stars is OK by us," declares their spokesman, David Kidd. Backed by a four-piece combo directed by Steven Baker, their first item is Di Quella Pira from Verdi's Il Trovatore. No introduction or background. Straight in at the deep end. You get a measure of their vocal ability by the fact that none of them baulk at the high C with which that aria concludes.

In between that and their concluding bracket of favourites by the Bee Gees is an eclectic and egalitarian mix of folk, opera and retro pop, from Botany Bay to Queen.

The group is more polished since their last visit. They shift and contrast songs to suit the audience's mood which was highly responsive. Introducing a bracket of opera favourites, they advised their fans that this would be opera without the boring bits. Refusing to give background to arias such as Non Piangere Liu, however, is a mistake.

The singing is energetic, the performers charming, and far from being the end of civilisation it introduces a large audience to good music brilliantly delivered.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/reviews/the-ten-tenors/2005/08/28/1125167547730.html

xotic · Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 9:41 pm Post subject:

Ten Tenors make opera accessible to younger generations, provide funny and charming entertainment

By Gabrielle Wiegand

I’m in love, madly, deeply in love. With ten men, or to be more precise, ten tenors. On Sunday, Oct. 3, The Ten Tenors came to Sangamon Auditorium and dazzled the audience with about twenty fabulous numbers from classic opera to the Bee Gees.

The Ten Tenors are all Australian students of opera who got together in the mid 1990’s and decided to delight audiences with their own brand and style of music.

They make opera, which is frequently considered old fuddy-duddy music, accessible to younger generations (in particular, 21 year old girls with raging hormones, AKA my roommate and me).

First, they sang beautiful classic opera songs in Italian, German, and French. Then things began to lighten up with Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Let me tell you, no song about murder has ever sounded so good.

They sang a medley of Bee Gees hits, a Beach Boys medley, and a collection of traditional Australian folksongs, including “Waltzing Mathilda.”

The Ten Tenors were accompanied by a very talented pianist and an equally talented keyboardist. For “Cast in Stone,” a song from their new album “Larger then Life”, my favorite Tenor, Craig Hendry, (though believe me, picking a favorite Tenor is like trying to pick your favorite star in the heavens) played acoustic guitar. The musical accompaniment and set were very simple as not to detract from the performance of the Tenors.

On one song, “Thunderpoint,” they gathered around the grand piano. You could not help but feel like you were watching 10 friends hang out and jam with nothing but a piano and their voices, and you felt so extremely fortunate to witness it.

The performance was more then ten guys singing on stage. The lighting effects were very dramatic, in order to portray the mood and feel of each song.

The Ten Tenors were not only an auditory treat, but a visual one as well. Each song was choreographed and while the Tenors are singers, not dancers, they still did a wonderful job executing the moves. In everything they did, from beginning a song to moving their microphones, they did it in unison with impeccable timing.

The Ten Tenors sang with their whole bodies. You could almost see the music begin in their toes and build momentum until suddenly voices filled the auditorium that must surely have come from angels. They were that beautiful and perfectly blended.

The Ten Tenors were funny and charming (they probably could have taken anybody in the auditorium they wanted home that night, including the ushers, ow-ow). They clowned around and enjoyed performing so much it was impossible to sit in the audience and not have a good time. I have never had as much fun at a musical performance.

Each of the Ten Tenors were equally strong performers. Each had his own solo, his own time in the spotlight, and yet, they worked together like a finely tuned machine.

They were all in matching tuxedos, which led me to wonder just how much their dry cleaner bill is. The intermission costume change consisted of replacing their white ties with black ones.

After the performance the Ten Tenors signed autographs. And there in a crowded auditorium lobby, a man got down on one knee to propose as the Ten Tenors serenaded him and his new fiancee. It was the perfect ending to a fabulous evening.

http://www.uis.edu/journal/2k4oct6/arts.html

xotic · Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 9:59 pm Post subject:

Tenors turn in safe yet pleasant performance
Glenn Pillsbury
Special to The Record
Published Tuesday, Nov 15, 2005

Mixing bits of opera with pop and original compositions, the Ten Tenors performed a solid and entertaining show for a small but enthusiastic crowd Sunday at the Bob Hope Theatre.

The group combines the original Three Tenors operatic concept with youth-oriented marketing reminiscent of the boy bands of the 1990s and the fascination with vocal acrobatics that makes the current "American Idol" craze.

The combination makes for a polished and pleasant, if aesthetically safe, production.

The Ten Tenors' repertoire ranged from the slapstick humor of "Largo al factotum" from Rossini's "Marriage of Figaro" and the camp of the "Rawhide" theme to earnest ballads such as "Destiny Lies" and "The Boxer."

There also was humor, as the men presented a couple of good-natured skits playing off popular Australian stereotypes.

Yet it was the tenors' clever medleys that really showcased their individual and collective talent.

The arrangement of various tenor arias into an opera medley was performed with confidence and panache, and was overshadowed only by the creativity and energy of medleys devoted to the Beach Boys and, especially, the Bee Gees.

"Cast in Stone," an elegant original composition by group member Craig Hendry, introduced a pleasant change of pace, with one member backing the others on an acoustic guitar.

The crowd also was treated to the tenors' signature arrangement of Queen's 1976 hit "Bohemian Rhapsody."

When they want to, the Ten Tenors can produce marvelously rich vocal music, but the group didn't consistently fulfill the potential of having 10 voices to play with.

Although each singer was certainly capable and well-trained, as a group they frequently retreated into singing melodies in unison with only modest harmonic accompaniment on a hum or single vowel.

In a few spots, however, the tenors did present music highlighting the possibilities inherent in the group's multivoice format.

For their first encore, they performed an arrangement of the Beatles' "In My Life" that caught the audience's ears by closing with a short section of a cappella close harmony singing heard nowhere else in the show.

More instances such as this would have been welcome, and in the final measures of the piece, the tenors could have capitalized on that sound by reaching for a moment of harmonic daring and vocal transcendence.

Instead, as in many of their other arrangements that evening, they fell back on something simple, pleasant and safe.

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051115/ENT/511150310&SearchID=73226583436919

xotic · Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 10:03 pm Post subject:

Dmand's Darren Clark tells Bob Dog what it takes to make it internationally
Published: 14 May 2003
Author: Bob Dog

Working with The Ten Tenors has seen Darren Clark (of Dmand) sell his house and almost go broke but, thanks to a lot of hard work, eventually develop one of this country’s most successful music exports. Darren tells Bob Dog about what it takes to live the dream of touring overseas.

BD: Can you give us a quick rundown on your career history? What got you involved in the music business in the first place?

DC: I started playing in a primary school band when I was about 7 years old. It was a great way to miss school time and I used this scam right through high school. I saved up enough money to buy a snare drum when I was 8 and then continued to piss off the neighbors until I was old enough to move out or home.

I played in covers and original bands while I had a real job. I toured for a year or so with a band called Russia Blue (we weren’t very good but shit we were entertaining) and I was amazed at how bad most of the agents were. Like everyone I thought I could do better so a couple of us bought Shawthing Entertainment. We eventually changed the name to the Ocean Agency and I ran that for about 13 years. During that time we also set up a Record Company, Publishing Company, Event Marketing Company and a Management Company. I sold the Agency a little over a year ago but all of the companies are still going in some form or other.

BD: What are you focusing on now?

DC: My passion has always been exporting. Over the years I’ve sold hundreds of live shows and licensed sixty or seventy albums to a hell of a lot of different countries and I still love it. For the last few years I’ve been doing it as a manager and given that our roster of artists is so unusual we have to create everything from the beginning. I’ve accumulated a lot of friends in a lot of countries and it’s finally become really rewarding.

BD: Tell us about your achievements to date with the Ten Tenors?

DC: The Ten Tenors is probably the most difficult artist I’ve ever worked on. There was no base market anywhere because everyone thought it was just a send up of the Three Tenors or a tribute show and this made it really difficult to book and record. They really are a great bunch of guys to work with and we believed in the concept and decided that we could break it. It was nearly the act that killed me after a couple of years. I sold my house and everything I owned and I nearly lost all my businesses to keep them on the road. Eventually it paid off. We worked Australia and NZ for about 4 years at the same time trying to get work in Europe of the US. We had about 10 different tours fall over then we got offered some shows in Germany funded by promoters in Berlin and Hamburg. We sold out every show (48 shows to about 550 per show) and this gave us the platform to approach other promoters and record companies through Europe.

Now there are 20 people on the road, we tour in a night-liner bus with 18 beds, bar, kitchen, playstation, computers etc. We’re still selling out our shows all over the world and now we performing to thousands each night. This year we’ll tour USA Canada, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, UK, South East Asia, Australia and NZ. We’re fully booked till March 2005. We have self funded every album so we still own all of our copyrights and we license to Majors and some independents. We never do worldwide deals, only territory by territory. It’s much more difficult to do but the results are much better and you keep bigger margins. So far we’ve sold over 400 000 total worldwide in one form or another.

BD: Any highlights?

DC: We recorded their first album in about 11 hours for about $5000, recouped at the first gig and to date we’ve sold about 30 000 of that same album. We shot a live performance TV special in Germany that topped the ratings and has been replayed 3 times. We once ate 32 pizzas after filming a celebrity TV show in Switzerland because the record company was paying. We recorded the title track for Disney for the Jungle Book 2 European release. We got sponsored for an incredible amount by a multinational to perform on a TV commercial to sell Italian olive oil to Germans. We made a profit on our first US tour. We got knocked back by just about every Australian major record company at the beginning and without this we would never have achieved what we did.

BD: How important has it been to take the group overseas?

DC: After touring Australia for a few years we had run out of room. We were doing 1000-1500 seat venues 5 or 6 time a week and there weren’t enough people to go around so we had no choice but to try and tour internationally. It was the biggest risk we took and I talked on the phone all day to Australians and all night to Europeans but if we didn’t do it there would be no Ten Tenors today. Now the boys get mobbed on the street in Europe but don’t even get recognised in Brisbane.

BD: Any advice for people who would like to take a shot at touring Europe?

DC: I don’t believe it matters where you tour, you have to do a lot of work before you send your act there. We worked on Europe, Asia and the US for years before we did the first show. I made about six trips over 2 ½ years and did dozens of meetings and I still do. Every country is different and you really have to know how it works to make the most from it. You also have to be committed to doing it properly. Don’t just treat it like a hobby. If you’re serious about wanting to tour internationally get serious about the work to do it right.

BD: What's the one piece of advice someone has given you that you will always live by?

DC: You must stay focused on the long term. It’s too easy to spend too much time on the day to day but you really need to stay focused on the future or you will never get there.

http://www.qmusic.com.au/broadcast/index.cfm?action=dsp_article&categoryID=6&articleID=7690