"Meet the Artist" on the Koningsdam

[JennysUncle]

On the Jan-Feb 2019 cruises (at least) on the Koningsdam,  the CD Thomas Weber has been hosting a series of "Meet the Artist" sessions.  These were about an hour long, and consisted of Thomas asking a few background questions and then taking questions from the audience.  These featured the Lincoln Center group, the BB King group, the Rolling Stone Rock Room group, and the Billboard duo.  Attendance was good, the questioning was lively, and the performers seemed happy to participate.  Thomas said that this was somewhat of an experiment.

 

Through the years I have noted on the HAL after-cruise surveys that it is unfair and disrespectful that the performers in its entertainment groups are not identified.  Who were the HALcats, and the Neptunes, and the Adagio, and the Singers and Dancers ?  At any other entertainment there would be a playbill, or handout flyer, or at least a poster naming the performers.

 

There has been some progress on this - there now are occasional flyers with short bios of the Lincoln Center performers, and on the Koningsdam one of the video panels cycles through these.  Due to an overlooked comment card I was able to meet the HD Santosh and he connected me with Mikey, the Entertainment Coordinator.  He said that this issue has been discussed and some thought is being given to it.  The Lincoln Center info is available because it is produced by RWS Entertainment (the contractor for LC Onboard) and given to HAL.  BB King and Rock Room are contracted from Beale Street Blues Co, and they have not been providing that sort of directly usable promo material.

 

The "Meet the Artist" sessions are nice, but they do not really address the need to identify the performers.  Artists deserve that recognition.  Clearly HAL knows who they are - it would not be very hard to put a poster with their names in each venue - even it it had to be updated every three months when the contracts changed.  And it shouldn't be too hard for the HAL IT department to put up their bios on the video panels since they have the LC as a template.

 

[grsnovi]

It's possible that the reluctance has to do with the fact that the performer's contract could expire at any point. I suspect that many of the musicians are expected to be able to drop into an ensemble setting and pick up the sheet music and play. I know that I was mightily impressed with the LCS performers on K'dam this past June. I had asked if they did their own arrangements and they told me the arrangements were supplied.

[JennysUncle]

The performers do get replaced when their contracts expire, but how hard could it be to update a cast list ?  They update the activities list every day in the daily Navigator, and the Menus too (just kidding, the menus repeat and repeat).

 

Actually, it's not clear that the performers are still random pick-ups.  The Lincoln Center group was a pre-existing string quartet who won an audition.  The Rock Room group were all on the same contract, and it seemed (based on the Meet the Artist Q&A) that they had been assembled by their leader.  Not sure about the BB King group.  Definitely, the HALcats used to be hired independently and thrown together to gel or not, but HAL is now outsourcing the entertainment.

[Copper10-8]

The B.B. Kings come together and rehearse in Memphis, then join the ship together (and go home together) as a group (baring unforeseen circumstances such as illness, compassionate leave and some others, where a replacement member is flown in) 

 

I found your comment about RWS "contracting" with LC interesting since, after years of using a production cast/show from Stiletto Entertainment (Inglewood, CA), HAL switched over to RWS & Associates (New York, N.Y.), as well as Belinda King Creative Productions (London, UK) a few years ago

[IllinoisGirl1978]

Every so often the performers post on Instagram using the # symbol and the ship's name. I sometimes follow the hashtag before and after a cruise or when I'm trying to kill time.