{"id":453527,"date":"2026-02-04T15:27:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T15:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/453527\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T15:27:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T15:27:07","slug":"make-the-orchestra-great-again-not-likely-with-jd-vance-playing-the-cello-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/453527\/","title":{"rendered":"Make the orchestra great again? Not likely with JD Vance playing the cello | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

Events in the United States of Trumpland continue to reveal staggering new dimensions to the possibilities of orchestral music. Trump\u2019s announcement that his \u201cTrump Kennedy Center\u201d is to be shut for a refit<\/a> is a brilliantly cynical way to stop the noise when artists try to cancel their appearances during the rest of his presidential tenure: it\u2019s shut already! Bigly<\/a> losers, all of you!<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the new dawn for the artform I\u2019m talking about. I mean the inspirational painting unveiled by the maestro of Trumpian kitsch, Jon McNaughton (and stamped with the presidential seal of approval \u2013 ie a post on Truth Social<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Tucker Carlson is cheerleading on the cymbals and Elon Musk? He’s on electric guitar, of course: the joker in the orchestral pack<\/p>\n

Maga Symphony<\/a> depicts Trump as a conductor of the politicians and cultural figures who are Making the Orchestra Great Again. Who\u2019s in this Maga fever dream of an orchestra? Marco Rubio leads the violins, JD Vance takes the cellos (Melania is relegated to the second desk), his sons and Roger Stone are on double basses, the foundation of the orchestra\u2019s ideological soundworld. A bizarrely configured woodwind and brass lineup features four flutes and no oboes \u2013 mind you, there are no violas either, those shape-shifting probable Democrats! \u2013 plus Tom Homan on horn, with Tucker Carlson cheerleading on the cymbals. Where\u2019s Elon Musk, you ask? On electric guitar, of course: the joker in the orchestral pack.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s Truth Social post showing the painting. Photograph: @realDonaldTrump<\/p>\n

As McNaughton describes this image, \u201cyou can feel it \u2013 the music is coming together \u2013 rising and stirring something deep inside \u2026 When Americans pull together and trust a shared vision, they create something strong, lasting, and bigger than any one person.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the cultural trope that this ludicrous image burnishes: the idea of the all-powerful conductor, inspiring total command and obedience from his musicians, which has been inspirational catnip for dictators from Hitler to Stalin to Mussolini. As Elias Canetti wrote in his book Crowds and Power<\/a>: \u201cThere is no more obvious expression of power than the performance of a conductor \u2026 He has the power of life and death over the voices of the instruments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Orchestras can represent an ideal society \u2013 if, that is, you\u2019re a wannabe despot. Imagine: one hundred musicians, working in perfect togetherness to realise your vision, with no possibility of dissent, criticism or disagreement. Every tiny movement of your arms and facial expressions is magicked through the force of pure will into the sounds of your deepest desires. Which self-respecting autocrat wouldn\u2019t want that kind of social control?<\/p>\n

McNaughton\u2019s Maga orchestra takes the idea a stage further. There are no music stands in front of the players \u2013 they are performing through Trumpian telepathy, a connection as mystical as it\u2019s musical. It\u2019s not so much a Maga symphony as a political seance turned into sound.<\/p>\n

This concept of the orchestra didn\u2019t only take hold of the fevered imaginations of dictators in the 1930s and presidents in the 2020s. Works such as McNaughton\u2019s are routinely used in less obviously politically inflamed contexts to describe the potential social good that orchestras can do, from apologists for Venezuela\u2019s El Sistema \u2013 its \u201csystem\u201d of music education, and its satellites all over the world \u2013 to many leaders of orchestral culture here in the UK. If society worked more like orchestras, the story goes, our lives would all be better, because in orchestras everyone\u2019s giving up their individuality for the greater good.<\/p>\n

An orchestra is created through the tensions between the individual wills of the players and their contribution to the collective<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s a deeply problematic idea, because orchestras never work in absolute harmony. An orchestra is created through the tensions between the individual wills of the players and their contribution to the collective. The best orchestras do not function like well-oiled machines, drilled to the finest margins of unanimity. Instead, they\u2019re models of a controlled chaos of human emotions, desires and virtuosities that are held in tension, balance and friction in the moment of performance. They\u2019re made from the transfigured experience of listening to each other. When orchestras really fly, the conductor isn\u2019t an all-powerful musical despot, instead, he or she is an inspirer of a dynamic culture in which everyone responds to where the musical discourse is going, recognising when they\u2019ve got the tune or the accompaniment, creating a permanent state of flux, volatility, and creative negotiation.<\/p>\n

The Trump image is comic, and troubling, because it reinstates the idea of the relationship between conductors and orchestras as populist shorthands for autocracy and demagoguery. No doubt the Association of British Orchestras\u2019 annual conference, convening in London this week<\/a>, will inspire a more genuinely collective vision for the future of the orchestra in this country. Or maybe an enterprisingly craven orchestra will sign up Trump as their next music director. Stranger things have happened. And probably will by next week.<\/p>\n

This week Tom has been listening to: Kevin Puts\u2019s Emily: No Prisoner Be, Joyce DiDonato\u2019s collaboration with Time for Three. It is communicative and urgently powerful in recording and performance. (Apple Classical<\/a> | Spotify<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Events in the United States of Trumpland continue to reveal staggering new dimensions to the possibilities of orchestral…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-453527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}