Battle of Alberta: Edmonton, Calgary orchestras unite to perform physically distanced ‘Hockey Night in Canada’

Since sports are on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is another way to get your Battle of Alberta fix.

Seventy musicians from the Calgary Philharmonic and Edmonton Symphony orchestras joined forces for a special rendition of “Hockey Night in Canada,” with each performer — sporting an Oilers or Flames jersey — separately recording their track.

How they did it

It took hours of meticulous editing and post-production work to get the finished product together.

“You think of the efficiency of having 70 people on stage and performing a four-minute piece all at once. Then you consider those same 70 people recording it on their own, sending 70 files of four-minute length to an editor or producer like me to chop up and edit and EQ and put it all together,” Donovan Seidle, assistant concertmaster of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, told Global News on Thursday.

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“It’s just an insane amount of work.”

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As a producer, Seidle said he provided synchronization for the musicians.

“We sent out a click track with a measure count that adhered to all the time signature changes and all that,” he said.

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