Pops puts pianists to pasture

In this brief little update to the last post, I'll just note that I now see the Boston Pops' POPSearch rules explicitly forbid accompaniment for the auditionees. I had accompanied a few singers in the 2004 competition, so they obviously didn't have that rule then. I'm still curious as to the rationale here - if it's just to level the playing field (let everyone sound bad!), if it's to imitate American Idol, or if they really believe this is a good test for the singers. The whole competition seems a little half-baked - the rules and YouTube instructions look as if they were never proofread (as opposed to this blog, which is sometimes proofread). I also wonder if the fact that they extended the deadline means the whole YouTube thing didn't bring in as many auditions as they would have liked. Just to be clear, I'm not at all disappointed I wasn't involved in this process. Standing in the '04 cattle call line for hours last time was no picnic, and it's pretty clear they're not really looking for opera singers anyway. Still, the YouTube gimmick feels like a cost-saving measure as much as anything.