Youth orchestra hits back with video at abusive Nissan commercial
OrchestrasA Nissan Infiniti luxury car ad that shows kids resenting their orchestra time and playing offkey has aroused a video response from the New Brunswick Symphony.
If you were thinking of buying a Nissan car, tell them what you think. Seriously, why abuse classical music and young people when you are attempting to project excellence? Nissan has gone right off the road.
Bravi tutti to the young artists and their conductor of this youth orchestra, and the fantastic idea to make this video.
I DETEST this commercial every time I see it.. the idea that “Mom” can’t stand hearing the young players attempting to play, and has to seal herself off from them, in her Infiniti “car cocoon”.
Shame on Nissan for mocking young talent, for mocking little kids doing their best to play their instruments! Shame on the ad agency which successfully pitched this commercial to Nissan.
Whether it is good judgement in terms of selling the product, who knows? But being subjected to other people’s brats making a din – attempting to play, in your terms – is surely something to avoid.
If the other kids’ din is what you wanted to avoid you would not have signed yours up for their beginner orchestras.
Nissan must be marketingto the more-money-than-brains set.
Thank you so much for your message. Well done!
I contacted customer service and expressed my distaste with their choice for their ad. I was told that they were considering removing the ad, but it hasn’t happened yet.
I am a retired music teacher and orchestra director and agree that this old stereotype of youth musicians was unnecessary. I love your final message, there is an infinity of talent in our youth! Thank you thank you.
It sounds like Curtis Institute of Music Orchestra at their most recent concert. The Alsosprach was terrible under Oundjian!
I can indeed see why you want to be anonymous.
Who said that advertising people had any sense. They aim at the lowest of the low, as is evident by this advert.
What do you expect (I am assuming that this commercial aired in the United States and the “New Brunswick” referred to is the city in New Jersey, not the Canadian province)? I watch little commercial television, mostly sports, and 99% of the commercials that I see depict uneducated slobs who act exactly like uneducated slobs. Twenty or so years ago, it was common to use classical music to sell luxury products such as high-end vehicles or jewelry. Remember Karl Jenkins’ “Palladio,” frequently referred to as “Diamond Music”? (He is not exactly my favorite composer, but that doesn’t change the point.) Now, you never see that.
It is a Canadian youth orchestra.
New Brunswick Youth Orchestra in fact…
Which the original poster would have realized if he’d watched the piece.
“Eee it were a grand ride down” Dvorak New World used to sell sliced bread to us Ekkythump ITV watching Northeners. And Bach Air on G to sell cigars to the sophisticates in the posher suburbs. Elvira Madigan sold chocolates to the same aspirant dinnerparty classes. Nothing new under the sun
I thought it showed a student orchestra sounding like crap and the mother shutting the car door to get some relief. I feel her pain.
Glad to see others have noticed this! That the Youth Symphony Mom raises her windows in luxury
while the kids slither about in a muddy Zarathustra has irritated me from the getgo.
A commercial that “shows kids resenting their orchestra time and playing offkey”? Did you actually see the commercial? That description is wildly unrelated to the actual commercial, which shows a representation of a somewhat surrealistic elementary school orchestra (about 15 children around the age of 10 to 12) attempting to play the opening of Also Sprach Zarathustra while the mother of one of them sits in her Nissan in the position where the conductor should be, and rolls up her windows to shut out the sound after a few seconds. It has a bad vibe about it, but it shows no resentment on the part of the children, and the intonation is what you would expect in a ridiculous scenario like that.
Lighten up, Francis
Why would anyone buy a Nissan or Infiniti?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MogExZ9NBVI
Also, they didn’t use a youth orchestra in the soundtrack for the commercial, it’s an iconic recording with the Portsmouth Sinfonia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_Sinfonia
Exactly! The “Portsmouth Sinfonia” is a group of musicians who have a lot of fun playing instruments other than their regular ones. They have other tracks besides Zarathustra, including Peer Gynt and William Tell.
Yet another way to bash classical music – mockery of kids playing, thus contributing to both the stereotype of classical music being boring and awful to listen to, and the stereotype of of kids playing instruments being horrible to listen to. The venom reserved for musical efforts is appalling. Sporting endeavour is lauded, meagre sporting achievements glorified and praises sung, but ignorant advertising idiots heap scorn on young musicians for a cheap laugh. Car manufacturers are quick to exploit out of copyright composers when they want to project an image of classiness. How do they think the musicians playing that music started out?
If the advertising people I have met are anything to go by, this is entirely predictable. Cool and vacuous, all of them.
I cannot tell you how offended I am by that commercial! Shame on Nissan for even considering it. What company would promote such a thing? Just a piece of promotional junk.
Baffling ad. It’s exactly the luxury car owners who have the money for good music teachers and youth orchestra programs. Nice that the video’s cover features a girl trombonist.
Re.: “If you were thinking of buying a Nissan car, tell them what you think.”
Nissan Motor Corporation is part of the Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance, that is a partnership between Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors of Japan, with Renault of France. Renault holds a 43.4% voting stake in Nissan. Are you considering buy a Renault auto? Tell them etc.
‘Mom’ is the language of silly Americans.
Hey, Nissan/INFINITI! I want to see the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra in your next ad campaign. How about it?
Reminds me of this Lexus commercial from ~8 years ago in which a trio of musicians in the backseat badly playing the Andante from K. 467 were rudely kicked off the car by the driver in the middle of nowhere, before he drives off with monotonous EDM beats. Does anyone remember/know where to find it?
Ah found it, not EDM beats but drum hits. My point still still stands:
https://youtu.be/UDsORny3SnE
Abusive? Puhleeeeeeze. We’ve all been there, musicians included. The noise, the cacaphony, the indifferent parents. And it didn’t stop us from loving the beauty within. I don’t know about you, but I still hear Reiner and the Chicago playing Also despite this. Lighten up.
Get over yourselves people. It’s a funny commercial. I remember being in school band and orchestra and thinking we sounded great. Then I went to my kids concerts which sounded a lot like mine and the one in the commercial. I still look back fondly on my days of playing music in school and I also understand the mom needing a break from it. Lighten up.
When I think about how many famous musicians and conductors like Daniel Barenboim and Sir Simon Rattle who championed Youth and Music in such an inspired way with the support of music-loving industralists, and showed the world how much young talent needs to be shown as something god-given and in need of more financial and moral sustenance, such despicable ads like this disreputable Nissan one makes my heart bleed.
It got everyone talking. Mission accomplished.
That’s pretty much every Hollywood screenwriter’s concept of the school band.
This is all so absurd! Has anyone seen this commercial?
The children are obviously not playing the music we hear.
There is no conductor.
There are no timpani. There is no pipe organ.
Anyone who would assign “Also sprach Zarathustra” to a children’s orchestra needs to have their head examined and/or promptly be relieved of a job.
My conclusion: what we hear is a recording made in the 1970s by the beloved Portsmouth Sinfonia.
I have had two youth ensembles play an arrangement of Zarathustra. One aged 9 – 14, did a good job of the arrangement, that was adjusted to suit their abilities. As a musical performance it cohered. And did the job of opening a concert. The other ensemble was much younger, 7-10, and a raggle-taggle ensemble of the instruments I had in that school. Nevertheless, they had the exhilaration, for such it was, of performing it in a simplified version at their school dance, themed Space. Yes, that would offend every purist on this website. But also yes, every single child there felt like they were in the Melbourne Symphony that night. They were playing real music and knew it, even if they were outlandishly dressed in their costumes for the dance. I did not and do not need my head examined, and far from being “relieved of a job” I was commended in both situations by those higher up the tree, for doing a serious work with young students. I do not know if those students went on to do music, but they have had that experience. And you want to deny that for some sort of snobbery? Exactly the snobbery that Portsmouth Sinfonia were trying to puncture.
Classical music lovers have no sense of humor.
And then there’s this advert… tessa.substack.com /p/eat-the-icecream
“Eat the Ice Cream”: No, Dear Transhumanist Swindlers, I’ll Pass
Tessa Lena 3/18/2022
…So this is an actual ice cream commercial (yes I checked, it is an actual commercial, not a spoof).
delish.com/food-news/news/a55404/halo-top-ice-cream-ad/
It is one of the creepiest commercials I have personally seen, matched perhaps only by the “I am transhumanist” bit from BBC (quoted below) and Bill Gates’ really strange and dark video presentation about mosquitos that I am not going to link to out of principle because that video about mosquitos has a straight out serial killer vibe and I am going to pass. It is creepy as hell.
The crazy ice cream commercial shows two things, to my immediate senses. One, it is of course is an indicator of the current state of the genre of “commercials,” where the script writers somehow thought this would fly and … sell product???
In the past, such things existed only as art projects screaming about the really horrible and inhumane condition of the world ( see “Corporate Cannibal” by Grace Jones).
Doing this as a food commercial is bananas. I certainly am now resolved to not buy this ice cream. Yikes!!..
As a Strings and Orchestra teacher for many, many years, this commercial more than angers me. Can any of you imagine if you were a young musician in that commercial feeling any sense of accomplishment once you saw the finished product?? This commercial shows kids who are in every kind of level imaginable! Beginners to Advanced (the little girl playing violin) and “Also Spracht Zarathustra” is HARD for even a great Orchestra like the New Brunswick Youth or Orange County Youth Philharmonic!! And then, to see that pampered rich b sitting there rolling her windows up and acting like she’s *finally * getting some peace and quiet????!!!!!! This is such an OFFENSIVE ad to ANYONE who has put YEARS AND YEARS of their life into having the incredible skills it takes to play ANY INSTRUMENT at that level of difficulty!!! WE KNOW the hours and hours and years IT TAKES TO PLAY AT THAT LEVEL. HOW INCREDIBLY INSENSITIVE to put KIDS into something like that!!! Is that even something you’d want the kids in that ad to even see or hear??!!! That’s enough to make them QUIT!!!
Don’t see the problem here. Sounds like Violas.
Yes more unoriginal Viola jokes is what we need here.
I totally agree with the violas =)
People, it’s a funny commercial! Adverts don’t need to be philosophical or respectful. Just get people paying attention to the product which obviously this one does. I am a musician and parent and grandparent of musicians and I can’t tell you how many times I wished I could put a barrier between me and the sound, including my own playing! Lighten up!
Shameful Nissan.
Why is it that it seems the really stupid people are in charge of marketing? I know of a ten year old that would have said – yea, not cool to make fun of someone.
I am in the market for a new car. This commercial made my choice – I will never buy a Nissan. I will ask my friends and family to boycott Nissan.
I see mostly humorless reactions. I like it and thought it brought out the pomposity of Richard Strauss’s grotesque late romantic music. It’s the worst piece of music he ever wrote. Kubrick must have had tongue in cheek also.
Sad, that Nissan could not have come up with a better idea. ..Big Company like Nissan …get the message…youth plays wonderful music!!!
This stereotyping should not be allowed to continue; it is extremely detrimental to our profession the world over.