In Praise of Broadway Orchestration

NYT
August 17, 2008
Off the Stage, What’s Behind the Music
By SUSAN ELLIOTT

YOU can hear the collective gasp from the audience as the stage of the Vivian Beaumont slides back to the opening bars of “Bali Ha’i,” revealing 30 formally attired musicians reveling in the lush, exotic hues of the overture to “South Pacific.”

The melodies that roll seamlessly by — “There Is Nothing Like a Dame,” “A Wonderful Guy,” “Some Enchanted Evening” — are all classic Richard Rodgers. But the instruments playing them, the elaborate counter lines, shifting harmonies and alternating rhythmic contexts, are the work of Robert Russell Bennett, his orchestrator. Mr. Bennett wrote the overture, too (as he did for virtually all of his clients, including Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Frederick Loewe), weaving together excerpts of the score’s famous melodies to create a seamless potpourri of its greatest hits. Similarly, Sid Ramin’s original orchestrations bring to life Jule Styne’s score for “Gypsy,” now playing with the full complement of 25 pieces at the St. James Theater.

The size and sound of the “South Pacific” and “Gypsy” ensembles are far from today’s Broadway norm of smaller, heavily miked pit bands. But virtually all musicals of any vintage or scale have long been dependent on orchestrators for their aural color and character. Imagine “Mamma Mia!” on a lone guitar or “The Phantom of the Opera” on piano. Mel Brooks may be a brilliant writer and director, but without Doug Besterman’s orchestrations, his music for “Young Frankenstein” would sound bland. The same is true of countless Broadway scores through the years.

The composer-performer Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” won the Tony Awards for best musical and best score. Mr. Miranda’s secret weapons? Bill Sherman and Alex Lacamoire, who transcribed, arranged and orchestrated the show. (The two won the Tony for best orchestrations.)

Working from as little as a hummed melody to as much as a keyboard arrangement, the orchestrator at the most basic level assigns instruments to create the full score; more importantly, he or she interprets the composer’s intentions. “It’s as much a creative job as the composer’s,” said Paul Gemignani, Stephen Sondheim’s music director of choice and perhaps the most powerful Broadway conductor working today. “The same thought process, the same agonizing, the same artistic decisions made by an actor have to be made by the orchestrator. The best orchestrators” — he mentioned Michael Starobin and Jonathan Tunick — “write movie music for the theater. Orchestration is the warmth in a love scene, the electricity in the kiss, the thing that makes you start to tear up. And it has to come from the gut.”

Audiences may not realize it, said the “Gypsy” music director, Patrick Vaccariello, “but the orchestration supports the journey of the entire piece.”

The choice of orchestrator is generally left to the composer. Just as Rodgers chose Mr. Bennett (among others), so Mr. Sondheim uses Mr. Starobin (the original “Sunday in the Park With George,” “Assassins”) or Mr. Tunick (“Sweeney Todd,” “Company”), Stephen Schwartz chose William David Brohn for “Wicked,” and Michael Holland is revamping Mr. Schwartz’s original “Godspell” score for its run at the Ethel Barrymore (set to open Oct. 23). Martin Koch is Elton John’s orchestrator for “Billy Elliot,” scheduled to open Nov. 13 at the Imperial Theater.

When the composer is deceased, the choice of orchestrator is generally left to the music director. For the revival of Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s “Pal Joey,” scheduled to open Dec. 11 at the Roundabout’s Studio 54, Mr. Gemignani asked the veteran arranger-composer Don Sebesky to create an orchestration for 15 pieces based on the original 1940 piano-vocal score.

“Normally you have to reorchestrate,” Mr. Gemignani said of revivals. (Not everyone agrees with him on this point.) “It’s not that the originals are no good, but shows get revamped. You have to make the numbers work for the people in them.”

Downsizing is the norm these days, mostly because of space and economics. “We’re being asked to write for smaller and smaller bands all the time,” Mr. Starobin said. “Everybody’s oohing and aahing about ‘South Pacific,’ but nobody’s saying: ‘Hey! Let’s use big orchestras again.’ Producers don’t want to put money into the music; they’d rather spend $3 million on the scenery.”

Today’s Broadway orchestras range in size from 1 (keyboard for “[title of show]”) to 30 (“South Pacific”), with most in the 8-to-14 range. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians has been battling the shrinking-orchestra issue for years; its current contract with the Broadway League sets musician minimums for specific theaters: from 19 for the Broadway, Minskoff, St. James and Marquis theaters to 4 for the Longacre and Nederlander theaters, barring special situations like the one governing “[title of show]” at the Lyceum.

Space is also an issue: open sections of Broadway pits were long ago shorn up for the addition of seats. Often the musicians are under the stage or even in separate rooms from one another — not to mention the audience — relying on the conductor’s image on a monitor. “Jersey Boys” splits its offstage band into three rooms at the August Wilson Theater; the entire orchestra for “A Chorus Line” is in the basement of the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater; the percussion for “Legally Blonde” is piped in from a room on the third floor of the Palace Theater.

Today’s Broadway orchestras are basically treated like recording studios; acoustic instruments, to the extent that there are any, are closely miked and then mixed by an engineer. It’s a practice abhorred by musicians (“You may as well just give them a CD and go home,” Mr. Gemignani said) but favored by producers, largely because of cost.

“The dread of my job,” says Ted Chapin, president of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, which represents work by its namesakes (and many others), “is when producers ask, ‘How few musicians can we get away with?’ ”

It all comes down to economics. Depending on orchestra size, orchestrators get as much as $50 to $100 per four-bar page, with most Broadway scores being 600 to 800 pages. Add the musicians who play their creations, plus copying and contractor fees, and the per-show cost can be staggering. Small wonder commercial producers try to keep their orchestras small.

Some orchestrators consider themselves “guns for hire,” as Mr. Starobin does. Others, like Mr. Tunick, are more protective of their work. Essentially, they are paid for the initial run of a show and any recording, and that’s it. There are no royalties from future performances; those go to the composer.

Mr. Starobin is now reducing his original charts for the musical “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas” to 10 pieces from 14. Asked how best to reorchestrate, he responded, “The best way to do it is to not do it.”

Drama Desk voters singled out the recent revival of “Sunday in the Park With George” for outstanding orchestrations, a case in which the original orchestration was reduced. Mr. Starobin’s charts for the 1984 original Broadway production called for 11 instruments. Jason Carr is credited with orchestrating the Roundabout Theater’s revival, for which he reduced Mr. Starobin’s original arrangements and instrumental colors to just five instruments, making judicious use of a synthesizer.

What happened? Were the producers too cheap to allow six more instruments into the theater? “It was part of a particular artistic concept the director had,” said Todd Haimes, Roundabout’s artistic director. “The show had been in a small theater in London. Then when it came over here, Steve Sondheim was asked if he was happy with the way it sounded. He said yes, so there was never a discussion about increasing the size. If he had said, ‘No, it can’t come to New York unless there are 11 musicians,’ we probably would have accommodated that.”

Mr. Gemignani said: “Sondheim, to his credit, is very generous with his own work. Had that been Jule Styne or Richard Rodgers, the response would have been: ‘Excuse me, this score was originally orchestrated for 20 people. Get them in here, or the show’s not happening.’ ”