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Musical hits sour note with unions
By Marylynne Pitz Pittsburgh Post-Gazette January 30, 2005
In the musical "Oliver!," pickpockets on the streets of Dickensian England show the orphaned lad how to steal. "You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two" usually amuses audiences. But local musicians are not laughing.
Instead, unionized musicians will be distributing leaflets outside the Benedum Center this week to tell theatergoers that this non-Equity (the actors' union) touring production of "Oliver!" is picking the pockets of local musicians. In addition to nine live musicians, the production uses a virtual orchestra called a Sinfonia.
Among those passing out leaflets will be Jeff Mangone, a string bass player from Ross who has played in the orchestras for local and touring shows for 27 years.
Mangone's wife, Jennifer Gerhard, who plays viola and violin, could have earned $1,000 with the show.
If you count the touring production of "Oklahoma!" that played Heinz Hall in December and earlier this month, also with a Sinfonia, the couple could have earned roughly $3,000. Most touring productions hire local players in each community to complement the show's handful of traveling musicians -- "The Producers," closing today, hired 21 here -- while some make do with a Sinfonia.
"This new technology has the potential to completely displace entire orchestras. It can displace everybody except someone who is called the conductor," Mangone said.
In England, a production of "Miss Saigon" is using a Sinfonia on its tour of smaller United Kingdom theaters that could not accommodate a large-scale production.
In the United States, the battle climaxed in March 2003, when New York musicians, supported by other theater professionals, went on strike for four days in a dispute over the minimum number of players required for musicals in Broadway theaters.
Before the 2003 strike, said Michael Manley, director of touring, theater and booking with the American Federation of Musicians in New York, producers presented the union "with a very aggressive proposal to do away with all house minimums." Despite the producers' assertions to the contrary, the union saw that as a first step to creating musicianless pits.
Eventually, both sides agreed to a compromise minimum of 18 musicians in the largest Broadway theaters and 15 in the smaller houses.
David Lennon, president of Local 802 of the AFM, which represents New York musicians, is proud of the union's record since that strike.
"Since the beginning of 2004 we have achieved over 20 agreements with producers and theatre owners banning the use of this machine in New York City," Lennon said, adding that includes Off Broadway theatres.
The strike left lingering questions.
"Would this technology be used in good faith or was there really an agenda to get rid of musicians entirely from the pit? When does the use of an electronic device cease to become an enhancement and start to become a karaoke machine?" Manley asked.
The ultimate arbiters of this battle will be ticket buyers, who are paying between $20 and $55 to see "Oliver!," most as part of the PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh subscription package.
"It's not going to be the musicians who get this technology out. It's going to be people and audiences who don't want to be shortchanged. You pay top-dollar prices and you expect to see the real thing," Mangone said.
The Sinfonia, which was designed to enhance the sound of a live orchestra, is equipped with musical and computer keyboards, a notebook computer, screen monitors, samplers and a stand for a musical score.
Jeff Lazarus, chief executive officer of Realtime Music Solutions in New York City, which rents Sinfonias to touring productions, said the device is "played by a musician who reads a musical score, plays a keyboard and follows a conductor."
Unionized musicians are targeting the Sinfonia nationwide, Lazarus said.
"There's a been a very active campaign of misinformation at every stop of 'Oliver!' over the last three to four months," Lazarus said. "There's the suggestion that this is somehow the signal of the death of live music, which really gets me mad."
The Sinfonia, Lazarus said, is "played in real time and it requires extensive training and practice." The fallacy, he said, "is that if Sinfonia were not on this tour, there would be more musicians in the pit with 'Oliver!' And that's just not true."
When Lionel Bart composed the music, Lazarus said, he scored the production for 13 musicians.
" 'Oliver!' would not have 24 musicians under normal touring circumstances. It wasn't scored that way," Lazarus said, adding that, "All we're doing is taking the place of other compromises such as click tracks, prerecorded audio or an over-reliance on multiple synthesizers."
Ken Gentry, chief executive officer of NETworks Presentations, which is taking "Oliver!" on the road, said the Sinfonia is not used in every show the company produces. It was not used on "Showboat" or "The Full Monty."
"It depends on what sounds are required to generate the highest quality orchestral sound for the show," Gentry said.
The company's production of "Annie" will travel with five musicians, hire local players and not use the Sinfonia, although it will use a synthesizer.
NETworks is spending $2.7 million to take "Oliver" on the road for 67 weeks, and investors are looking for a high return, Gentry said.
"More shows don't pay out than do. It's a high-risk investment because you never know how people are going to respond to the shows. My job as a producer is to produce the highest quality show that I possibly can for the ticket price," Gentry said.
Nowadays, he said, "Every bit of music you hear has some synthesized sound in it, particularly pop music."
He has yet to find an audience member who can pick out "which parts throughout the score are played live and which parts are played through the synthesizer." Depending on the city, Gentry said, the cost of hiring one local musician for a week ranges from $650 to $1,200.
"Don't ever let them fool you into thinking that they are enhancing live music," said Lennon, the New York union leader. "How do you explain that in London's West End that Mister Lazarus's machine has now replaced half of the 'Les Mis' orchestra?"
The battle, Lennon said, will continue.
"Mr. Lazarus would love to desensitize his audiences into oblivion so he can grease his wallet and his pocket. We're here to tell him that wherever he is, that's where we'll be."
Ken Gargaro, founding director of Pittsburgh Musical Theater, uses members of Actors Equity and unionized musicians in his shows. He is a member of the American Federation of Musicians.
"Forget about quality. I don't think that's an arena you can argue in. Quality is in the eye of the beholder. It's just too hard to gauge."
When Gargaro studied piano, he learned about "piano sensitivity."
"Musicians don't just play instruments. They are sensitive to the instrument. There's a dynamic interaction between the instrument and the person," he said.
Musical theater, Gargaro added, is made up of "these glorious moments that are created between live people and wonderful instruments. This glorious interaction is extremely complex. How are we going to get a machine to achieve that dynamism? Why should we dumb down the audience? For me, it's about sensitivity to the art form."
Cynthia Anderson, who leads the orchestra committee of the local musicians union, said she attended the NETworks traveling production of "Oklahoma!" at Heinz Hall on New Year's Day.
"The trumpet players sounded fine. All of the string sound was synthesized," Anderson said.
That "really canned sound," Anderson said, detracted from such numbers as "The Farmer and the Cowman" and the dream ballet sequence.
"It is not what I went there planning to hear. This is our great American musical form. We ought to be treating it with more care and more reverence."
Paul Organisak, vice president of programming for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, which presents the PNC Broadway series, said "Oliver!" would go ahead "because it is a touring Broadway production of the highest quality and that is our primary mission.
"The technological advancements in musical technology have been taking place for many years." _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
