On Mon May 24, at MondayMay 24 7:19 PM, Ryan wrote:
I love hearing these "horror stories" from musical theater. I'm
getting
ready to conduct Fiddler on the Roof and the director has told me he's
considering putting the orchestra on stage (partly in the wings),
so that we
can become the "wedding band" at the end of Act I. I don't like the
idea of
having 15 musicians trying to perform during a brawl...
Christopher, I wonder if we've worked with the same choreographer.
There
always seems to be one like her involved in every show I've done!
Hey, man, I've got TONs of horror stories! Here's my favourite, which
I have actually heard variants of, from two or three different
sources, aside from the incident that I was involved with. This must
happen more often than I thought possible.
I was preparing arrangements for a hotel revue (think cruise ship)
and the choreographer said, "I have an original piece in the show
that I have invented. It's very exotic, with an Arabian Nights theme,
and it's in seven. Can you compose something that will go with the
style? I'll give you the counts and the hits." I spent a lot of time
working out a very cool (in my opinion) original composition in 7/4,
proud of my work. In the first rehearsal with the dancers and band
(time was very tight, so he had taught it with counts and clapping)
he stopped us after a few measures. "Oops, we got off beat. Try
again." Six or seven times we restarted, then he started to blame us.
We weren't playing it properly, the hits weren't right, the musicians
weren't good enough, I had written it wrong. Finally I asked him,
"Can you show me the counts as you conceived it?" "Certainly!" he
said proudly, and counted off emphatically with a clap on each
syllable, "One, two, three, four, five, six, sev-en." It was in
eight, with two counts for "sev-en".
We faked Caravan and he was happy.
Oy.
Christopher
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