At 10:23 AM -0500 12/11/10, Christopher Smith wrote:
I'd hazard a guess that John plays a lot of original orchestrations, while Eric plays a lot of remounts or reduced orchestrations, which have been re-arranged for a smaller band.
And I'd guess that you're exactly right! Our community Summer Musical Enterprise organization is pretty conservative, and we've done a majority of tried-and-true "golden age" musicals because we have no "Angels" and have to fill the seats to pay the bills. So I've seen mostly hand-copied books. We've done a couple that were clearly done on the music typewriter, pre-computer, and a few with computer-engraved parts, including the expanded orchestration of "Joseph" and Don Sebesky's re-orchestration of "Kiss Me, Kate" (brilliant scoring, by the way!). Next summer our show is R & H "Cinderella," in the updated version from the late '90s, and I hope it will be engraved.
We are a 100% volunteer organization, which presents me with some challenges when I start putting the orchestra together (I've had cellists and bassoonists as young as 11 or 12!), but it also means that we (meaning *I* for a number of years) try to assemble a full orchestra, and not an el-cheapo combo (which sometimes works really well and sometimes does NOT!). About the largest string section our small pit will hold is 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, although for "Kate" I had 8 violins shoehorned in, with 3 of them playing mandolin. Definitely community, definitely non-union, definitely a challenge, and definitely enough fun to have kept me at it for 19 years now!
John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[email protected]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
