LIVE Broadway??

Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 03:10:01 -0500 (EST)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.theatre.musicals
Size: 4,170 bytes

From Florida's Sun-Sentinel. Like the pound of supermarket coffee that
has dwindled from 16 ounces to 14, 13, 11.5 and now 11 ounces, the
Broadway musical shrank. We see the erosion more clearly out here "on
the road," where "Live Broadway" musicals play our arts centers with
half-sized (or smaller) bands.
-------------------------
After weeks of increasingly bitter debate, the musicians struck on March
7. Broadway musicals were shut down for four days at a loss of $4.8
million in ticket sales. Add the repercussions throughout midtown
Manhattan, and the city's tourism office estimates the overall loss at
$7.2 million.
----------------------------
A deeper worry is that audiences won't notice when high-end virtual
substitutes are employed. That's exactly what happened when the national
tour of Fosse played the Broward Center during the Miami AFM Local 655's
strike in early 2001. At the moment, the Broward Stage Door's
productions of Parade and Drood rely on strikingly well-engineered
recordings, and The Actors' Playhouse production of Floyd Collins is
partially synthesized. Actors' Playhouse artistic director David Arisco
chose to use a keyboard synthesizer to re-create a harmonica, a staple
in the Floyd Collins score. He couldn't find a player locally or afford
to bring one in from out of town, he says.
--------------------------------
The old Broadway contract, which expired March 2, required 24 to 26
musicians at the 13 largest Broadway musical theaters. In some cases,
producers whose shows called for smaller ensembles had to hire
"walkers," musicians paid not to play.
But that practice has been on the wane, and "virtual music" has made its
way into the Broadway pits insidiously over the years. Rent, Mamma Mia!
and Movin' Out have bands of 11 pieces or less. The Tony-winning Contact
is a dance hybrid that uses prerecorded music entirely.
-----------------------------
The problem occurs with composers who want to write for big orchestras
and revivals originally written for large ensembles. The compromise,
which pleased neither side assumes that traditional-style musicals,
especially revivals, will employ some form of virtual music.
Synthesizers and samplers have already been used for years as a
"sweetener" for downscaled orchestras. Each generation of new
electronica is able to more closely emulate the voices of specific
instruments.
-------------------------------
Only one musical that opened under the old minimums uses more: Director
Baz Luhrmann insisted on 28 musicians instead of 26 for his
Broadway-ized La Boheme. But is even that a triumph? Hardly. Puccini's
score is written for more than 80 musicians. One wonders if the opera
audience would sit still for a Met production "sweetened" with a trio of
keyboards connected to a battery of electronic components, or whether
America's troubled symphony orchestras might consider the same
alternative for their subscription series. That day might not be far off
for classical music.
-----------------------
In the meantime, the only way to truly hear the Broadway musical as
traditionally intended is not on Broadway but on West 55th Street.
There, New York's City Center hosts the "Encores" series of concert
musicals and occasional special events, such as a March 30 all-star
benefit concert of Jerry Herman's Mack and Mabel. Or, we can hope that
the Boston Pops continues to tour with programs like last month's
tribute to the music of Richard Rodgers at the Kravis Center and Jackie
Gleason Theater.
-----------------------------
As for the world of "Live Broadway," even the wall of sound in Miss
Saigon is an eight-piece band "sweetened" with keyboard-induced
orchestral sections. And a joke that circulated along the picket lines
last week asked, "What's next? Virtual actors?" Actually, no. We're past
that already -- or hasn't anyone noticed the mannequins populating the
staircase during the Masquerade number in The Phantom of the Opera for
the past 17 years? Sneakier are the extra singers' voices -- on tape --
in the chorus finale of Hairspray. Now and perhaps forever, "Live
Broadway" is a genuine illusion.
http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com