Articles on topic: musicals (11 found)

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Interview: Gene Scholtens, Broadway woodwind doubler

Gene Scholtens

One of the awesome things that has happened since I started my list of reed books in musicals is that great people from all over the world have contacted me to contribute to the list. These contacts are always a pleasure for me personally, and they serve to make the list more accurate, complete, and useful for others.

I have a number of regular contributors who contact me periodically with updates, and until recently the record was nearly twenty individual contributions from one much-appreciated person.

That record was shattered when, a few months ago, I started getting emails from Gene Scholtens. The first email was a small correction for one show, but then the floodgates opened. Gene revealed that he has been playing woodwinds in Broadway orchestras for over thirty years, and has been keeping his own very comprehensive log of who plays which doubles on which shows. Gene’s contributions to my list at the time of this writing number a staggering 72.

As it turns out, Gene is not only a talented musician and a prolific record keeper, but also a very nice, humble, and generous guy, and graciously agreed to talk to me on the phone about his career. Here’s what he had to say. [Note: edited for length.]

 

BP: How many shows have you played?

 

GS: I’ve been playing on Broadway since roughly 1980. The last count was somewhere in the neighborhood of 90-95 shows.

 

Wow. Read more →

From WindWorks Design: Wind controller in a pit orchestra

Photo, mabel.sound

“Gertjan” at the WindWorks Design blog posted some interesting comments about using a wind controller in a local production of Seussical the Musical. Gertjan (I wasn’t able to positively identify him from the WindWorks website, but maybe he will find his way here and let us know who he is) played saxophones in the show as well, and used the wind controller to cover a number of wind and non-wind instrument parts.

Although it gives me a little indigestion to see a wind controller substituting for woodwinds that might otherwise have been played by a doubler, I do think there is application for wind controllers in orchestra pits. Keyboard-driven synthesizers are ubiquitous in recent shows (or are sometimes used to replace other instruments, especially a string section), and, in some cases, a wind synth might be even better suited to certain kinds of synthesizer parts. Gertjan mentions some synthy sounds like “vocal doo,” “scary voices,” and “ghostly shimmering breathy sound,” all of which strike me as likely to be very effective with a wind synthesizer’s breath control. Some others, like “harp” and “tinkle bell” seem like they might be more intuitively assigned to a keyboard. Read more →

Conrad Asklund on finding woodwind doublers

Photo, davekellam

From a blog post by musical director Conrad Asklund back in 2006:

How do you find woodwind players that can each double on 4-5 instruments?

You can’t—assuming you do not have a budget to hire session players (which really, only session or union players are going to be able to pull off all those doubles professionally) and are not near a major city with access to players like this.

Hey Conrad, call me!

Read the whole thing

Peter Hilliard on contracting woodwind doublers

Photo, danifeb

Peter Hilliard has a nice blog, Music Directing the School Musical. It doesn’t offer any information about who Peter Hilliard is (presumably this guy), not even contact information*. But he does seem to know a thing or two about putting on a musical, and, in a recent post, offers some advice about hiring musicians. Here’s a little of what he has to say about hiring woodwind players—I do suggest reading the whole thing.

The actual numbers (Reed I, Reed II, etc.) vary widely from show to show, but if you look through your books, you’ll see the following is generally true:

…

There is a book (usually Reed I) that looks like this: Flute and Piccolo normally, sometimes Clarinet, Soprano and/or Alto Sax. Normally this book is very flute heavy. In old shows, sometimes it’s only flute, with no doubling. Hire somebody with a good flute embouchure, not a clarinet or sax player who plays flute with an airy tone. Have the guy who dabbles on flute play the book with all the second or 3rd flute parts. For some reason, the alto flute got really popular from the 70s through the 80s, but beware. 1) you’ll never hear it. 2) You’ll never find one! I swear, I called every instrument rental house in Philadelphia and South Jersey for a show recently and nobody had one. 3) your player will pass out from too little oxygen to the brain.

I can’t say that I’ve ever had a musical director volunteer to round up instruments for me—I need to work for this guy! By the way, keep that alto flute embouchure focused to avoid passing out, and make sure you’re playing right into the mic so the sound crew has something to work with. Read more →

Still going strong: Seymour “Red” Press

The Theater Development Fund‘s Stages blog has a nice little story on Seymour “Red” Press, a veteran Broadway woodwind doubler and contractor and an alumnus of Benny Goodman’s band.

The cast of Chicago changes frequently, but if you listen to the orchestra behind the actors, then you’ll hear the same man night after night.

Woodwinds player Seymour “Red” Press has been in the orchestra of the long-running Broadway revival since it opened in 1996, and that’s just part of a career that spans over fifty years and 100 shows. He’s played everything from Pippin to Meet Me in St. Louis to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, not to mention the original production of Chicago.

Read the whole thing here, and see a photo of Mr. Press in his natural habitat.

This thread at the Clarinet BBoard brought the story to my attention, and has some nice comments from some of Mr. Press’s colleagues and admirers.

Advice on writing for doublers

Manuscript score
Photo, liza31337

I got an interesting question by email last week. I’m reprinting the message here, followed by the suggestions I sent in return (I’ve edited a bit).

Hi Bret,

I’m doing my first arrangement for a musical, which will be an amateur production.

I’m going to be hiring players from amateur/student orchestras (university), or simply people who play well enough to take on the parts. I don’t think at this time I will be able to have more than 3 wind players.

One wind player has advised (from their experience as a musician) not to expect a player at this level to be able to play both a single and double reed instrument. Is it common for this to be the case, in your own experience? Is there any doubling of a mix of certain double and single-reeds instruments that’s even commonplace amongst ‘amateur’ players?

Do you have any recommendations of how to group the players, in terms of if I only have 3 available, and they are ‘amateur’ (but still ‘good’) level?

I had a look at the reed books on this site, but had to bear in mind that when putting on professional productions, you’re more likely to find players who can switch between a wider range of instruments. Any tips you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Hello,

Thanks for stopping by my website and for taking the time to write. This is a great question with, I’m afraid, no great answers.

Woodwind doublers, like most commodities, are most easily found in larger cities, but can also pop up in odd places. Depending on where you are located, you may have more or fewer (or none) at your disposal. The best solution, when possible, is to line up your musicians in advance, and write for their strengths. Shows on Broadway are sometimes written this way.

Assuming that you can’t do that, you may have to hedge your bets somewhat. You might, for example, do something like this:

Reed 1: Piccolo, flute, clarinet [optional]

Reed 2: Flute [optional], clarinet, soprano saxophone [optional]

Reed 3: Bassoon, clarinet [optional]

In this case, the parts could be played by a flutist, a clarinetist, and a bassoonist. The optional parts could be notated on ossia lines for the “primary” instruments, or omitted according to your instructions. All of these books include clarinet writing, but you would want to put the important solos and the lead clarinet parts in book 2; likewise the Reed 2 flute parts would be harmony parts to Reed 1′s lead. Read more →

Dan Willis in the West Side Story pit

Tip of the hat to Patty at oboeinsight for this one:

EDIT: I originally had an embedded video here, of a CBS news interview with Broadway woodwind doubler Dan Willis. It appears the video is no longer available. You can read a text summary here, at least for the time being. Below is a picture I stole from their website.

Dan Willis

It appears Mr. Willis is playing reed 3.

Common doubling combinations from the Broadway doubling list

The most popular thing on my website is the Woodwind doubling in Broadway musicals page, which brings in visitors from around the world. I’ve even been lucky enough to hear occasionally from major woodwind doublers who are working on Broadway.

I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the most common combinations of instruments called for. I’m including a table at the end of this post that shows every combination that occurs 10 or more times on the current version of the list. The first column numbers the rows for convenience in referring to specific data; the second column indicates how many times that particular combination occur. Read more →

Videos: John Miller, Broadway music contractor

I’ve been really enjoying these videos of John Miller. Mr. Miller (not to be confused with the eminent bassoonist) does much of the contracting of the musicians who play in Broadway shows. In these videos, he is addressing a group of his fellow bass players, but everything he has to say is highly applicable to woodwind players and anyone else who wants to make money playing their instrument(s).

John Miller

John Miller, bassist and NYC contractor

He talks about what kind of musicians he likes to hire, what is expected of a professional musician on the New York City scene, and lots more. Read more →