Here Lies Love and Live Musicians

Does anyone know how or why Here Lies Love can only have ONE live musician in a theater whose minimum is surely higher than 15?

Are they REALLY paying 14+ "walkers"?

My socials blew up this morning over it and I feel like I'm missing something. SURELY, a twenty-plus mission dollar musical directed by Alex Timbers can't possibly be opening with ONE musician. Right?

Updated On: 5/25/23 at 03:13 PM

So, did the AFM cave on this one? or do 16 lucky musicians show up every night and sit backstage and babysit QLab? ha ha ha (Okay, fine, Ableton)

AFM is much more willing to make concessions now based on the needs of the score, but usually not for zero musicians. Wasn't there a bunch of hubbub surrounding AMERICAN PSYCHO a few years ago because they wanted to just use a keyboardist who controlled the electronic music system? That ended up having 4 musicians.

I'm all for large orchestras when a score calls for it, but I have mixed feelings about these rules. On one hand, the house minimums allow SOME LIKE IT HOT and NEW YORK NEW YORK to have those sounds and not be reduced to 12 players due to beancounters. On the other hand, it's an antiquated rule when a score like this utilizes electronic music as part of its artistry.

We don't have minimum numbers for actors or authors based on number of seats, so why should they exist for musicians?

Updated On: 5/25/23 at 03:40 PM

The special situations clause is usually open to *very* generous interpretations - it would be incredibly likely that Local 802 would have gone along with a much smaller band than the minimum at the Broadway (OUAOMT just opened well under the minimum at the Marquis) but the fact that they are hiring zero musicians is a bit outrageous. And nobody wants walkers - musicians want to play music, not sit around and do nothing.

Also, while HLL does use a lot of electronic music, I'm listening to the original cast recording with Ruthie Ann Miles, and there are oboes, clarinets, strings...not to mention what's clearly guitar, bass, and drums, along with the v-music in the show. Am I missing something?

ErmengardeStopSniveling: I wasn't arguing for minimums. I'm just saying that this very specific one leaves me scratching my head and I feel like I'm missing something. But, now, looking at the list of minimums, they don't seem unreasonable to me. Especially, as you even mentioned, if the AFM does seem easily and reasonably bendable on them.

I happen to wish all musicals had a Hollywood-size string and brass/horn section added to the classic Broadway reed and rhythm writing.

Allowing shows tracked as heavily as HLL for no aesthetic reason (listening to the album) makes it seem like we'll get them: three keys, a drummer, two reed doublers, and a non-union string and horn/brass section recorded in Prague running off of "tape".

Which seems horrible to me.

Updated On: 5/25/23 at 04:17 PM

HogansHero said: "The show would be weird with a live orchestra (except at the end)."

What am I missing? Listening to the original cast album:

• American Troglodyte is a drum machine, a live tracked electric bass, two un-timed sound effects, a live tracked electric guitar, a live tracked keyboard, more drum machine that would be very easy to do live. It adds a synth with an arpeggiator (many shows recreate this on keys and guitars).

• Here Lies Love is live tracked strings, some live tracked reeds, easily executable percussion, a synth sound that can absolutely be played live, a drum kit, and some sfx. There's nothing in here that can't be easily -- or wasn't -- executed live for the recording of the tracks.

• and on and on and on. The tracks don't make any crazy argument for a "karaoke sound", they don't sound like karaoke. Karaoke is cheap synth flutes and horrible drums sounds. These tracks are LIVE MUSICIANS tracking a score that is far less technically complicated than anyone wants it to be.

It MIGHT be an 13 person pit at MOST: Three strings, two keys, a drummer, two percussionists, two reed doublers, two guitarists, and a bass player. And it would still sound EXACTLY like the recording. You'd be splurging on strings to add two or three more and STILL get to ask for a minimum reduction.

I'm not trying to argue. I'm truly just trying to understand what I'm missing. Because the aesthetic argument makes no sense to me listening to the original album. Think it would be weird to have the live musicians that tracked the album playing it live? Hide them in another part of the theater. Shows have been doing that for more than 25 years.

Skipping through the rest of the album: I don't hear ANY custom synth sounds that you couldn't just pluck off a keyboard walking across a Guitar Center in Oklahoma... or percussion more complicated than ANYTHING in The Lion King or In The Heights. In fact, most of the show could be executed even without a click track.... and I'm under no illusions that click tracks are as rare as people want us to believe.

So is everyone just swindled by the idea that the authors wanted a Karaoke sound that they knew people wouldn't pay $200 a seat for so they recorded real musicians and called it a "Karaoke" aesthetic or am I missing something?

This HAS to be making Andrew Lloyd Webber salivate over a tracked Phantom revival recorded by a (non-union) HUNDRED-piece Hollywood/Symphonic-size orchestra. "My intent was a Symphonic-Size orchestra with a rock component, not a 27-piece piece pit band."

Updated On: 5/25/23 at 09:29 PM

BBDM,

I'll take a shot at explaining.

Karaoke involves using fully produced (in the recording industry sense) tracks from a recording from which the vocals have been stripped. It is not the raw sound that an orchestra playing a live performance yields and it is immutable. I haven't listened to the recording you have listened to but I assume that it is fully produced. I am not sure what you mean by "executed live for the recording of the tracks." (All recordings start with musicians performing live, no?) Also, you seem to be thinking of karaoke as a genre, but it is merely a process. It is not limiting in terms of its "sound." You can have showtunes karaoke or opera karaoke, neither of which would involve "cheap synth flutes and horrible drums sounds."

Does this help? Am I missing something?

I'll just add that all of this discussion is really a tangent to the issue at hand which is whether AFM and the production can come to terms on how much the latter will have to pay to the former. Without an agreement there will be no show and a lot of money will have been lost. With an agreement, the show will go forward with recorded tracks. Having a live orchestra, whether in the house, upstairs in a room, or whatever is not on the table.

Wasn’t IN TRANSIT that moved to Broadway a few years back a fully a capella/instrument-free musical? (From Kristen Anderson Lopez and others.)

jpbran said: "Wasn’t IN TRANSIT that moved to Broadway a few years back a fully a capella/instrument-free musical? (From Kristen Anderson Lopez and others.)"

There is a conductor credited, which counts as a union musician. It’s likely the union counted the conductor and possibly an associate conductor and vocal percussionist as musicians. Conductors and vocalists can count as musicians, and the minimum at Circle in the Square is three musicians. The production could have also requested a special situation, saying it’s a fully a cappella musical in conception, which I think is totally different than saying karaoke is the show’s concept. Karaoke, no matter how real or fake sounding, requires emulation of real instruments, which means live musicians must be hired for a Broadway production.

KPOP managed to hire their required three live musicians at Circle in the Square, and that score is way more dependent on electronic music than Here Lies Love.

jkcohen626 said: "Question: I believe the Broadway is losing around 700 seats for this show. If it now has around 1000 seats, how could that change the minimum?

Like I know the Nederlander has around 1200 seats and the Shucked orchestra has 6 people. That's not so far off from the DJ and the musicians at the end."

I read an old agreement once and my recollection is that the minimums aren’t tied directly to capacity, just the specific theatre. So reducing the capacity would have no automatic effect on the minimum number of musicians - a reduction would still need to be negotiated as an exception. (Someone please correct me if I am mistaken!)

Maybe they should just do the show in another venue. You can't come to Broadway and expect NOT to have live musicians.

It's outrageous!!!!

Has AFM 802 released a statement yet? Do we know for sure an agreement has not been made and a few lone musicians are trying to make this a bigger deal than it actually is, or were the producers really trying to open this without live musicians and over the unions head? As hogan said, these are not novice producers. So, not sure how they thought they were going to get away with this. Did any of the prior off-Broadway productions face any backlash for this?