No Mary Mitchell Campbell nom for COMPANY- Page 2

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 10:59pm

She didn't do Sweeney's orchestrations, Sarah Travis did. Mary-Mitchell was the resident music supervisor. Apples and oranges.

I seem to be in the minority, but I'm actually not that bothered by the Spring Awakening orchestration nomination. The intricacies of that music don't come across well on the cast recording at all, but they're really quite beautiful.

Updated On: 5/28/07 at 10:59 PM

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 11:11pm

Oops my bad.
Well that's why I liked SWEENEY better.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 11:13pm

Whoops, sorry, wonderfulwizard! Didn't see you sneak in there.

[wonderfulwizard11]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 11:13pm

No problem emcee.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 11:18pm

SPRING AWAKENINGS might take this on a roll, and they are wonderful, but I want Bruce Coughlin to take his second TONY home for GREY GARDENS.

[iliketheater]

Posted: 5/28/07 at 11:44pm

I was really upset when I saw that she wasn't nominated. I also prefer these arrangments to those on the OCR. As others have speculated, I think that maybe the Tony comitee didn't want to make a habit of rewarding arrangers for scaling down Sondheim. Even still, I think that she should have at least recieved a nod.
Updated On: 5/28/07 at 11:44 PM

[JB Fan]

Posted: 5/29/07 at 12:12am

CurtainPullDowner wrote:

"I loved her work on SWEENEY, not at all on COMPANY.
It sounded weak on such a great score and it didn't help that the so called actors/musicians were very sloppy in playing it.
She is a wonderful artist and will do very well without the nom this year."

Do you suffer from amnesia?

You wrote this last December:

"Mary-Mitchell Campbell's orchestrations are brilliant and prove once again that Sondheim has some kinda genius going on we can only bow down to and kiss his toes."
CurtainPullDowner's Original review of COMPANY

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 5/29/07 at 12:15am

Yes call the medics
I am going under
uh uh
Save me

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 5/29/07 at 12:20am

I'm sure he'll attempt to weasel his way out of this by telling us what he "really" meant -- wait, wait, let me guess, he must have meant that Mary-Mitchell's orchestrations, by being so thin and awful and messing up Sondheim's score, remind us how great the original is and that we should pine after the days of yore -- but *APPLAUSE* for you nonetheless!

ETA -- oh, aren't we lucky, instead, knowing he's been called out and lacking a suitable excuse, he seems to have writen us a poem.

Updated On: 5/29/07 at 12:20 AM

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 5/29/07 at 12:27am

I have no excuse
I am a total idiot
But I am flattered that you save all my postings

[JB Fan]

Posted: 5/29/07 at 12:37am

No one saves postings, it's called a search function.

I was noticing you give reviews often after you see a show, but I never caught one from you for LOVEMUSIK...

[misschung]

Posted: 5/29/07 at 3:49am

I'm not suprised that she wasn't nominated considering the fact that they aren't even using her arrangements at the Tony performance

[BroadwayChica]

Posted: 5/29/07 at 4:30am

The best argument for why Mary Mitchell Campbell should have been nominated was given by Donna Lynne Champlin in her My Space blog. If you haven't, give it a read:


Donna Lynne's outrage at the Mary Mitchell snub

[jochang621]

Posted: 5/29/07 at 11:22am

When I first heard that Company wasn't nominated for Best Orchestration, I was ok with it - it was a minimalist take on the music, and I feel like Best Orchestration usually goes to music with the most lush and sweeping scores. However, I realize that Company should have been nominated after I read this from Kristin Huffman's column:

"Upon closer inspection of the music, the arrangements by Mary-Mitchell were genius. For the song "Sorry-Grateful," she had my husband, "Harry," singing while I played the flute line with him. Then when "David" sang, his wife "Jenny" played the violin line. There were other great touches as well. For "Ladies who Lunch" only the wives play their instruments along with the piano. In "Being Alive" when "Bobby" mentions certain lines that correspond with a certain "girlfriend's" personality, THAT specific "girlfriend" plays along on her instrument. A particularly genius touch was in "Side by Side" where the tap dancing breaks normally go. Instead of the solo tapping sounds she put in a solo instrumental each time that mimics the original tap rhythms!! I don't know how many people will pick up some of those touches, but I was overwhelmingly impressed!"

Brilliant. A nomination for Company in this category would have redefined what "Best Orchestration" meant - not for the "prettiest" sounding score, but the orchestration that best supports the plot of the show.
Link

[wickedrentq]

Posted: 6/1/07 at 11:06am

Well, looking back...I HAVE seen it, but I'll honestly say I don't remember paying intense attention to the orchestrations of GG...on the one hand that could mean it wasn't anything extraordinary, but it also could be that I simply wasn't paying attention the way I did to the others for some reason...

But to my memory, if there's one show that Company deserved the nom over, it was GG. Having just seen Lovemusik, I can say without a doubt it deserved the nomination, and to win, as it likely will. Not only were the orchestrations splendid, but so important that different instruments got to stand up while playing.

I think Tony voters might have felt the same way about 110 as I did, that being in a theater where you could see the instruments, visually see, not only hear the orchestrations, gives you a bigger appreciation for them. Any time I'm in such a theater, at least as a musician, at times in the show, certain instruments grabbed my attention away from the show...granted Audra was there to steal it right back but still...perhaps because of that, I feel 110 without a doubt deserved its nomination, even if it is the same magnificent composer.

Now, in a traditional sense, I too wasn't that impressed by Company's orchestrations, though that is likely a biased response, as prior to seeing the revival, I had just studied and wrote a paper about the specific music and orchestrations of the original production, and its particular relevance to the play, and I was disappointed when seeing the revival that quite a few of the specific orchestrations I had written about were changed...

While I also feel that Sarah might have had a more difficult task as she was dealing with less people and less instruments, and so the job that Donna explained the orchestrator having to do in a Doyle production might have been a little harder...I do have to say she made a point I hadn't thought of. Though I'm sure many of the Tony voters hadn't considered that and just looked at the orchestrations traditionally, I wonder if that deserves consideration...I mean it deserves some sort of consideration without a doubt...but when voters see "best orchestration" they unfortunately may still think of it in terms of traditional best orchestrations.

Sorry, I think this was a ramble that actually doesn't really make a point...

Does anyone else agree that if Company should replace a show in this category it should be GG? Taking away the point that Tunick was nominated twice? Do you think voters might have been swayed by the visual orchestra in 110 as I was?

Either way, thank you very much Chica for providing that link, it made me think of the lack of nomination in a way I originally hadn't.

ETA: "rilliant. A nomination for Company in this category would have redefined what "Best Orchestration" meant - not for the "prettiest" sounding score, but the orchestration that best supports the plot of the show."

Excellent, excellent point. Though I would argue that best doesn't necessarily mean prettiest--consider the orchestrations for the non-pretty songs in West Side Story like the Rumble or A Boy Like That--certainly not pretty, but effective. I think traditionally, best orchestration means the orchestration that best supports the music, but in Company, that support comes from not quite a traditional sense, and still certainly stands to redefine Best Orchestration.

Updated On: 6/1/07 at 11:06 AM