Time out New York Dirty Theater Secrets

I just love the one about how the composers don't write the songs alone.

"4) They (don't) write the songs alone.
We love Stephen Sondheim, Jeanine Tesori and many others. but guess what? Their scores are the product of a process that they merely initiate, plunking out a tune and basic song structure at a piano. From there, the orchestrator writes out the arrangements and vocal parts, deciding when a swell of strings or burst of brass fits the number. This spring, thank (or blame) orchestrators like Jonathan Tunick and Julian Kelly for LoveMusic and The Pirate Queen, respectively. "


Someone finally telling it like it is. It was like a breath of fresh air. I'm sure the writers heard the lame excuse about time constraints and they didn't buy it either.

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Updated On: 4/5/07 at 12:40 PM

This'll help.

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Wouldn't thread fit so much better inside this one?:

https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.cfm?thread=931041&dt=24

only a few posts from this one and started earlier. Clear up the clutter, spring cleaning, you know.

Chorus girls are beautiful--from afar.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

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*sigh*

right, then.....

Re. the #4 item about Broadway composers being largely supplanted by orchestrators is incorrect in the mention of vocal arrangements which are typically made by the pit conductor, or at least it used to be that way, notably by Lehman Engel during the Golden Age and others of his generation.

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Updated On: 4/5/07 at 02:02 PM

Now, if it had been Drew Barrymore, that might have made more sense.

Personally, I think that nothing about the truths in this artcile can be counterproductive, after all, there's no such thing as bad press.

And theater and fans should be able to take a swipe at it/themselves now and again.

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Eh, none of those were suprising. And they certainly weren't "shocking."

I believe Donna Murphy had a bad case of bronchitis (sp?) or something like that durring previews of Wonderful Town. Other than that, I think her attendance record is fairly good. LaChanze...well, that's a whole other story. ("I've got a slight tinge in my throat. I can't riff my ridiculously bad 11 o'clock number, let alone stand onstage doing nothing the rest of the show.")

Hmmm #14 made me think...does Lincoln Center limit Student Tix members? Becasue when I told a friend about it and he tried to join they sent him an email saying they would let him know when they were accepting new members....I thought it was a general student discount thing but maybe it's more like their member subscription thing....

The fact that jumped out at me was that Sherie Rene Scott was paid over $8000 a week for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and that's after taxes, so her actual pay was probably more like $12-$15K a week. That's $600-$750K a year. I did not realize that Sherie would be paid at that level for that role.

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Sondheim does all his own stuff, except for Tick Tock in Company. Makes one wonder why the author would use his name specifically, especially considering it is well known that the orchestrations to Sondheim shows are strictly from his piano scores with minimal to no departure from them.