Why didn't Tunick orchestrate SUNDAY or ASSASSINS?

I don't know why, but I do know that those orchestrations were brilliant. And yes, I am a big Michael Starobin fan.

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I remember reading that back during the Sunday period, Playwrights would *only* work with Starobin. As brilliant as Tunick is I think he did a fine job with it.

Assassins was of course originally scored for, I think, three instruments (percussion and two keyboards?) and then expanded for the recording--brilliantly. Another reason I think the revival CD is so inferior--i miss lots of that orchestration.

The revival orchestrations never bothered me at Studio 54. On disc they sound too sweetened. Why is that?

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According to Zadan, and I don't think I've ever read anything different in another official source, at the time of Sunday, Tunick was devoting himself to composing. Since Starobin had worked with Lapine at Playwrights, it made sense for Starobin to be involved in the workshop. I think if Tunick had been available or had strongly wanted to orchestrate the score for Broadway, I'd guess he could have.

It's inconceivable to me that Playwrights Horizons would have said essentially to Sondheim, "No, you can't bring in your usual orchestrator, that second-rate Tunick guy. You have to work with our guy. If you don't like it, you can go elsewhere with your show."

When it came to Assassins, they only had money for three players for the Playwrights production and Starobin was, not surprisingly, one of them. It made sense for Starobin to then orchestrate the score for the recording since he knew it intimately.

Updated On: 11/22/08 at 03:03 AM

As far as I know, the only person who said that Walker hated the ACW score was Herbert Greene, and I don't necessarily believe him, though he seems to have been an excellent conductor (as long as he stuck to just conducting).

I'm going to make a guess (and this is totally a guess) that Greene was kind of bitter. His last credit on ibdb is ACW. I know that wasn't his last show on Broadway. He conducted Fiddler for much of its run. And perhaps he was a replacement conductor on some other shows too. But ACW seems to have been his last new show and I can't help but wonder if that was because he behaved badly on it and got a bad reputation and then wanted to badmouth the show.

Or it may have been that no one wanted him on a new show because of the way he coached singers. I always thought that what Lansbury was quoted as saying in Zadan about Greene's help as a singing coach was odd. You know, she says that he put his fingers on the singer's throat and this relaxed the tension and "then somehow you sang." Even when I was a teenager, I thought that sounded strange. And though it sounds like she's praising him in Zadan, now I'm not so sure. "And then somehow you sang" might really mean "And then you tried to somehow sing in spite of the terrible thing he was doing to you."

Then Kermit Bloomgarden talks about him right after Lansbury's quotation, saying that he coached some of the leads and convinced them that they couldn't work without him. Then he held out for more money before signing to do the show. Greene had done all of Bloomgarden's musicals up till then, but he didn't do any of the musicals Bloomgarden produced after that. Admittedly, all of the musicals Bloomgarden produced after that flopped, but he was one of the most respected producers in town. If Bloomgarden told people not to hire Greene, that might have seriously hurt Greene's career, and it seems that may have been what happened.

In Gottfried's bio of Lansbury, Gottfried says Sondheim feels that Greene's technique almost destroyed the voices of all the leads. And Lansbury's quoted saying very negative things about his work with her.

So I wouldn't necessarily trust what Greene says about Walker hating the score.

OTOH, in Zadan, Tunick says that Walker didn't understand the music. But that sounds odd to me, even though I have to believe he said it. I think Walker's work on the show is great. Tunick seems to be saying that he (Tunick) is the first person to have orchestrated Sondheim's music well, and if he really meant that, it's nonsense. The original Forum orchestrations were fantastic.