Re: Rehearsal Horror Stories


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Posted by js on July 05, 2002 at 20:44:48:

In Reply to: Rehearsal Horror Stories posted by Larry Zaidan on July 05, 2002 at 17:32:13:

One time, I was playing locally with a touring Broadway show. This was only the second city on their tour that they decided to add a tuba part, and the tuba "book" consisted of two xeroxed non-bound stacks of music sitting simultaneously on the stand - the bass trombone book and the string bass book. One cound not get away with "mix and match" to make one "clean" stack of music, because one had to often switch back and forth WITHIN THE SAME NUMBERS from the bass book to the bass trombone book.

footnote...[Our local Broadway pit musicians have a reputation with many of the touring conductors of being the best sightreaders on the tour. Consistantly, conductors have told us that our first show was the best (most mistake-free) "first show" so far on their tours. Those of you who have played in tour pits know that the tour books are much harder than the NYC books, because the orchestration is reduced and the parts are highly condensed.]

In this show, I was expected to sometimes (as marked) play string bass parts properly transposed (at the octave) and other time not transposed (an octave higher than the string bass. Other times I was to play in unison with the bass trombone or 8va basso with the bass trombone.

Of course, I was switching back and forth between stacks of music - turning pages in both stacks, and some of the time I was tacet in both books, even when both the bass trombone and string bass were playing.

The most annoying thing was that the (_!_) conductor thought that he had completely "decided" about all of the times that the tuba was to play, but in reality he either kept changing his mind without realizing it, never made up his mind, or simply forgot what he had said earlier.

At the beginning of the intermission of the second or third show, the conductor made a nasty NYCish-smartass remark to me about how I was failing to come in when I was supposed to and coming in when I wasn't supposed to.

My remark was, "Perhaps you're right about all of that, but I've played a lot worse for a lot better conductors."


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