Posted by GC (the older one) on July 07, 2002 at 12:38:29:
In Reply to: Re: Rehearsal Horror Stories posted by js on July 05, 2002 at 20:44:48:
I live in a small north Georgia town that's fairly well loaded in good musical and theatrical talent. One of our local service clubs puts on a variety show every couple of years, and it contracts with a New York theatrical agency for a director, costumes, and music. A local dance orchestra that I've played in for 28 years usually gets the call to fill the pit, and we are the only locals who get paid. The directors pick the tunes depending on the available local talent that year, teach the dances, and usually conduct the orchestra. We usually end up with 4 or 5 winds, piano, bass (electric or tuba), and drums.
The directors usually are ex-dancers with little or no musical background, although there have been a few welcome exceptions. Often they have little or no idea how to count off a tune or how to give conducting cues. The pianist often becomes the de facto leader of the band. When you have a pianist who is weak rhythmically (a common failing with pianists), it can become a real horror. One year, the director put us on risers on stage wearing tuxes and behind the dances, left the piano in the pit (where we couldn't hear it well at all), conducted sitting down in the front row, and blamed us for every problem the show had.
However, the biggest problem was sheet music. We would walk in a Monday night after the dancers, singers, and pianist had been working for two weeks. There would be a trunk of music with about 200 show tunes, standards, rock tunes, etc. in it. We would pull the show's tunes and begin to go through parts, and usually most of the parts would be piano music. The pianist would tell us where the conductor wanted horn parts, or we would use our judgment, but I and the drummer played almost all the time. The wind players would mark parts or transpose on the fly. Since these tunes often involved lunatic jumps and cuts, and since I have to play bass with both hands, I usually rewrote my parts. Then at least one singer would demand a change in key of a tune that had been in rehearsal for at least two weeks already. On Tuesday, we would run the first act, Wednesday the second, Thursday would do an open dress rehearsal and tech rehearsal, and then do two or three shows on Friday and Saturday.
In my early years of doing this, the lead trumpet and I would knock out quick arrangements where needed. One year, from Moday through Wednesday, he did 13 charts and I did eight, half of which had to be altered because of the conductor's stupidity. In later years, the winds worked more from the piano parts or improvisation, but I still rewrote the bass parts. Also, we would sometimes find parts that we'd written as long as twenty years before in the music trunk.
These shows are fun, but terribly high pressure. When you combine the musical ignorance of most of the directors, the inconsistency and unpredictability of local talent (including pianists), and scant rehearsal time, these things can become a real ordeal. They're definitely a great test of one's musical flexibility.