This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Jennifer Apple: Hello.

[0:01] Welcome to the Empowered Artist Collective Podcast.

[0:04] I'm your host, Jennifer Apple, a multi-hyphenate actor, educator, acting coach, writer, dog mom, and founder of this vibrant community that champions artists as they carve out their own unique paths in this wild industry.

[0:17] Whether you're just starting out in the thick of it, or seeking a bit of artistic fuel to expand your toolbox, you're in the right place.

[0:24] In this space, we'll have honest conversations, share actionable strategies, tips, and resources, and delve into the messy yet beautiful journey of living a sustainable creative life.

[0:34] We unmask the reality of life as an artist, from navigating career highs and lows to nurturing your full human well-being.

[0:42] I chat with women and non-binary guests who share their personal stories, helpful learnings, and hearts to help you unlock your artistic potential, expand your knowledge, and show up fully and fearlessly in your artistry and daily life.

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[1:18] All right, grab a cup of something cozy, settle in, and let's get to it.

[1:22] What exactly does an orchestrator do, and what else is possible in the landscape of orchestration?

[1:27] In this episode, I sit down with orchestrator and founder of The Broadway Sinfonietta, Macy Schmidt, to explore the creative, technical, and entrepreneurial facets of orchestration.

[1:36] Macy breaks down the craft from expanding a piano sketch into a fully orchestrated arrangement to choosing instrumentation, texture, and timbre that bring an arrangement to life.

[1:45] She shares the tools, techniques, and self-taught path that shaped her process and what led her to create The Broadway Sinfonietta, an all-women and majority women-of-color orchestra, which has partnered with global brands, reimagined what orchestras can look and sound like, and redefined the ceiling of possibility.

[2:01] From practical tips around not relying on music software to business-minded strategies like writing compelling cold emails and fostering environments built on transparency and trust.

[2:10] Macy's journey is a lesson in how creative innovation, ethical leadership, and artistic excellence can—and must—coexist for us to expand what is possible in the industry and beyond.

[2:21] Enjoy.

[2:21] Macy Schmidt, hello.

[2:23] Hello.

[2:24] Welcome to the space.

[2:26] Thank you for having me.

[2:27] For anybody who does not know you, who are you today?

[2:30] Macy Schmidt: Who am I today? Um, I'm an orchestrator and business owner and corraller of orchestra musicians.

[2:40] I love the "corralling" is like a nice framing of leading, I think.

[2:45] Like I feel like it's like an interesting choice of words for that.

[2:48] Yes.

[2:49] Um, you're our first orchestrator in the space.

[2:52] Um, we had Andrea Grody in here to talk about music directing.

[2:55] Um, but Andrea's amazing.

[2:57] She's brilliant beyond.

[2:59] But I am so excited to talk about the orchestrating of it all.

[3:03] And so I'm curious to hear how this came to be for you.

[3:07] Macy Schmidt: Okay, music journey.

[3:09] Um, I did not start as a young child.

[3:11] Um, most of my colleagues typically report the story that they were like four years old in piano lessons.

[3:17] I was not. Um, a running bit in my family is that I like would ask for piano lessons as a young kid, and I think they thought that like I just wanted to do it because my friends were doing it, and like I would quit by the time I was 10.

[3:27] Yeah.

[3:28] Um, and I'm a very hyper obsessive fixating person.

[3:33] Uh, I got to high school.

[3:34] I had a really, really influential choir teacher who one day she made an attempt to teach the class Solfège for sight reading.

[3:42] No one was having it, and she's kind of like abandoned ship and went back to like teaching by ear.

[3:45] And I was very hooked on it.

[3:47] I was like, what is this thing where the dots on the page make the sound and the sound can be distilled to the dots on the page?

[3:52] And um decided I wanted to learn to read music.

[3:56] I wanted to learn to read music before I had any desire to like perform it or write it.

[4:00] And like to this day, I don't, I mean, technically I perform like as a conductor with the orchestra, but I'm not a performance instrumentalist, I'm not a performance pianist.

[4:10] Um, what I tend to tell people when they ask like what I do on Broadway if I'm like music supervising or music directing or orchestrating is I don't write the music, I don't perform it at the end of the thing, but I love doing everything in between.

[4:23] Um, and I uh self-taught piano when I was in high school, um, mostly through the lens of wanting to learn to read.

[4:30] Um, so you know, going like one measurement at a time very slowly, being like, well, this note equals this key, and like how do I piece them together?

[4:36] And and self-taught being a reader from that.

[4:38] I have always just been like enamored by the sound of an orchestra.

[4:44] I mean, I love classical music, but particularly in non-classical settings.

[4:47] I think it's not a unique thing uh to say, but a lot of us were influenced by like 90s-era classic Disney films, which really have that like lush orchestra sound that like is so defined to that.

[5:00] Um, I also loved Broadway cast albums.

[5:02] I loved overtures.

[5:04] Um, when I was in high school, I would listen to all the songs in a Broadway cast album except the overture, try to arrange my own overture, then listen to the original at the end.

[5:13] Wow.

[5:14] Wow.

[5:14] So I always just kind of loved, and also because I don't write, I've never had an inclination for composing or writing music.

[5:20] I love taking the existing music and manipulating it, arranging it, changing the way it's presented in a way that music you already know the raw composition of, you're hearing or experiencing in a new way.

[5:31] It can bring out different kinds of emotions for the person hearing it when they hear it presented in a different way.

[5:36] So basically I love to manipulate other people's music instead of write my own.

[5:40] And I just knew from like when I first came to New York and wanted to work on Broadway that that is the role that I wanted to play and what I wanted to do.

[5:48] And I'm very fortunate that I get to do it.

[5:51] How did you know that this was a lane that even existed?

[5:54] That like what you found was a job.

[5:58] Macy Schmidt: I definitely didn't till I came to New York.

[6:00] Um, I started music assisting um different uh people in the industry, and I was lucky that I connected with a mentor pretty early who um was known for the orchestration lane, and I got kind of got to see up front what that is.

[6:15] And I was like, oh, I could have never said that word or understood that that's what it is that I've already kind of been tinkering with in like the kind of like knockoff music notation software that I had access to in high school.

[6:26] Um, but this thing that I love, like there is a word for it and there is a path for it.

[6:30] Um, there wasn't really a path for it, I should say.

[6:32] It's pretty much the only role in the music department on Broadway that doesn't have like an associate stepping stone.

[6:38] Like there's like your associate music director or your assistant music director, and there's kind of like these steps before you get there.

[6:44] Orchestration, you kind of have to just catch 22, have experience to get experience, be ready out of the gate at a very high level, where there are a lot of orchestrators and a dozen new musical productions on Broadway every season to of jobs to compete for.

[6:59] So um, there's not much of a stepping stone there.

[7:02] Um, I started as like a department music assistant, copyist.

[7:06] I've always loved music theory, the relationship between the notes on the page and the sound, and vice versa.

[7:12] So um, I was handy for a lot of the music supervisors in the industry when they would need like transcription done or you know, in workshops, labs, readings, I got to be a part of a ton of those, um, some of which made it to Broadway and many of which don't.

[7:24] Yeah.

[7:24] Um, but uh no, I definitely didn't know that it was a path before getting here and really seeing firsthand um meeting people who had different roles in music departments and learning what their paths were.

[7:38] Um, I do find that a lot of orchestrators, not all for sure, but a lot of them also are composers or are performers.

[7:43] And I kind of just realized like, oh, the definition of this job is even though I couldn't have said it, exactly the combination of all the things that I most love.

[7:51] Yeah.

[7:52] Well, can we define then what an orchestrator is for us who are unclear or maybe would love a deeper understanding?

[8:00] Macy Schmidt: I get asked it a lot, and hopefully by now I've gotten to like some sort of functional definition.

[8:04] But um, orchestration is assigning instruments to play what is often written on just piano or maybe just guitar or an existing melody.

[8:12] So on Broadway, a lot of composers, I would say most musical theater composers compose on piano.

[8:18] So an orchestrator will be handed uh a file with their piano sketch in it.

[8:23] And our job is to take the piano part and basically expand it vertically in the score to add all the different instruments in the orchestra to be playing alongside it or in place of it, to take the energy and essence and vision and harmony and writing in that and fulfill it through the timbres and capabilities of the instruments and the rest of the orchestra and ultimately have a line for every single instrument of what they play.

[8:47] So that when it's all done together, you've taken that piano sketch and kind of blown it up into something bigger.

[8:53] When you're doing that, are you basing it off of a pre-ascribed knowledge of like they will have X amount of you know, string instruments, X amount of percussion, and then you're building it?

[9:05] Macy Schmidt: Okay.

[9:06] Yes.

[9:06] Exactly.

[9:07] And, you know, depending on what medium you're working in and your role in the music department, that, you know, how that's determined can happen by like a number of ways.

[9:15] Um now that I'm uh very spoiled and run my own orchestra, I sometimes do it in reverse now where I just like will orchestrate what I'm in the mood for and then hire musicians accordingly for that, which is a luxury.

[9:27] Um, but uh yeah, it's basically expanding vertically to the instruments in the orchestra.

[9:31] And there's a gray area in terms of I don't like to work with a blank page.

[9:36] I like to work with other people's material and be manipulating, enhancing, expanding the material that I'm given.

[9:43] But, you know, depending on the composer, there are composers that write off for piano extremely intricately, right?

[9:48] Like a Stephen Sondheim piano sketch is gonna have like most of the material of like the little line you'll hear in the clarinet would have been written there in the piano sketch, and his longtime orchestrator Jonathan Tunick would look at that and like you come to a place where you can kind of read your composing partner's mind, um, where like you can tell from the range it's written or the style of the shape of the melody, like where it wants to go.

[10:08] And then there are the more pop-leaning composers who write more chord-based, or it's a lot more open and it's less detailed in the sketch that you're given.

[10:16] And in those cases, the orchestrator has a lot of freedom to write or add lines.

[10:20] There's a gray area of that crossing over into like a compositional edition.

[10:27] I don't view it that way because you're given so much information within what you're doing for that.

[10:31] You're given tempo, time signature, harmony, chord progression, um, lyric, uh, intended mess, like all you're given all of these frameworks that for me, it's like these filters that narrow it down to like a few good choices that would enhance what the composer's already done.

[10:45] Yeah.

[10:46] Um, so I personally don't view it that way, but there definitely is um there's a lot of addition of creative material when you're given less from your composer.

[10:56] I'm so fascinated by how you did not come at this in a quote unquote usual way, though.

[11:03] Because in my mind, it's like, you know, obviously you're brilliant in what you do, and it happened in such a short period of time.

[11:11] And for you to like know instrumentation in the depths that you do, like I guess, and this is just from me who does it who is not an orchestrator, obviously, but like, you know, to compose for string is different than to, you know, again, for percussion for all you have to know that varied timbre and like yeah, like chord progressions and like what's best and not in each, just like you would for I guess you know, voice parts if I were to be writing it in, you know, alto soprano, tenor, bass, baritone, whatever.

[11:41] But it there's so much more nuance.

[11:43] And so for you, how were you able to learn those differences, details so in depth?

[11:50] What was your process in addition to like obviously like the technique around it?

[11:55] Like to really get to know the details.

[11:58] Macy Schmidt: It's such like an obscure question.

[12:00] Okay, great.

[12:00] I was like, this is strange.

[12:03] No, it's a great question.

[12:04] So, you know, my generation has um a very, very handy crutch, which is electronic notation software.

[12:10] Macy Schmidt: And I think it's a great thing in that it the speed at which we can churn things out is really enhanced. And for me, it was a kind of an entryway point. You know, that the premier music notation software in the Broadway industry are mostly Finale, though there's a lot of controversy there that I won't go into on this podcast, but Finale is closing down and they're moving to Dorico and the whole industry's figuring out what software we're using. But there are two or three industry standard notation software separately. There's a lot of like online ones like Noteflight, things you can make a free account on and just kind of like tinker around that don't really have the professional capacities to be used at Broadway level or that aren't commonly used at the Broadway level.

And I found my way in through that. Actually, Noteflight was what I found my way in through. You can make a free account, and you know, you can't, you don't really have that much control over formatting, it doesn't really go that deep, but you can press, you can hear synthetic instrument sounds and press notes and hear it come out. So in high school, I started tinkering around with that, and that was kind of a gateway. When I was in college transitioning to being in New York, I was obsessively looking up at every orchestrator that had ever worked on Broadway, which like there aren't that many, to be honest. Like the same maybe like 30 guys, 20 guys, absolutely like dominate that scene of things.

It's a pretty niche craft to do it at a high level. And I was like, I want like mentors, I want people to look over my work. And I connected with a very respected orchestrator mentor who has been doing shows for decades and decades and said, will you look over something that I've done? And he did, and he gave me some really brutal advice that changed my life. And he was like, he started his career in the era where you hand wrote everything because you didn't have that tool. He was like, it's so apparent these days, like the kids of your generation who just downloaded notation software and think that's enough. Like you, you don't even have any idea that when you switch the clarinet part from like this note to this note, that there's like a little bit of like an artificial hiccup in like that octave switch, or you know, that when you're doing a double stop on this string that like this is possible, this isn't possible.

You're not even picturing yourself holding every instrument. He was like, go away and handwrite for two years and come back to me, and I think this will like you'll know what you're doing. Wow. And I was like, that sounds uh, uh analog and tedious. And I did wow I I kind of found my my in-between because I'm also very ADHD and I lose things and like having a lot of paper was not going to be good. So I got a full-size iPad and I use the apps where it has a kind of blank score paper on it. And that way I could kind of import from I kind of did a hybrid. I could import from the notation software the piano sketch with everything else blank. And I would use an Apple pencil and like write it in on that so that everything's digitized.

I wasn't carrying around physical paper. And then I would input it in the Finale or as I got later into my career and got to have a team have a music assistant input it once I'd written it out but forcing yourself to hear it in your head without this immediate gratification playback of a software spitting something synthetic back into your brain I'm like oh that's how all these greats yeah got great.

[15:06] Macy Schmidt: So that was at the time it was very stressful advice. I was like oh my gosh I thought maybe I'd be ready to start doing something and I wasn't I wasn't that you know it it really is and now it's very very strange. I had this happen last week it's very weird to be in a position to get those kinds of emails from someone. I got an email from like a young woman in London who's like I'm an aspiring orchestrator and do you need any assistance and can I send you some work and now that I get occasionally like emails like that you really can tell immediately who is exclusively reliant on the feedback of the electronic tools and crutches versus who can write without any sound and hear it in their head and physically understand exactly like what you would be doing with the instrument.

So there's a textbook that's really common in colleges. It's the Adler Study of Orchestration handbook. Any orchestration nerds listening to this, I'm not sure if any will, but they'll know what I'm talking about. It sits on my desk. I obsessively studied it, and that just kind of like it gives you the basics of all the tedious logistical stuff on each instrument. Like what can this instrument do that this instrument can't do? What are the limitations? What will sound particularly seamless and what will sound weird? So that part was just kind of filling in the gaps, but really handwriting as opposed to leaning on the crutch that we have in technology, which I'm sure that's a metaphor for lots and lots of different skills and industries, really was invaluable.

And now I've found that when you're in the room, and I wouldn't have known this at the time because the weirdest thing about orchestration, it's almost like it's like choreography, I think with even more barriers where like if you're a choreographer to show your work at a large scale, you've got to have like 40 dancers in front of you to show it off. As an orchestrator to show off your work, you've got to have a room full of musicians who you've got to pay. And it's a high barrier to entry to show your work acoustically in a real way. But you know, we all know time is money. I've been in rooms where I was hiding to orchestrate something for like a big company or studio, and I'm in LA in a reading room with an orchestra of a hundred pieces, and you need to make a change on the spot.

I don't have time to go type it into my notation software and have it spit it out to me and decide what I like. You have to be able to hear in your head what you want and know what it would look like in writing and verbally communicate that. So basically, some brutal mentor advice from someone who came up in the days of having to handwrite and following it. I think that's why I asked, because again, like, you know, I invite people into this space so that we can show the breadth of possibility in this industry because it's so vast and we enter mostly through, you know, university or you know, training spaces that show us just a narrow vision of what's possible. And there's like so much possibility, and you're showing us exactly that in the world of music.

[17:37] Jennifer Apple: And for me in my brain, of you know, having relationships and interactions with people in music departments over my career, you know, I interact with it, but the details I don't necessarily know. But when I do see somebody in an orchestrating space, like give a note to say a clarinetist versus a you know saxophonist to be like, actually, can you swap that? It's like there is mechanics that I don't personally understand that are happening around where is the sitting and the way in which it transitions from this to this. That I really do, I think that note of like being able to be adaptable within not just being so reliant on one form of infrastructure, aka, you know, the electronic space, really, I would imagine does allow for expansion in real time and also just the way that you think, which is it's awesome.

[18:24] Macy Schmidt: The thing though that accelerated that knowledge, honestly, more than anything, more than any textbook, more than any mentorship, more than any being a music assistant in a room, was I decided to start my own orchestra.

[18:33] Jennifer Apple: Yeah, which was I'm glad you brought it up because I was gonna like segue us there.

[18:37] Macy Schmidt: Um, and when I did like this first piece with the first orchestra, I identified all these players, which that was kind of its own, we can talk about that, that but that was its own journey. And this was in 2020. I of those players that I'd never met before that I contacted in 2020, I've talked to three of them on the phone this morning. Like they're my family, they they are kind of the OGs. Um there is a drummer named Elena Bonamo. She's the drummer for Six on Broadway, she's phenomenal. Before she was a drummer for Six on Broadway, and I think I'd seen her gigging around in some like galas and different things, and I decided I want to start an All Women Orchestra. And there are many reasons that's changed my life, but also I was able to do something that I was not able to do in the all older male rooms that I was assisting in or orchestrating in, which is when I did this first chart, I called her and I was like, can I pay you?

Can I hire you by the hour in the pandemic, like on Zoom, to like go through drum parts that I've written and help me understand how you communicate it to a drummer? Like there's shorthand, there's names for grooves. There's like, you know, drummers will use certain phrases that are very like drummer-centric. And um, I needed to learn and understand all of that. And I basically had to create my own safe space with other women to be like, I'm gonna sit down and reveal to you what I don't know and hire you to fill in the gaps of what I don't know so that I do know it. And without kind of starting my own orchestra and having like this now family of women that like I've I can sit down with like one of our woodwind doublers who plays oboe and be like, I haven't written for oboe that much.

Can we sit down for a session or two and just like read through some charts? Our harpist who I've worked with since like the very beginning, she was in Philadelphia. I took a train down in Philadelphia at some point, and I was like, I want you to give me a couple harp lessons and I want us to play through some charts that I've written for things that we've done before because I need to understand what's intuitive and what's not, and I just want to have more of a handle on it, and harp is a very hard, expensive instrument in New York to get your hands on.

[20:27] Macy Schmidt: Yeah. So like these women, and everyone is so gracious and kind and professional. And that the thing is, it's just I think about this a lot. I'm so spoiled. Sometimes I should say, there are so many wonderful male musicians and wonderful male orchestrators. And in a room that I created with the Sinfonietta, since the first day I started it, I've never felt an ounce of imposter syndrome, even when I should have. The first professional show that I conducted with a baton was conducting my own orchestra producing Barbie in concert at the Hollywood Bowl with 15,000 people with like the LA Philharmonic's home. Um, and I had a talk back mic to the orchestra where they can all hear me in their ears. And I'm sitting up there and it's like I can make eye contact with them, and I just like feel held by them. I'm like, oh, like I know these people, they've got me. I if I was standing in front of the actual LA Philharmonic, like you don't have that.

[21:27] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[21:27] Macy Schmidt: And so I think it accelerated all of my growth from a craft perspective, but also from like a confidence, trial and error, like putting yourself out there and doing something new perspective to like assemble this group of women where like I did not have to fear looking dumb. I didn't have to fear holding your cards close and not revealing what you don't know. And it's just all open, it's all out there, and you get kind of a supercharged growth by creating that environment. And I don't think I realized that that was what I was doing when I was doing it. But looking back, I think it is the most valuable thing I've ever done.

[22:00] Jennifer Apple: Oh my goodness, there's so much here that's so beautiful. First, just naming the fact that you created a space for yourself to feel seen and held and by association doing so for others, just like naming that being such a beautiful model that I wish existed more and more, and hopefully will continue to exist more and more in this industry. I just want to like name how incredible that is to the the self-awareness to like acknowledge where one's blind spots are and being vulnerable enough to reach out for assistance, help, and and those who know more in a way that's collaborative and explorative so that we grow and we expand like what an amazing thing that you a knew to do for yourself, but B, like felt comfortable to seek, and like I just want to name that, and then just like see the fact that you're like accelerating this part of your career with your own autonomy by creating something that you've chosen to make for yourself.

[22:55] Macy Schmidt: Hi, actor friends, talking to you. If finding the perfect monologue has you feeling stuck, I've got just the thing. I put together a free monologue selection toolkit just for you. It's packed with resources, free and paid options, plus tips for choosing, editing, and customizing pieces to showcase you. Head over to jenniferapple.net slash freebie and stop avoiding the auditions that ask for a monologue or waiting for the perfect piece to simply fall into your lap. Dive into this free toolkit that I set up just for you that'll set you up to feel agency over your process and artistry.

[23:13] Jennifer Apple: That's jenniferapple.net slash freebie and get started on finding your next go-to monologue.

[23:35] Jennifer Apple: I'd love to hear why you started the Broadway Sinfonietta and like why that was something that was important to you in the pandemic specifically when we were not able to be together. Like tell me the origin of that.

[23:50] Macy Schmidt: Yes. So the Sinfonietta is the love of my life. I started it in June of 2020. Um there were three things at the time that made me start it. I was coming off of some shows that I worked on on Broadway that were um shows that were stories very, very centralized around people of color, um, with large music departments, lots of funding, big bands or orchestras. Um I was a music assistant in those departments.

[24:18] Macy Schmidt: And I realized throughout the course of that season, I never met another on a show I'd worked on, another woman of color in a music department on Broadway anywhere.

[24:28] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[24:29] Macy Schmidt: And I was like, oh, like I I I didn't even really notice it or dial into it, which I'm adopted. I was adopted by white parents who are the greatest parents in the world. I often say I won the parent lottery, but I was raised in like a very white community. So sometimes like I I uh like check out from that and I'm used to I don't think about it as often as I should, and I kind of like uh opened my eyes and was like, whoa, like I'm working on shows like the Tina Turner musical and the color purple and et cetera. And I'm looking around and I'm like, there's a a lot of British people here and not a lot of women of color here. And that's not to say that all the people who worked on that show weren't phenomenal.

I'm like, oh, but maybe we had to like look harder to find them. I don't know what it was. And there was um I also started to notice that we were making really big strides for women in Broadway, Broadway music departments, and there were some great organizations popping up for that. And I noticed that the all women's spaces tended to be about 99% white women, and the all people of color spaces tended to be about like 70% men. And that women of color were the minority of the quadrant in like every single of these advocacy spaces being created on Broadway. Um also in the pandemic, like artists weren't getting paid.

[25:34] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[25:35] Macy Schmidt: Um, I wanted to pay people. Um there was a lot of stuff going on being put out there that was like people contacting each other to like work home record in the spirit of the pandemic for funsies for collaboration. Like no one was like paying other people, which now that I'm doing something like a little bit different with my career and like on the business side, I I look back at this and I'm like very uh like fond of how this all came together, but I was like, there are all these like there is money. There like we we work in an industry that is a churning economy, and um there are people with money who can pay these artists, and how do we incentivize those people to like kind of create an economy cycle to make it churn to create jobs?

[26:13] Macy Schmidt: And um I also just had some orchestrations in a vault that I really wanted to do that required like a huge ass orchestra.

[26:19] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[26:19] Macy Schmidt: And like no one was just gonna give me a huge ass orchestra. You have to have experience to get experience, right? I also found that I was being booked on almost exclusively shows that I think we would uh define as um in terms of story or origin or music, more ethnic shows. And like the style that I was trained on or trained myself on is like the big like Broadway with a capital B white like Barbara Streisand orchestra charts or like the Danny Trube Disney movie era.

[26:47] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[26:47] Macy Schmidt: I was getting hired for shows that were like ethnically leaning shows that maybe I mean I'm pretty ethnically ambiguous, so I would get hired on like everything, but where I actually had absolutely no experience in the cultural musical style of that show.

[26:58] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[26:58] Macy Schmidt: Um so I was like, there were a lot of reasons to want to do this. And um, I also just needed to busy myself. It became very clear that Broadway was not opening back up at Easter, like everyone said at the beginning. It was wild. Um, this was immediately after all things that happened with George Floyd in the summer of 2020. And there were all these advocacy groups coming together, and all you know, a lot of us were getting invited onto Zooms where they would ask people of color in the Broadway industry to talk about what needed to change, and we'd have all these kind of conversations where I would hear some of like the wealthiest and most well-resourced people in their industry be like, how on earth could we ever, you know, uh give more money or visibility or status to like, you know, uh musicians or artists of color in the Broadway industry.

[27:36] Macy Schmidt: And I'm just sitting here like give them jobs, yeah, like paid jobs, like hire them.

[27:40] Macy Schmidt: So I equal emailed a couple producers. Um looking back, I I I'm baffled that it all worked out because I was like, hi, here's who I am, here's what I'd like to do. Um, this is the project I'd like to work on. Um, I'm looking for this big amount of money. I'm not a not-for-profit, you won't get a tax cut for this. You'll never see an a return on investment. Audacious, but here's what I like to do. Let me know if it resonates with you. The first two people.

[28:01] Jennifer Apple: Oh, yeah.

[28:02] Macy Schmidt: The first two women that I emailed um responded back and they were like, I'm in what's your wire information? I was like, oh shit, I haven't even really thought that far. I'm not sure. Um so had the money and then found the women, which I really wanted to get away from the friends of friends thing. So I went to YouTube and I looked for like recital videos from the Harlem School of the Arts or like things like that.

[28:24] Macy Schmidt: Like I watched like hundreds of hours of like flute recital videos from Harlem School of the Arts. Or got on Instagram and just like started stuff. I have a Finsta. A lot of people have a Finsta for like their like drunk escapades. I have a Finsta for stalking women musicians around the world because by only engaging with that, the algorithm only shows me new people.

[28:40] Jennifer Apple: Amazing.

[28:40] Macy Schmidt: Um so it's my nerdy Finsta. But um I would like comment in the YouTube comments of like someone's flute video where it'd be the perfect tone and the perfect high-be flat. I'd be like, hi, I can't find your info information anywhere, but I want to hire you for a paid job. And can you email me at this email? I can't figure out where to find you. And some of those people are now I've been working with for five years.

[28:57] Jennifer Apple: Obsessed.

[28:58] Macy Schmidt: So we put together this kind of first video. Um, Soleil Pfeiffer, who's a good friend of mine and an amazing vocalist. I've just seen her in a Vita, a city center. I was just taken with her performance. I was like, this is a another ethnically ambiguous woman of color who stood in a role that's only been played commercially by white women, and like just the energy she brought to her performance in a Vita was exactly what I wanted for this piece.

[29:18] Macy Schmidt: And I reached out to her and put together a recording session in person with quarantine with everything and hired like a camera crew. And I was like, I want to put this out with a bar of excellence and quality that can't be disputed.

[29:31] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[29:32] Macy Schmidt: Um, and I'm really fortunate that I think it came out at a moment in the pandemic where like everyone had kind of like musical doom video fatigue.

[29:39] Jennifer Apple: Yeah and seeing something in like HD, like really, really high res and well produced when we were not used to that.

[29:44] Macy Schmidt: I remember seeing it.

[29:45] Jennifer Apple: I do.

[29:45] Macy Schmidt: I remember I do.

[29:47] Jennifer Apple: Mm-hmm.

[29:47] Macy Schmidt: This is like yeah, like on the couch, probably doom scrolling, whatever.

[29:52] Macy Schmidt: And I remember it popping up.

[29:53] Jennifer Apple: Mm-hmm.

[29:54] Macy Schmidt: Because it went like viral in the little community.

[29:56] Jennifer Apple: Yeah, and what's funny is it didn't really go viral in the like Gen Z TikTok space, but it did go viral in the like boomer morning talk show space, like the CBS Sunday morning today show, like that sort of place space.

[30:05] Macy Schmidt: And then the next call I got was a few days later from an organization associated with like Matt Cosmetics, and they were like, We saw this video. We’d love to do a brand partnership with you.

[30:11] Jennifer Apple: And it's funny, at the time I was like, What's a brand partnership?

[30:15] Macy Schmidt: Love. And now we we've done mostly brand partnerships. Like we've done like brand partnerships like Bloomingdales, and we just did it with Condé NAFT and HSBC and Abu Dhabi, and like it's all kind of brand partnerships.

[30:24] Macy Schmidt: Um so the orchestra grew. We now have symfonietas all over the world. I'm leaving to go to China, where we auditioned an all-woman orchestra in China, and it's a symfonietta in China that we were waiting for verification on this, but we think might be the first all women orchestra in China.

[30:40] Jennifer Apple: Oh my god.

[30:41] Macy Schmidt: Um, to tour the country performing um the Barbie movie concert, which is my program from another company that I'm sure we'll get to. But um, I'm going straight from China to Romania where we assembled an all women orchestra in Romania in Bucharest. We have one in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, LA, London, we did World Evert Hall with a Sinfonietta, and now there's these Sinfonietas all over the world in places where you know the old people went out of their way to assemble an all women orchestra because you know, when I licensed the Barbie movie concert, I say, if you're a promoter doing this and assembling an orchestra, um, you need to go out and find all women musicians and it's gonna be a symphonyetta.

[31:17] Macy Schmidt: Um, and if you had told me in 2020 that I'd be sitting here about to go tour China with an all women symfietta of all Chinese women, I don't know if I wouldn't have believed you or if I would have believed you, but yeah, here we are.

[31:27] Macy Schmidt: I'm really excited. Um, and honestly, just moved. It's like my it's love of my life.

[31:32] Jennifer Apple: It's um unbelievable.

[31:34] Macy Schmidt: It's so cool. I mean, just so I understand though, when you're creating these orchestras, and you're saying there's like the one in there's one in China, there's one in Bucharest, there's like, are they now their own living, breathing orchestra that just like then if going forward anybody now has to audition to become a part of that specific one?

[31:51] Jennifer Apple: Or is it like once you are part of the Sinfonietta like family, I can pop into depending on the demographic or depending on the need, I can in theory pop into any of them because we all ladder.

[32:02] Macy Schmidt: Okay.

[32:02] Jennifer Apple: So you're doing roster based amazing.

[32:05] Macy Schmidt: But you're doing like the same not this I mean obviously every concert's different, but like there is the orchestrations that you have in the family now that like go for each of the concerts that you can that's really freaking cool.

[32:18] Macy Schmidt: Yeah. And you know what's what's funny is also like I've not worked nearly as much in theater. So I I think of my career kind of in like three eras. Era one was like Broadway I want to be an orchestrator got really lucky that I got to do that really early. Yay orchestrating on Broadway. Era two was like the Sinfonietta and like those first two three years building the Sinfonietta where I kind of found that like you know companies would come and be like we want to do a partnership with you in the Sinfonietta. That's all we know.

[32:43] Macy Schmidt: And I'd get to help them figure out what kind of music should we have for this thing. What fits the partnership what is the what are the goals or objectives? Great. How many what's the budget? How many musicians should we hire? What should the instrumentation be? Decide what that layout is then do an arrangement orchestration of an existing piece that I would just select and curate for it. And it was like music supervision orchestration music direction arranging all pretty much all the the the pipeline of a broader music department in these kind of individual siloed um projects that only existed because of the Sinfonietta.

[33:13] Jennifer Apple: Wow and um that just like was me feeling like dialed into my purpose in a way that I didn't even know that was an option.

[33:20] Macy Schmidt: Yeah.

[33:21] Macy Schmidt: Um, even if I had started getting called for to orchestrate in every broader musical ever with these very limited jobs and this very competitive pool of veterans, like you don't get that much orchestration work at that level that fast.

[33:33] Jennifer Apple: Or the autonomy.

[33:34] Macy Schmidt: I feel like there's uh a huge level of creativity and autonomy and collaboration.

[33:38] Jennifer Apple: I mean, I am curious about these brand partnerships. When they come to you, it's obviously because they want the vision, the expansiveness, the you know, the community of women that you have in your roster, like and like what goes into that as like an actual partnership.

[34:01] Macy Schmidt: There's a bunch of different ones. Like um, Matt Cosmetics was um wanted to sponsor a an artistic video project for Black History Month to go on socials. Just like pick a song, get in a studio record, and like intertwine it. Bloomingdales had a holiday window unveiling ceremony, and they were like, we want to like like Christmas songs, orchestra at the Bloomingdale's flagship store, unveiling our holiday windows.

[34:22] Macy Schmidt: And I got to just choose the Christmas songs. We actually did it in November, so I also chose a Thanksgiving song.

[34:26] Jennifer Apple: And you would take that that idea then and build it for the roster that you have.

[34:32] Macy Schmidt: Um, not always. Usually we would start with the budget and the genre, figure out okay, what instrumentation fits the business terms of the partnership, and then hire in the people from the roster for those chairs.

[34:43] Jennifer Apple: Got it.

[34:43] Macy Schmidt: Um, but the most fun part is that with brand partnerships like this, you know, one or gallas, that first summer or first fall that the world was kind of open again, fall 2021 when Broadway was reopening. We were like the darlings of the gala circuit.

[34:56] Jennifer Apple: Every gala that happened, like Chipriani or the like everywhere, we were like the gala girls.

[35:02] Macy Schmidt: And I loved it. Because I could call for a gala, and they'd be like, this is what we're honoring. It's all on the program is we want four songs, or we want music throughout, or we want two songs with these famous people, or whatever it is. Like we got to play with a bunch of like huge pop stars, and like I love curating and picking the songs. I love picking the music, arranging it, kind of having a vision for like what the final reimagined presentation of the thing is gonna be.

[35:21] Macy Schmidt: For example, um, in the fall of last year, fall of last year, I got a note from Condé NAFS talent division, and they were like, We've been watching this orchestra, we want to just spotlight you as a part a cross-cultural partnership with a multidisciplinary artist in Abu Dhabi. HSBC is another partner, it's gonna be about just like art transcending cultures and borders. What would you like to do?

[35:38] Macy Schmidt: I was like, they're like we'll pay for it. What would you like to do? I was like, are you joking?

[35:43] Jennifer Apple: Wow.

[35:43] Macy Schmidt: And they were like we wanted to all be about the Sinfonietta and like the founding of it, and uh they paired me with this um uh multidisciplinary visual artist, Meita Hamdan in um the UAE, and I picked a piece of music that was by a Qatari female composer that I love, and she designed like these visuals to it where like as I would conduct, it was like responsive to the sensor that would like change her art with what where the music went, and like Condé facilitated everything.

[36:09] Macy Schmidt: We did some shoots in New York, some shoots in Abu Dhabi, we just did events with it in Abu Dhabi, and they just like filmed it all really gorgeously and made a sound exchange out of it, and like put it out as a a brand partnership.

[36:19] Macy Schmidt: And I didn't even know that was a like when I was just like on the Broadway hamster wheel, like trying to climb a ladder, I was like, I didn't know that was a thing that Condé Mass could just be like, hey, this career that you wanted to build, what would you like to do in it?

[36:30] Jennifer Apple: What are just your artistic fantasies that fit in this? We'll fund it, film it gorgeously, put it out into the world and pay you. What? Have you been using the same monologue for years? Are you gearing up to apply for BA, BFA, or MFA programs and need pieces for that process? Or maybe you just have no idea where to even start with monologue hunting. I get it, and that's why I offer monologue sourcing. This is a unique process where I find monologues chosen specifically for you. So many artists pick pieces based on external labels like type or for roles rather than finding material that represents who they truly are. So here's how it works. We'll meet virtually and you'll share all about who you are, your passions, values, beliefs, and everything in between.

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[37:54] Macy Schmidt: Well, you're reminding me specifically, but I would imagine many folks who are listening to just like of the fact that there's, you know, there's no one right way to do this. There's certainly no single way to do it. Um, and also, again, like the breadth of possibility when we allow ourselves to think beyond the, you know, the little world that we know very well. And remember that we do live in um a capitalist structure that has many other infrastructures that are simultaneously functioning, and that when there is alignment, that partnership actually allows for yeah, more collaboration and different ways of using our art and our craft to reach other people. It's it's really, really incredible.

Um like we hear a lot of people say that, like, okay, the ceiling does not need to be Broadway. Like those of us who come here to work on Broadway, like the ceiling does not need to be Broadway. The pandemic was a difficult and tragic time and a lot of people experienced a lot of loss. I've also heard a lot of people say without the pandemic, I wouldn't I wouldn't have even gotten my brain out of the hamster wheel of like climb the Broadway ladder long enough to like conceive of a ceiling beyond Broadway. Correct. Correct. Um and even from there, I remember I did an interview maybe a year or two into the Sinfonietta kind of being out in the world and someone asked me my favorite thing about Sinfonietta was.

And I don't even think I was aware of it till I said it, but it just tumbled out of my mouth I was like creating jobs, paying people. And like even though we got to have a team and I got to have like a team of people who would like do the payments I loved still love sitting there and like clicking pay on each of the payments because the thing is with this all women orchestra thing which I don't know we'll see if like political administration will start coming for me for discrimination. But the thing about the all-woman orchestra thing is I'm not going into Broadway orchestra pits being like you should fire your men and replace them with my women. Yeah. That's not what we're doing. We're we're paying the women in the orchestra to do work that only exists because of the growing reputation and brand of the Sinfonietta.

Yes. Like that that Conde job it's not like that existed and we were replacing jobs that men were holding it it only was created for this thing it's an and and an addition. You know it's not exactly and you're creating more space and opportunity where there wasn't beforehand. And I I it's a huge part of my own ethos that like instead of the or it's the and like I'm really continuously trying to do yes and very improved me but like it really is you know and you're also not telling anybody to quote unquote choose the Sinfonietta over a job. You're showing you're saying here's another option for when and if you also it's an want to do this and be involved with this as well as what you're doing.

[40:25] Macy Schmidt: And the the thing that kind of took that, which like if Era two was the Sinfonietta, Era three, which I'm now mostly in, yeah, that's kind of what took us into Era three, which is we started getting hired to do um film concerts. And the first one was we got called by a producer who was doing Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse with like the live orchestra playing this for in Brooklyn. And he was like, Would you be the orchestra for it? So I put together the orchestra for it. And at that show, I was like, Oh, I love Broadway. I'll always love Broadway. I love Broadway so much. And like I will always work in the Broadway industry, I will always orchestrate shows. I love it. And slash, but the the musical sound that I came to Broadway because I loved is not necessarily synonymous with what's coming out of Broadway anymore.

Yeah. Right? I I loved the recent revival of Sweeney Todd. We were advertising like 20 something musicians in an orchestra pit on the posters as like a huge win for like the orchestra size, which in our current moment is a huge win. You look back like 40, 50, 60 years ago, and it's like it's it's depressing how much we lost in terms of like, but we also have so much capability now in terms of electronics and programming and sweeteners and keyboards and et cetera, that like we can accomplish that sound with with less musicians. I the thing that I wanted that I came here for was giant orchestras with like this kind of musical grandeur energy, playing non-classical music, um, with like unique arrangements and like that kind of overture energy, and these film concerts.

I mean, we've gotten to do that with the Sinfonietta separately. Like Carnegie Hall came to us and said, Hey, if you want to build a concert for as many musicians as you want in an orchestra, and we'll do it in Bryant Park with 10,000 people watching. Like, I've I've gotten to just do that with whatever songs I wanted, which I love doing those. But the film concert thing, I'm like, oh, the orchestra's on stage. The point that the the you come to see the movie with the orchestra playing it. There's no singers in front that the orchestra's backing. Yeah, they're not hidden away in an orchestra pit underground, the orchestra are the headliners, like the star of the show. But there's this brand IP of the movie that brings people in the door who aren't used to seeing an orchestra.

So you're selling out these rooms in like a way that people will come to see Star Wars in concert, Harry Potter in concert, Frozen in concert, Spider-Man concert, who like wouldn't go see Mahler or you know, Rachmaninoff Second Symphony. Like they're not subscribers to the New York Phil. And I was so moved at that Spider-Verse concert. We then put together the orchestra for Spider-Verse to do a 73 city tour across North America. Amazing. And the response to the Sinfonietta was really moving. And I was like, huh, I've really gotten into the business side of things from the Sinfonietta. Something no one told me when you started an orchestra is that like 90% of starting an orchestra is like not just running a business, but learning how to run a business that is a for-profit business with a really, really, really high standard of financial ethics and finding out how you balance that.

[43:11] Macy Schmidt: Um you say more. One of the things that like was always important to me is like I or the Sinfonietta as an entity of an LLC should not be bringing in profit while there are working moms who are breaking even on jobs to hire child care while they go to a recording session of ours. We set aside money for a child care fund and have like a no questions asked policy. But like if you need to hire child care for any job we offer to you, you let us know and I'll pay for it. We're not a not-for-profit, I don't raise money for it. It's just like a a thing. And I'm like, the the bar for how working artists and independent contractors who are freelancers are treated in the industry is so low that we consider meeting that bar a win.

Um I really wanted to exceed that bar, but I also like need to make the money work, need to keep new projects being created, need to keep new jobs being created. And a lot of people have asked me why the Sinfonietta is not a not-for-profit. Um part of that is that starting a 501c3 just sounds like a bitch and I don't really want to deal with it. But then you have a board and you have to deal with, and then you have people who are telling you what to do and you have to ask for permission. Yeah. Yeah. The real answer is I feel like the moment someone creates something that's like, oh, women, we're all people of color, it becomes a cause that you donate to and you fundraise pennies on Facebook, like asking for fundraisers and donations.

Not that we like build them into the cycle of an actual economy, the way the economy, I mean, this is the entertainment industry is a at least million, maybe trillion dollar economy. And like, why can't we be part of the actual for-profit economy? We build, if we do a recording session, if we do a project that has back end of residuals, we build an equal splits for every single person who participated in that project from a mixer to a master to a violinist into the profit share. So that if anything ever makes real profit, everyone is participated in that. And I guess I just I was like, at the moment we make something all women, we get on Facebook and we say, please donate to my birthday fundraiser. It's like, why does that need to be something that needs to raise money from people online rather than just existing in the infrastructure capitalist flow of economy?

[44:57] Macy Schmidt: Yeah. And um, but learning how to run a business and have the trust and respect of the people that you're hiring, acknowledging that you're running a for-profit business, like this is my full-time job now. I have a team that I pay a salary to. Um, and acknowledging that while also making the money work so projects can continue to exist and never making a single person feel undervalued or exploited or underpaid. Like I want the women on our projects to walk away saying they feel overpaid, better treated than anything they've ever been on, having everything advanced thought of and taken care of. Um, like that's critical to me.

[45:29] Macy Schmidt: And so from a business standpoint, uh learning how to run a business in that way, which I'm so lucky that I have a team that shares that ethos. But um, it was not just learning how to run a business. I got online and I was like, how do I take all these online MBA certificates? I was like, that's actually not enough. It's how do you run a business at like an ethical bar that very few people are setting or meeting because the bar is so low. How do you know how to do that? Like, obviously, you have the vision for it, so you will be looking specifically to fulfill that vision. But where are you looking? How are you finding these people who are doing it within the value system that you're wanting?

[46:06] Macy Schmidt: Um, I think the reason I know how to do it is because I'm a lifelong freelancer. I mean, before the Sinfonietta, I gigged around and was only a freelancer. It's like freelancers are like a short end of the stick. Yes, you're in time of you're in charge of your own time, your own schedule. Someone cancels on you, you could have maybe taken another job and you booked it there, like you know, you're just out your money. And I'm not a mother, but we have worked with so many working mothers, single working mothers with multiple kids. And it's like, how do you possibly like you're breaking even on your jobs after you like take care of your kids, not to mention like the cost of your kids. So I think that just I've never really worked in a quote unquote real job.

Um, which like now that I've done like some personality analysis, I'm like, that's probably for the best. I wouldn't have lasted anyways, being told what to do. But I think that just being a lifelong freelancer, I know exactly where the pain points are. I have lived in New York with like less than a thousand dollars in a savings account, making $500 a week for six hours a day all day in Broadway Tech.

[46:56] Macy Schmidt: Yeah. I've made less than minimum wage six hours, six days a week in Broadway Tech. And had to figure out how to eat and live and pay rent. And I'm like, I I physically can't imagine. I mean, that was when I was like 22 and down to eat 99 cent pizza for every meal and like could bounce back from that physically. I'm like, I can't imagine being like a functional adult with a family and still like working under freelancer conditions. So I think it just comes from like the experience of all I've ever known is freelancing and working for myself. And it's like the bar is so low. So it's been a lot of trial and error, and honestly, it's been a lot of telling the people that we employ, you need to come to us if something feels icky.

[47:32] Macy Schmidt: I love. We were offered a job by a really big studio to work on a film. That's what we would be like a big project where the money is tiny, but if you hear the name of the company, you would think that the budget is huge. And it's like a buyout. I have a lot of feelings about buyouts, but you know, there are companies like Disney is very infamous for if if we work with you, we own the material. And so to decide whether to take the gig, which would be a huge resume win for me for the Sinfonietta, I called three players that we work with. I said, hey, before I accept this, these would be the terms. If I call you saying we've accepted this gig, what do you want to do it? What would you need to see changed?

Does it feel um, do you feel valued in it? Would you feel exploited or taken advantage of? Would you feel um like what would make it feel different? Should we take this gig or not? And I like, we amassed input and we've built enough of a trusting relationship with the players that like they would tell me. They would be like, you shouldn't be calling people for something under that band, they shouldn't be paying that much, and you're gonna endorse them underpaying by taking this gig. Or, oh no, that makes sense. And if we do the recordings from home and we do it this way and that way, we build this in, like that works great.

[48:33] Macy Schmidt: And so honestly, it's like creating a system where like I guess technically, like me and my colleagues and like those who are doing the hiring or like in power in the hiring position, creating a dynamic in an environment where like there is absolutely no fear in any way of negative retaliation or negative energy.

[48:52] Macy Schmidt: If somebody comes to us and says, this doesn't actually feel right, this doesn't fit your ethos. And like we ask them to be a mirror for us, and like this doesn't fit our ethos. I've gotten texts from players across the room in a recording session that like I accepted the job for, but I wasn't running, being like this thing just happened, someone said this to us. Could you come address it? And the moment the players we work with in the Symfonyetta stopped feeling like they can do that, I've failed. It's really a lesson in beautiful leadership. There's a humility here in recognizing that you're still learning as you continue taking on more opportunities and expanding. There's a real collaboration and understanding that truly what you're doing does not just happen through you.

It requires and is in need of every other everybody who's working with you. It like it only works because of that. And there's a real trust and beauty in like the real actual deep relationships that you've built, not just the art that you've collaborated on. That I think is an incredible model for people in this industry to look at um as because I really I hear it when I have in these spaces for sure, and certainly in rooms that I'm in as an artist, that like, oh, we just can't do it any other way. It's like, no, you can, you just won't, or you don't know that it even exists.

[50:11] Macy Schmidt: And there is a model of how are we having an infrastructure, a for-profit infrastructure where there is a quote unquote power structure where you do have a top person leading, and yet there is an actual like cyclical way of how are we sharing what that means? How are we all showing up so that we all feel seen? How are we allowing ourselves to really think beyond what we already know is like this this bar? Like, and I just I just really want to commend you for creating this space. And there is a reason, not just because of the art that y'all are creating, but there is a reason it continues growing. It's because people are responding to that value system. And there's a need, there's a real need, and you've created a space for people to show up for that, which is just congratulations. It's it's pretty epic.

[51:01] Macy Schmidt: That's why it's the love of my life. And you're right, I'm still learning. Yeah. I still completely mess up in it. And the thing I always tell the players, I'm like, if I screw up or we make a decision that doesn't feel right, and you like come just and tell us, that makes me feel loved, respected, and trusted because it means that you care trust in me and my value system that like I'm not gonna take that out on you. Like the concept of retaliation for speaking up in the industry is like could be its own three-hour podcast. It's just more longer. We can't even go there. Um and I've experienced that. I've been on the I've been on the retaliated against side of that, and it's just it it's it's lazy.

[51:32] Macy Schmidt: Yeah. But the other thing is I'm not afraid to if we were to wipe out the profits of the Sinfoneta because we wanted to take a gig that would maybe open some doors and after the daycare fund and the child care fund, and maybe eating some costs to make sure like someone gets sick before a gig and I have to have someone else out. I'm gonna pay them both out. I take a loss, fine. If the profit sitting in the symphonietas account goes down to like a wash and zero, as long as we've upheld the relationship with the players and the reputation of the company and the product in the industry, it's gonna build back. It's just gonna build back. And there's like a laziness and a scarcity mindset when you run a business that is people-based out of fear.

[52:05] Macy Schmidt: Yeah. Um, so it's something that we're still working on. I'm so so lucky that the people on my team that work with me share the ethos in lockstep that like they can be a ethical mirror. I mean, my COO, Colleen is my like right hand in everything. Um, like she's like a mirror to me, and like, are we upholding this all the time? And um, I could not do it without being surrounded by people who feel the same way.

[52:25] Macy Schmidt: Yeah. The Symphonetta did get involved with Barbie. That's been a big game-changing one. Um, after Spider-Verse, after the Spider-Verse Tour, I just thought, like, oh, well, Barbie should Barbie was in theaters during this. And I was like, Barbie should be a phone concert, and we've been all of an all-women orchestra. And so I cold emailed um some C-suite members of Mattel and was like, Hi, this movie that's in theaters. That's like the most valuable movie in Warner Brothers history. Um never have actually done this before, but maybe you could give me like the worldwide rights to it, and I could just like produce it with our orchestra. And they responded to me the same day.

[52:56] Macy Schmidt: And they are now, I mean, Mattel are our partners, we work with them every day. They are the most incredible company I've ever worked with. Um and we just built it and produced it. We did it at the Hollywood Bowl, we did it at Royal Albert Hall. And the thing that's really special about Barbie, which we're now that kind of prompted my colleague Colleen and I to spin off. And um uh I started a another company called Overture Global Entertainment. Overture's job is to kind of create a pipeline for jobs that the symphonyetta will end up being hired for. We go to movie studios and consult with movie studios on titles that they have and develop them into film concerts and license those out to commuters and buyers and et cetera. And it's like uh the goal is to have even more film concert jobs for the orchestras to get hired into.

[53:37] Macy Schmidt: So now those two things kind of happen in tandem. But Barbie specifically, Barbie's the only reason that right now to do China Sinfonietta or a Romania Sinfonietta, because it's kind of like vessel that globally is so known that it's giving us the excuse to um build those new ensembles. So um uh Barbie has given us a lot. I love it, uh continues to. We're touring like the world with it in the next few years and coming out with a few other films and titles that Overture is producing that the Symfonyetta gets to perform. And sometimes the Sinfonetta doesn't perform it, sometimes we license it into the San Diego Symphony or the Seattle Symphony or whatever it is, but um Barbie as a vessel to expand the symphonyetta around the world has definitely changed a lot of our lives.

[54:17] Jennifer Apple: I just I'm enamored by your audacity. Like I I mean, I think I have some of it. Like I'd call it Chutzpa, really. It's just like, you know, but like I think I have some of it, and then I'm just hearing who you're emailing, and I'm like, I don't know. Or like just it's really, it's really admirable.

[54:33] Jennifer Apple: If anybody is sitting here being like, yes, echoed, uh, what within you would you say when you are cold emailing somebody who would be your like highest recommendation?

[54:44] Macy Schmidt: Oh, that's such a good question. I have a couple. Never copy and paste anything. I've never written a cold email that I have not written from scratch, starting from the first word and crafted to who you're writing to. I mean, there's a lot of like cold email tips that are very you could assume, like the get to the point, people have limited time, all of that, but like really I just try to like show a lot of heart, have your shit together and know exactly what you're communicating or asking for, trying to convey, but also like remember the worst case scenario, right? The worst case scenario in that case was I either didn't get a response, which okay, am I gonna feel like embarrassed or butthurt? Like, no, okay, yeah, like is what's holding you back embarrassment that like a very famous successful CEO is gonna respond to you. Um, or that I get a response saying, like, these rights aren't available, or this is spoken for, or not open to this at this time. Okay.

[55:32] Macy Schmidt: Yeah. It's a massive, these are massive corporations, so there's a lot of reasons that can be the case. So keeping in mind the worst case scenario and never uh never recycling content. I think are the two things like I really try to keep in mind for it.

[55:46] Macy Schmidt: But um, but yeah. I love it. That's changed my life. And then for anybody who uh is wanting to go down the orchestrator path or get involved with the Sinfonietas, like what would be your recommendation for these folks?

[56:01] Macy Schmidt: Okay. Well, anybody who wants to get involved with any symfonietas, um, reach out to us. We have like open submission forms for musicians all over the world. Um uh our Instagram is at The Sinfonieta, and you can email info at the Sinfonietta.com. Uh everything is on the Sinfonietta.com, but we love being reached out to. We have a team of people who field them and you know, kind of slot um where everyone is based so that when opportunities come up there, we have everyone's information.

[56:26] Macy Schmidt: Um, as far as people who want to go down the path of being an orchestrator, it is such such tricky advice. It's advice that I was given that I really only was able to solve by starting the symphonetta, which is a not an easy lift. Um, but getting your music played by an orchestra and being in the room and actually hearing it is invaluable. And I I kind of skipped down on the school college experience earlier than most people did. Um, if you're a student and you're listening to this and you're in school and you have access to like your university orchestra, like I even even when I was in school, I did not utilize that. And that's like this gift of a safety net to try and experiment and grow and hear things.

[57:04] Macy Schmidt: And even like there's there's rarely an orchestration for theater program in your school, but like to take the initiative to reach out to an orchestra director, say, this is something I'm interested in. Can I have 15 minutes at the end of one of your rehearsals to do a reading session of some of my charts and some of my work? Can I record it for a personal portfolio? Like access to an orchestra that you don't have to pay tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for time with uh a massive gift.

[57:29] Macy Schmidt: Yeah. Um so that's something that uh I should have taken more advantage of that I think students should take advantage of. But um, there are all kinds of charity events and galas that you know, uh there are broader charity events. I mean, one of the first time I heard about orchestration was in a Broadway theater, there was like a Broadway cares event going on in the meetings cough. And I reached out being like, you and orchestra performing, do you need orchestrations? I'll I'll do it for free for charity. Um that's a really, really great way to workshop your material with a Broadway orchestra and a Broadway rehearsal room and then hear it in a Broadway theater.

[57:59] Macy Schmidt: Yeah. So there's a lot of ways for that but but really hearing your work in front of an orchestra is huge and um and asking for feedback on um charts is also a huge thing. I mean me asking that led to figuring out the pitfall that I think would have held me back detrimentally had I not yeah rectified.

[58:16] Jennifer Apple: So yeah I love that. You're such a fucking boss you're so cool and I just I really am so inspired by this space that you've created and the jobs that you've created and the expansiveness of bringing art and collaboration and music into all these other spaces that maybe people might not have uh thought to be possible and so I want to commend you for being a champion of that and the first unfortunately but hopefully not the last to do that.

[58:52] Jennifer Apple: And I'm so grateful that you're in this space to talk about it. So thank you.

[58:55] Macy Schmidt: Thank you thank you for having me.

[58:58] Jennifer Apple: Oh my gosh what a dream um for anybody who wants to follow along for your journey wants to continue the conversation or uh reach out to you what within your boundaries is the best place for people to find you.

[59:09] Macy Schmidt: Oh sure I mean I'm I'm pretty open and contactable like my shit's all over the internet but um uh on Instagram is usually where I put things I'm at at Macy J Schmidt um and my my Sinfonietta emails Macy at the Sinfonietta.com reach out say hi I love a cold email and I love to pay forward all the cold emails that people have answered for me.

[59:29] Jennifer Apple: I love it. Thank you so much for your time and sharing uh all of this with us.

[59:34] Macy Schmidt: Thank you for having me.

[59:35] Jennifer Apple: I'm a treat. That's it for today's episode. I hope you walk away with some fresh insights, feel inspired, and a little more empowered to take the next step on your artistic journey.

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