This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:02] Jennifer Apple: Hello, welcome to this week's episode of the Empowered Artist Collective Podcast.

[0:07] Jennifer Apple: My name is Jennifer Apple, and this week I talk to music director extraordinaire, Andrea Grody, all about music directing specifically in musical theater.

[0:16] Jennifer Apple: Now I know Andrea from my time with The Band's Visit.

[0:19] Jennifer Apple: And on this episode, she breaks down all the different types of positions on the music side of things, from music director to music supervisor to assistant and associate, orchestrator, arranger, conductor, you name it, we talk about it.

[0:33] Jennifer Apple: The overlaps and rules or not that are in place, the way each functions and the job that is required.

[0:39] Jennifer Apple: We also talk about learning through doing, discovering as you go, and advocating for yourself.

[0:45] Jennifer Apple: Andrea also shares some of her favorite show experiences and why, what it feels like to be nominated for an Olivier Award, and three super awesome pieces of advice that she wished she knew earlier.

[0:56] Jennifer Apple: Plus, she shares what brought her to create Word Waves, which is this visual musical language for singers.

[1:03] Jennifer Apple: Enjoy.

[1:06] Andrea Grody: Hi.

[1:09] Jennifer Apple: Hello!

[1:09] Andrea Grody: Hi Jennifer, how's it going?

[1:11] Jennifer Apple: You're so cute.

[1:12] Andrea Grody: Just sitting all I don't know, just you know, like there's some people who just like when you look, and I mean this is a compliment. When you look at them, you're like, I know what they were like when they were six.

[1:23] Andrea Grody: Like in a cut like when I was six.

[1:26] Andrea Grody: I don't know, but like in a classroom setting, like just like really like cute and sweet and smart.

[1:31] Andrea Grody: I don't know. Anyway, hi.

[1:34] Jennifer Apple: Hello.

[1:35] Andrea Grody: Hello.

[1:36] Andrea Grody: I'm good. I'm so grateful that you're here.

[1:39] Jennifer Apple: Um, but for anybody who does not know who you are, who are you today?

[1:43] Andrea Grody: Hi, my name is Andrea. My pronouns are she, her. I am a music director, mostly in musical theater. I live in New York City. Here I am at my apartment in Astoria.

[1:54] Andrea Grody: Um, I also am a voice teacher, and I'm training to be an Alexander Technique teacher.

[2:01] Andrea Grody: I created a visual musical language called Word Waves in the pandemic, which is related to all those things.

[2:07] Andrea Grody: I do a lot of arranging as well. That's my life.

[2:11] Jennifer Apple: Y'all, Andrea is um a genius. I'm gonna use it. I'm gonna put it on this podcast for all to know.

[2:20] Jennifer Apple: I mean, obviously, I don't know how one, you know, qualifies or quantifies that, except for like through science, which is not my speed.

[2:27] Jennifer Apple: About Andrea and I um we worked on The Band's Visit together, which is how I know her.

[2:33] Jennifer Apple: And when I say like the brilliance of your mind, um, you know, I've worked with many a music director in my life, and just the way that you think is so specific and so you and just brilliant.

[2:48] Jennifer Apple: Um, I'm really pumped for this conversation because I feel like um it's gonna go some really cool places that I don't even know where we're gonna go.

[2:57] Jennifer Apple: But I'm curious um to kind of go to like the beginning a little bit with you and where it all started, like how this was the path that you ended up going down versus say, you know, the performer path or any of those things. Like why this?

[3:14] Andrea Grody: Sure. Um, I've always been a storyteller through music. I grew up, you know, playing piano. I've been a singer my whole life. My brother and I would play games where we would give the other person a word and they would have to make up a song about it. Like this has been, I've been a composer since I was, you know, that age.

[3:34] Andrea Grody: Um, and I started college wanting to be a film composer. I did enjoy acting as a kid. I was about 14 when I decided that wasn't what I wanted to do with my life.

[3:42] Andrea Grody: Um, but film composing was the choice. I spent a summer in LA after my freshman year of college, and I discovered that the day-to-day life of being a film composer is really solitary.

[3:53] Andrea Grody: It's a lot of sitting alone in a room with computer sounds. And if you're gonna go into a field that has a dream where you have some image of what it's gonna look like, you have to expect that 1% of your life will be that dream if you're lucky.

[4:06] Andrea Grody: And the 99% around it will be the slog.

[4:09] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[4:10] Andrea Grody: And if you don't like the slog, you're in the wrong field.

[4:12] Andrea Grody: And the slog of being a film composer is sitting alone in a room with computer sounds, and I didn't like it.

[4:18] Andrea Grody: So I came back to college and spent a couple months not knowing what to do with myself. I had been music directing. Looking back, it feels really inevitable that this is what I did, but I didn't consider it as my career choice until that sophomore fall.

[4:30] Andrea Grody: And then I started pursuing that. My freshman year of college, I took a class with Michael Friedman for people who don't know him. He was a musical theater composer, the most brilliant mind I've ever met, who was a founding artist of The Civilians, has done a lot of writing um in musical theater both on and off Broadway and elsewhere.

[4:48] Andrea Grody: He wrote Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and I met him my freshman year. He came back to Princeton where I went to school my junior year with The Civilians to develop a piece, and I worked with them then.

[5:00] Andrea Grody: I ended up being his assistant following him around quite literally for four to five years, and it is from him that I got a career.

[5:09] Jennifer Apple: Amazing. Um the relationship that you had with him was what allowed you to continue forging this as your career, or was it more just like watching the way in which he worked was inspirational for you and then was like, this is what I want for myself?

[5:31] Andrea Grody: He wasn't a music director. So supporting him was what was exciting. I mean, I knew once I decided to go into it, I knew I wanted to do it.

[5:43] Andrea Grody: Yeah. Um, it's really satisfying to have a relationship that feels um symbiotic is the word I'm looking for, that feels symbiotic, where I was helpful to him and he was helpful to me.

[5:54] Andrea Grody: I kind of anticipated his needs a lot. I got to know him really well. He was I caught him at the right time. He was looking for someone just as he was really launching into a big phase of his career.

[6:04] Andrea Grody: So I got to get involved on a bunch of really cool projects. And I like helping grow something. I like being at the beginning that first summer, I worked on two shows, one of which I was with for five years on and off, as we did all these readings, and then there were two productions, and by the time it came to New York and was off Broadway, I was the associate music director.

[6:24] Andrea Grody: So I really grew up on that show.

[6:26] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[6:27] Jennifer Apple: For anybody who doesn't actually know what is the job of a music director?

[6:34] Andrea Grody: Great question. Um, the music director helps shape how the story is told in a musical through music.

[6:45] Andrea Grody: So I usually describe it these days as being the editor as if the composer were a novelist. I think a lot of people have an idea that editors help novelists write.

[6:56] Andrea Grody: And the novelist does the writing, but the editor is doing a lot of shaping. They actually have a lot to do with what happens.

[7:02] Andrea Grody: And it's kind of like that, except a book is flat on a page and a musical is three-dimensional. So there's like it really takes a villain.

[7:10] Andrea Grody: So there's so many people. So I mostly work in new musicals. That means I get involved pretty soon because if you're writing a new musical, when you first get to the point where you want to hear what it sounds like, you can gather a bunch of actors together, but if they're going to sing, if they're going to perform the music, they have to learn it.

[7:26] Andrea Grody: Someone has to play the piano. And that's when a music director comes in. So I'm often after a writer and a director, the first person to join a team.

[7:33] Andrea Grody: And from the beginning, is this key right? Is this casting choice right? Should this song be here? Should this song have this groove? Should this structure work this way? All of those dramaturgical questions that a writer and a director are talking about, I'm also talking about, and I'm looking at it from a musical perspective, but it's all in the context.

[7:54] Andrea Grody: It's musical theater. And a lot of times, as a music director, we're saying it's musical theater. There's music because we have to advocate for ourselves.

[8:02] Andrea Grody: But in this instance, I would say it's musical theater. We are using music to tell a story.

[8:07] Andrea Grody: So it's my job to serve the story and not just the music. If the music sounds nice but doesn't advance anything, it's not worth our time for the musical.

[8:15] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[8:16] Andrea Grody: So I'm keeping an eye on that. And it's a fun combination of big picture stuff like that. Like, does this work? And small things like, should this note be an eighth note or a quarter note? And I get to do both of those, which I really enjoy because I like the big picture, but I'm also a big fan of details.

[8:32] Jennifer Apple: Yes, you are.

[8:33] Andrea Grody: So that's the beginning. Then you develop a show for a while, you add musicians, you add further arrangements. A lot of things happen. When you get to a production level, you get to all these new kinds of questions.

[8:45] Andrea Grody: For example, we have to get from this scene to that scene, and the set needs 12 seconds to move. We need music there. That's incidental arranging, incidental music.

[8:54] Andrea Grody: And I've done shows where I have done the arranging for the incidental music, which means the composer has written the song and I take what they've done and make something up off of that.

[9:03] Andrea Grody: It's a lot of creation, actually. It's creation from a seed someone else has made, but it is still creation. And then there are times when the dance is changing, and as the dance changes, the music wants to change to accommodate that.

[9:16] Andrea Grody: If you ever see a show where the dancers do a dip and the music goes, be a dance arranger has worked with a choreographer to make sure those two things are happening at the same time. It was collaborative.

[9:27] Andrea Grody: So working in that way, making sure that the lights, everybody is really helping create the same piece. And then there's an orchestra and overseeing how the music gets orchestrated, which is the music has been written and arranged, but the colors haven't been set.

[9:42] Andrea Grody: Which instrument plays what note at what time? An orchestrator does that, and then I leave the orchestra. These days I'm often playing in the orchestra, and then getting to play and conduct.

[9:54] Andrea Grody: And when you see a show on Broadway and you see the conductor, that's the end of the journey for them. You're still plenty to do when you're running a show, but you get to celebrate all of that hard work of building it from the ground up, and then it's done.

[10:06] Andrea Grody: So there's kind of a release once the show gets going of like, we made it. Now we just get to have fun.

[10:11] Jennifer Apple: Yes. Is it possible that somebody does not necessarily grow in the way that you are talking about like you start with the piece from the beginning and then you come in later as a music director, right?

[10:25] Jennifer Apple: As in like perhaps there's somebody who is starting the journey and has curated the whole journey, and then you pop in later once the show is about to be in a, you know, its first, let's say, New York production, and you're now taking what prior music director has done and adapting it.

[10:41] Jennifer Apple: Like what are those situations when you might come in later in a process that's already kind of been in flux?

[10:47] Andrea Grody: Sure, there's sort of two things we're talking about. One is sometimes you replace people, and that happens because of scheduling conflicts because it's not the right match.

[10:57] Andrea Grody: And if that happens, you take what was there and you try and grow with it following your own instincts and what the writer wants.

[11:04] Andrea Grody: Then there's also the question of music departments what's the difference between a music director, a music supervisor, and associate music director.

[11:12] Andrea Grody: And I will say that this stuff is complicated because music departments aren't straightforward, people overlap all the time in what they do.

[11:22] Andrea Grody: It's a very collaborative thing, and we don't have a union that has specifically laid out rules for how these divisions should be made.

[11:32] Andrea Grody: There's a complication with music directors that our union, local 802, which is the musicians' union here in New York, AFM, the American Federation of Musicians is the national, but here we call it 802, covers performers and orchestrators and copyists.

[11:48] Andrea Grody: So if you're playing in an orchestra on a Broadway show, you are a union member, the union serves you. If you are the music supervisor of a show, which I'll say more about that in a second, where you've had a lot to do, but you're not actually playing every night, the union does not cover your work.

[12:04] Andrea Grody: And that creates a lot of complications for the people, but also it makes it difficult to define how to compensate that person, how to credit them. And every show has sort of different setups. I can say more about that.

[12:15] Andrea Grody: But let me go back to music directing and music supervising.

[12:19] Andrea Grody: Yeah. So music directing is I prefer to be called a music director, but these days in our industry, people have started using the term music supervisor as the head of the department, the auteur perhaps, the person who is overseeing what I was saying, how the music tells the stories in the dramaturgical conversations.

[12:38] Andrea Grody: You have people now who are music supervisors who also do a lot of arranging and orchestrating, and they feel they are best serving the piece not by playing it, but by sitting out in the house, listening, responding to the sound design, changing arrangements and orchestrations, doing more generative work, creating.

[12:56] Andrea Grody: And when those people are music supervising from the outside, they will hire a music director who works under them, who's still leading rehearsals and leading the orchestra and having a say, but the person the music supervisor has the main say.

[13:17] Andrea Grody: I haven't done as much orchestrating. And if you're going to orchestrate a show, you can't really run the orchestra and orchestrate. It's just there's not time. Orchestrating is a huge job.

[13:27] Andrea Grody: So if I were going to work on a show where I orchestrated, I would need someone else to run the pit because I would have to listen and just have time to work on the orchestrations rather than be leading rehearsals.

[13:38] Andrea Grody: But one of the things I think about in my career is how to balance being in the orchestra and playing and leading with my breath the way I like to do, while also serving the piece by hearing it from the outside, seeing it from the outside.

[13:52] Andrea Grody: It's a very different experience watching a show where you care about every beat and not caring about that.

[13:58] Andrea Grody: Yeah. I think about this sometimes when directors give notes, and I'm like, how did they see that? And I didn't. And I'm like, oh, well, first off, they're a different person, that's fine.

[14:05] Andrea Grody: But second off, they don't have to think about whether this transition felt like the right length of retard, which is a slowdown. Um, like it's just they don't have to worry about it.

[14:14] Andrea Grody: You can zoom out, and then you can go, oh, this is the theme I got out of this song, and does it feel good to go into the next scene? But when you're actually running the show, it can be hard to think those things.

[14:23] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[14:23] Jennifer Apple: So that's been on my mind lately.

[14:25] Jennifer Apple: Okay, so many questions.

[14:27] Jennifer Apple: One, and I I feel like I'm asking them like rhetorically, because I feel like I know the answer, but I for the sake of this conversation.

[14:33] Jennifer Apple: Is every music director also an orchestrator?

[14:37] Andrea Grody: So it's possible that is that because of skill set, is that because of interest? Is it because of both? Yes, all. Got it. Um, I could be an orchestrator. I think about this a lot. I could really fight to be an orchestrator, and I am interested in it, but it is not the thing I love most. And I feel complicated about that because I feel like I should. Yeah. And that's kind of how I feel about composing as well. I'm a composer, I've written a musical myself, and it was performed in the fall. How exciting. But I prefer music directing. I like being in the room with people, I like leading the orchestra. I love arranging. Orchestrating or not orchestrating, music directing and arranging. Arranging being like vocal arranging.

We've written a line, we want the ensemble to sing. What do they sing? How do they sing it? That's my favorite thing. Incidental music, doing the scene changes. I love that kind of stuff. Like working on the song and the structure and all of that. That's different than the orchestrating, which is that's those decisions have been made, which instrument is playing what. All of these jobs are different things. You can have a different person doing every bit of it. You can have a different conductor. Let's really break it down. Conductor, the person leading the orchestra, and that's all. That's usually music director covers conductor these days in musical theater. Then you can have a separate vocal arranger.

You can have a separate dance arranger. Dance arranging is a pretty specialized thing. It requires an impressive set of skills that I don't actually think I have. I know some great dance arrangers. Then incidental arranger, you could have a separate person doing that as well. You can have the separate orchestrator, and that pretty much covers it. But then if a show gets big and goes on, there are other productions, let's say like Wicked. Wicked has been running on Broadway for a long time. There's someone there running the show every day. That's the music director of Wicked on Broadway. They're not doing all the buildup work that I'm doing now. They are coming into a piece that exists and maintaining it.

And then there's probably a music supervisor who comes to auditions when they're hiring replacements, or when they're setting up a new production, helps tell people what the show is in that way. You might have an associate musical supervisor for a show that size, someone to help the music supervisor when they're unavailable, doing that sort of thing. You also will have an associate music director who's in the pit, music directing running the show itself, subbing in for the music director at times, helping give notes where they need to, supporting however they need to. So it can really expand as a show gets bigger.

[17:06] Jennifer Apple: You're touching on two things that I think is so important, which is why you're here. Like one, the idea that there could be a human out there who's like, I'm really interested, I'm really interested in the music aspect of things. I like to write my own music. I'm really a gifted musician. I think in this way, I love the creation of blah blah blah blah blah. And often I think so many of us are taught that there's really only one way to do it. So you're bringing up the possibility aspect of like all the breadth of what is possible in musical theater specifically for somebody to be involved in the music aspect of things, which I think is um not necessarily taught. I know even for me as like an actor, like, you know, I feel like I've learned as I've been on contracts and of big and small scale of like, cool, there's only the budget for a single human being to like run everything musically, and like they're working really hard.

And then there's like the larger, you know, productions that have more people who are touching more things and understanding who approaches who and how they work with each other and all of that navigation. But I wasn't really taught that, you know, how all of it works on the on that side of things and recognizing that there are so many ways to be involved. Um the second part of you might also have so many skills that can be used in so many different capacities in this land. And then it's either A on you to decide where your boundaries are of where you want to be using your skill set, or the way in which you decide that you can use all of them in all these different ways, and that's serving the piece.

Um, which I think both of these in my brain are like look at the possibilities that are available and um finding oneself in that and how you you can morph and grow, obviously, too, which clearly you are as well within your own self and your own work of like, oh wow, I've done this, I've realized I really love this part, or while I've done this, I've realized I could, but I'd rather not right now. You know, I have so many things to say. You brought up so many good things. I wanted to start with first you brought up what you're what you're taught. And I was just having this conversation last week. You get to like 25, 26, you get to a couple years out, and you go, Why didn't anyone teach me this?

Well, why didn't I learn this earlier? You can't. You cannot learn a lot of things until you do it. You learn on the job. You will never learn everything before because you have to just know what it is. You learn by doing. That is what experience means. So no matter how much someone tells you in advance, they can never prepare you for the job you're going to have because it is a unique job that you will have in that time. Even if there is a precedent, something about that precedent is going to change on the show that you have because every musical is unique. I've been comparing musicals to startups a lot recently. People who work as entrepreneurs understand the vibe of it's its own company. You create your own company culture.

There are things you can follow, precedents from the past, but then you have to figure out what works for you and your people and your goals. And that is true of every musical. And there are types that can be similar to each other. A musical that has principles and an ensemble dancing cast and a lot of production numbers is gonna be different than a musical like The Band's Visit that's quieter and more ensemble focused. But still each show will be unique nonetheless. And you can never learn everything in advance. And the process of trying to figure out what you have learned and sharing it with the next generation so they know more in advance is valuable and it is part of the great circle of knowledge.

But the second you give someone that information, they're going to grow beyond it, and that will always happen. So if you're at that point and you're saying, Why wasn't I taught this? Some of those things you could have been taught, some of them someone else will learn now because you're saying that, and some of it you had to learn it by doing it. And some of it is gonna continue changing too as the industry changes, you know?

[21:14] Andrea Grody: Absolutely. So the positions that are available now, I don't know, you probably do. Like I wonder if all of these were back in 40 years ago. I doubt they were. And this is my second point, which is especially with what I do. I just told you some of the complications of it. There aren't rules. Right. I'm making it up. And I know everyone says that, but like truly, I'm making it up. When I supervised my first tour, I was having lunch with another music director who's you know a couple decades ahead of me, talking about the rehearsals, and I was doing another show at the time. So how available I was was dependent on that. And I said, Oh, I'll be there for you know the teaching of the music, and then I'll take some time off.

And they said, Oh, you're not gonna put it up. And I was like, Am I supposed to? What am I doing wrong? No one told me what I was supposed to do. I was given a calendar, I had my own life, I had to just decide, and then I had to fight for that decision that I was making arbitrarily with the people who were hiring me to tell them what I thought was necessary, even though they might disagree because they want to spend as little money as possible. That part. So it's this very strange thing of like me saying, This is what you've asked me to do, and this is how much you're gonna have to pay me for the amount of work you're asking me to do, because I'm working full-time for however many weeks. And they're going, but really, can you do it in less?

And I'm like, But didn't you hire me? Yeah, and that's a very strange thing because they're really saying, We want you to come on, and you're gonna have to define it. And I have learned what those things are from talking to other people who have done it, and that's all there is. Yeah, there is no other resource for me than talking to the people prior. And now there are groups like Maestra who are starting to share some of this information. But some of these questions, I've been asking questions recently about like how royalties work for different music team members as a show gets licensed. That wasn't relevant for me until now when I've had a show that's getting licensed for the first time. And I won't say more about that because I don't know anymore. I've just learned that these are questions I should ask. And you kind of have to just discover it as you go and talk to people along the way.

[23:27] Jennifer Apple: Um, and speaking of the industry changing, one thing that's been changing a lot recently is the role of music assistants. So when I started working in the industry, I was Michael Friedman's music assistant, or I was his whatever you could call it, whatever you want. I started saying music associate because assistant feels small and doesn't honor the agency and the amount of responsibility and initiative that I was taking on those shows. So I fought for that title on all of the shows that I did with him. Now there's a complication in the Broadway contract with the union about associate music directors. I won't go into it. Everyone is confused enough about all the different jobs that having two titles that have the word music and associate is too confusing.

So we've been saying music assistants during lockdown. A bunch of us got together and I helped create a document defining what the music assistant job is, because what it has become is this repository for all of the music tasks that are happening as technology grows, as the expectations in rehearsal rooms grow. All of these places where the music assistant is just taking on the brunt of the work. It's supposed to be an entry-level job, it's not. They work full-time during the day, they work full-time at night, and they're paid off at minimum wage for a 40-hour week. Unsustainable. So we created a guideline of here's what you should expect. And here are all these other jobs that are often asked of these people that are specialized skills that need to be compensated separately.

And some of those places are saying this is a union job. And we have a union, and you have to honor that there's a union contract that exists to cover this work. For example, if you have a band at a workshop and someone is creating parts for them, they've written a drum part and someone has to make that part for them. That's copy work. Copy work is a union job, and a lot of music assistants have been asked to do copy work, and that's a very specialized skill. So we created that document 2021, early 2022. We put it out there. Now, it's a year later. I have seen a lot of music assistants use the word score manager, score supervisor, which feels more appropriate for what the job is. Yeah, but supervisor is a word that our industry has feelings about because it feels like a higher position, even though in film, score supervisor is a job.

And it's pretty much exactly what they do. And I think that that's a really smart change. And I really support score manager, score supervisor being the title. But that happened a year after we made this document. It's all in flux all the time.

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[27:33] Andrea Grody: This is also fascinating to me. I'm curious if you feel comfortable talking about being a woman in the industry.

[27:40] Jennifer Apple: Sure. That's my question.

[27:42] Andrea Grody: Great. I will happily talk about it. I did never I never wanted to define myself in that way. I think that being a woman in the industry has generally benefited me. Okay. More than it has been a problem for me. I have experienced all of the microaggressions that people experience. My favorite one is when people tell me I'm young. Um, there's a lot of variations of that. I've been told many times I can own a room, and it's a compliment. But it also comes from the expectation that I couldn't because I'm a I have a small stature. People are always surprised by how tall I am because I seem small, I look young. Um, and just this past summer, some you know, I was doing a show, we were masked in rehearsal, and then we were unmasked at the theater, and someone said, Oh, I thought you were so mature, but you look so young.

And I was like, I'm in my 30s, I'm an adult. I've been doing this for a decade. People telling me I look like I'm still in high school like two or three years ago. This is just what it looks like to be my age. Yeah. And we get a lot of mixed messages about that. Um, but okay, I'll come back to that in a second. I have gotten jobs because I was a woman. I am well aware of it. There are lots of opportunities that have come my way for other reasons that I will do my best to take advantage of when I have them. Because if the opportunity has come to me, it's my job to do the best job I can. I worked on a show about gender, and knew that I was going to get a lot of questions and comments about being a woman working on that show.

[29:16] Andrea Grody: And I went into it saying, I don't want to think that way, I don't think that way. That's not how I treat myself as a professional. I am Andrea, my colleagues are my colleagues. If there's something going on in our relationship, it's about us as individuals. And after a while of working on that show, I was encountering a colleague who was treating me differently because I was a woman, and it was very frustrating for me because that's what was happening. Everybody saw it, everybody knew it, people commented to me about it. I felt it, and I really did not want that to be the story because that's first off, that's what the show was about, but also that's not how I want to have to behave. And I never ended up having a conversation with them about it. But if we were ever to work together again, I would. At the time when I wanted to, we sort of separated as a team because the show opened. But that was probably the most obvious experience of that I've had in my career.

[30:13] Andrea Grody: Yeah. Because I mean, looking at it optically speaking, it's a very male dominated industry. Um I'm not even going to talk about like, you know, the intersectionality of other identities and race and all the other stuff at this point, because I don't have the stats in front of me and data is data and facts are facts. But um, you know, I wonder about you know, people referring to you as like a trailblazer in that kind of way because of your gender rather than your skill set. Um if you had any sort of feelings about it, but I think it seems like you know who you are, and that is what you stick with.

[30:58] Andrea Grody: Yeah, I also don't feel like a trailblazer as a woman because there are many other music directors who are women who are extremely successful. Yeah, and I could name 10 of them right now who are working on Broadway.

[31:10] Andrea Grody: Yeah. So the people who did the trailblazing to be the first woman doing these things are, if not one generation, two generations above me. I mean, Kim Grigsby, a huge mentor of mine, Linda Twine, there's so many incredible people. Mary Mitchell Campbell, like I could name tons of them. They're still working now.

[31:24] Andrea Grody: Yeah. And I have so many colleagues, you know. Maestra, again, I will give a shout out to Maestra George Stitch has created this extraordinary community of female and non-binary people working in music and musical theater. And there's so many of us. So I hope that my work helps define a career for who I want to be, but I don't feel that my identity as a woman is the dominant aspect of that.

[31:53] Jennifer Apple: Great. Um I want to talk about WordWaves because it's fascinating and it's a unique journey. And I want to hear how you came to develop it, what it is, um, and the way that you have found that it has been working.

[32:09] Andrea Grody: Sure. Um, WordWaves is a visual musical language. It's for singers and people who work with sung music, and it allows you to connect text, rhythm, and musicality in song. Let me say that in a different way. Um, I have been music directing for a long time, and I find it really interesting the way people learn, especially with music, the way that we make mistakes, which is consistent. There it shows how your brain works, and I find that fascinating. And I've been really interested in the differences between language rhythm and musical rhythm when we're singing. The basic question of this is what happens when you sing a stressed syllable on an unstressed musical beat.

[32:53] Andrea Grody: For example, syncopation. If you're singing a syncopated rhythm, as an actor, you want to emphasize that syllable, but as a musician, it's on that offbeat. What does that feel like? We've never had any better language for it than what I just said, where they feel like they're opposites, and it's like it adds up to something. But that's not actionable for a performer. For performers who don't think mathematically the way that we tend to teach music theory these days, it can be really challenging to learn for people who approach from the text first. They can feel like the musical rhythm is going against how they want to approach the text. And there's something to all of this, but no one has ever defined it because we've become very attached to traditional music notation and the way that we teach music theory as the way to think about music.

[33:38] Andrea Grody: Music notation, including a notation system that I have somewhat created, is incomplete. It is a map, it is not the actual art. The art is a physical thing that we do in real time. But we become really attached to this way of learning it. And we have robbed ourselves of the opportunity to develop other specific language to talk about it. So what I did was create a system for talking about language rhythm and musical rhythm specifically, how they work together in song, how you combine music and text at once. And I created this visual system kind of by accident because I knew this was an interesting topic.

[34:17] Andrea Grody: I connect or I relate a lot of how I developed it to my work on The Band's Visit, which is a very flowy show. I talk a lot about the ocean and water and waves when I talk about The Band's Visit, but also there's a lot of groove to it. There's a lot of rhythm. How do those things go together? I would talk about direction, I would say, go up with this, go through it, feel the flow.

[34:38] Jennifer Apple: I could say, I could say for sure that you did.

[34:40] Andrea Grody: A hundred percent. And that's one side. And then I was doing another show called SUFS, where a lot of the music is very syncopated and speech-like. So there's a real sense of musical groove, a real sense of rhythmic groove, but also there's a real naturalism to it. How do you put those things together? How do you know when you're looking at a rhythm on a page? This rhythm doesn't have to be perfect. And how do you know this rhythm really does want to be perfect? And sometimes that's the composer's choice or the performer's choice. But sometimes you can tell what are those patterns.

[35:10] Andrea Grody: And as I was trying to figure out how those things were working, because I'm a very systematic person, I started drawing, which is how I imagine it in my head. I just imagined like weights, little squiggles. And as I was figuring out what I was talking about, I realized that the visual I was making was the thing. It's like this is really where the gold is, where the treasure is. So I really dug into what the visuals meant, what I was defining, and I created a way of drawing rhythm, language rhythm, musical rhythm, they're different systems, but they follow the same rules.

[35:43] Andrea Grody: It's a pattern in time where you can draw the separate rhythms of the language and the music and compare them and then combine them in a way that feels intuitive because it's just matching how we feel rhythm in our bodies, and that feels actionable. So as a performer, if you have ever experienced someone saying, speak it like a monologue, now sing it like that. What? Sing it like what? What does that mean? Now instead, I could say something like, make your wave taller, add a dip here. You can do it. You can have different ways of thinking about what this direction is that aren't just feel it. Because feeling it is helpful, but what are we feeling? That's technique, and that's musical theater technique.

[36:26] Andrea Grody: And you also can't like recreate feeling. Like it's a thing that happens in real time and it happens organically, and it happens in response to something. You know, when I coach monologues, which I do often, um, I'd say that's like actually my forte is like coaching monologues and getting in on that, you know, how the amount of times that I've had a client that's been like, oh my god, that felt I'd be like, How did that feel? And they're like, it felt amazing. And I'm like, no, no, no, let's get specific. What felt amazing to you?

[36:58] Andrea Grody: Oh, I felt really grounded in it. Oh, I felt like I was really connected to my scene partner. It felt like I understood what I really needed. I don't know what I'm just giving arbitrary examples. But those things are actually tangible to the feeling, so that you can then aim to quote unquote recreate. It will never be the same, but aim to recreate what that feeling felt like. It will always be different. But by going to something that's actually tangible, you're giving it something concrete to head towards rather than this, like, oh, that felt great.

[37:30] Andrea Grody: Well, many things feel great. Where did you feel it? How did you feel it? What were you connecting that feeling towards? And I feel like this WordWaves is a similar thing. It's a tool that you are connecting to, whether it's a visual of, you know, an actual wave or a line or whatever, to the actual doing of the thing that you can then adapt accordingly.

[37:56] Andrea Grody: That's technique. That's craft.

[37:59] Jennifer Apple: Yep.

[38:01] Andrea Grody: A feeling is not replicable. And technique and craft are about making your art replicable.

[38:05] Jennifer Apple: Yes.

[38:05] Andrea Grody: Knowing what's coming, making it reliable.

[38:08] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[38:08] Andrea Grody: So I've developed a technique for acting in song.

[38:12] Jennifer Apple: I love it. Are you teaching this technique?

[38:14] Andrea Grody: Yeah, I just did a workshop a couple weeks ago up in Boston. I actually should probably schedule a workshop in the city. I haven't done one in person. I did a bunch of them over the pandemic over Zoom, but it's better in person because it's so physical. It's good to be in the same space.

[38:29] Jennifer Apple: But this conversation will help me remember to schedule that.

[38:34] Andrea Grody: Great.

[38:34] Jennifer Apple: You can listen to it every couple of weeks. You're like, oh right, this was my reminder.

[38:38] Andrea Grody: Here we are.

[38:40] Jennifer Apple: Um, are you comfy talking about some of your favorite projects that you've worked on?

[38:46] Andrea Grody: And this is like I hate that word for me when anybody asks me, like, what's your favorite? And like, I can't, it's not.

[38:53] Andrea Grody: So you can define that however you want to define it. Um, some of the more fulfilling, maybe that's a different uh way of thinking about it. Your career has run the gamut. And I don't know if it's like helpful to talk about some of the projects that you have done, or we can just talk more specifically about the ones that resonate still with you for certain reasons.

[39:14] Andrea Grody: Sure, I'll talk about a couple and feel free to ask questions about them. I mean, The Band's Visit is very special and will always be very special. It was the first show on which I held a position of that level of leadership. It was a beautiful, beautiful show. It was my first collaboration with David Yazbeck, who I just adore working with, and he's brilliant and kind, and that's a really special relationship.

[39:40] Andrea Grody: Um, it was a show that was a good match for me in a way that no one could have known until we started doing it. All the stuff we were talking about with flow, with just the way I approached the world as an artist worked well for that piece in the way that it did for everybody who worked on it. It was a real beautiful meeting of the minds.

[40:00] Andrea Grody: I think back to our off-Broadway preview process when we were really figuring out what the heck the show was. And at the beginning, it wasn't amazing. It was, you know, it had potential, but it wasn't there. And to David Cromer's incredible credit, our director, he crafted it bit by bit, and we all did it together. But again, everybody, everybody. We would have these dinner conversations of like, what is this? What are the musicians doing? What is happening?

[40:25] Andrea Grody: And we would argue, but we all respected each other, and we all knew we were working toward the same thing. And that's really satisfying because that's how you make a show like that balance like a feather in the wind. You need that kind of delicate touch of everyone working together. And that's really satisfying.

[40:41] Andrea Grody: The other thing about The Band's Visit is that because of the nature of the piece, because the musicians were playing instrumental music and what they were doing wasn't defined in advance. We figured it out together. I feel like I had a level of creation input that just isn't available on other shows because those decisions were things I got to be part of.

[41:04] Andrea Grody: And they're just fundamental to what the piece is. So I feel like I've gotten some level of ownership over the final product in a way that I just won't on a regular show where the composer hands you a full score, and that's what it's gonna sound like, even though of course it's gonna change a million times. But that that's it was a really special creative opportunity.

[41:23] Andrea Grody: And the show I'm working on now, SUFS that we did off Broadway. Also like a fantastic, beautiful show. It's like big, it's I mean, Shaina Taub is a genius if you're gonna be able to do that. And we had Rachel Sussman on our um our podcast uh season one.

[41:37] Jennifer Apple: Oh, Rachel Sussman, yes, the generator of the idea.

[41:40] Andrea Grody: She went to Shayna with the book.

[41:42] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[41:42] Andrea Grody: So that's just an incredible piece, but it's a different experience. And now that experience actually is changing as the show is developing. We've been doing a little bit more arranging, but it's just, you know, Shayna has written a score and there are scenes. So it's not the same thing with The Band's Visit where it was like, should the musicians be on stage here? Should there be a moment?

[41:59] Andrea Grody: Right. Yes. What do they play? What does it mean? And I remember fighting for a particular scene to say, like, you have to, it has to start with one musician and then grow because it's them sitting there and then saying, Well, I guess we're here, we might as well make some music, and that's what the show is about.

[42:16] Andrea Grody: And that was my way of voicing this. And we were all working through it together. But that level of creation is just not gonna happen on SUFS because Shayna is structuring the book very differently because it's a different show. So, but both incredible shows.

[42:29] Andrea Grody: Um, I worked on As You Like It this past summer in the park, and I want to give Public Works a shout out. Public Works is this extraordinary program created by Lear de Bessenay at the public theater, led now by Lori Woolery. Um, it's a community-based initiative. They have partner organizations all around New York City, and then they teach classes throughout the year and then do these productions in the summer that are like community pageants, which is a thing that used to exist, where they'll do a new adaptation of often Shakespeare, though they've done some other pieces like The Odyssey.

[43:00] Andrea Grody: They'll have like five equity performers, and then the community of over a hundred people from all around New York. They'll have cameo groups from other parts of the city, and they do these beautiful, joyous productions. It's the experience of working on it, the experience of seeing it, it stretches your heart, it makes you a better person. It feels radical and revolutionary in a joyful way, and As You Like It is I mean, I'm very, very biased, but it's just the best thing they've done.

[43:26] Andrea Grody: It's so beautiful, it serves the community. It's a great show. Shayna wrote that also with Lori, and Public Works just fills my heart.

[43:36] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[43:36] Andrea Grody: So that was this past year.

[43:38] Jennifer Apple: Thank you for sharing all of that. I'm just gonna humble brag on your behalf, also.

[43:45] Andrea Grody: Were you just like nominated for something fancy that you want to like talk about?

[43:50] Jennifer Apple: Or I was nominated for an Olivier Award.

[43:53] Andrea Grody: Yes, you fucking were.

[43:56] Jennifer Apple: Tell me about it.

[43:57] Andrea Grody: Congratulations, Mazel Tov.

[43:59] Jennifer Apple: Holy shit.

[43:59] Andrea Grody: Thank you. It's very weird. So I was nominated for The Band's Visit, which was produced over there this fall. It's interesting because I wasn't involved in the production. You know, I've done The Band's Visit off-Broadway, on Broadway, and the tour, and I was very involved in all of those. And this one was not our production. But the reason it happened is that the Oliviers, when they honor a best score, honor the composer and orchestrator and arranger as a team. I have never been eligible for an award as an arranger on The Band's Visit or as a music director. So there were lots of awards that came to my wonderful, beautiful, deserving colleagues on that show. And I was eligible for zero pieces of hardware, which is a frustrating thing to have feelings about.

But when you go through an award season, it's actually quite challenging to be around that because for every person who wins or gets nominated for something, there are at least 10 people who deserve awards and just don't have categories to be seen.

[44:57] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[44:57] Andrea Grody: It was interesting. I was just at the Obies on Monday, and the Obies don't nominate anybody, they don't have set categories, they just honor who they think should be honored. And it's beautiful because you learn about people you wouldn't have learned about otherwise. So I didn't know this was happening, and I was very surprised. I found out about it because I saw I had a missed call from my uncle, and I was like, why is my uncle calling me? I checked my text because I was in a meeting. He's like, congratulations on your Olivier Nom. And I was like, What? But it's exciting because it's just never been an option. So we were talking about music teams and how all the pieces function. And one of the challenges is people like to award what they can point at.

[45:35] Jennifer Apple: Right.

[45:35] Andrea Grody: This, you, that was good. I can see you literally. I will honor you. And music isn't like that. It's collaborative. I can't separate what people did. I can tell you moment to moment, but how to divide it, I don't want someone honoring just me. It should be a team experience. So I'm excited to be part of that.

[45:53] Jennifer Apple: Oh my gosh, I'm feeling over here. I'm so happy for you. And also it's just like one of those things that like I have a lot of feelings about award shows and you know and who nominates people and the politics involved in a lot of it and you know the optics around a lot of things and there's I have a lot of feelings about the benefit or not of award shows. However, in the structure that we are living in today where they do mean something in terms of like credentials and people somehow that is making validation for talent and whatever it's a huge, huge, huge fucking deal. And I'm so proud of you. And it's like many a year's worth of work that I feel like you probably just feel really seen for and what a wonderful gift. So congratulations.

[46:54] Andrea Grody: Thanks, a pleasant surprise.

[46:58] Jennifer Apple: Yeah, how cool. I love that. I mean this is like a larger conversation of like you know if these things keep changing just the amount of different types of category like we were talking about earlier like things need to keep adapting and it's like if we're gonna hold an award show that is the same that it was 40 years ago or 50 or longer when the world has changed and people have changed and jobs have developed and morphed and grown. My two cents on it is we need to continue adding and adapting categories very, very clearly. And like the fact that there's like not a casting category is like mind-boggling. You know what I mean? Like what like if we're gonna do this, like let's talk holistically about how this stuff gets made, you know.

[47:40] Andrea Grody: We're gonna have to do a whole other podcast about award shows because I've got so many feelings about this.

[47:45] Jennifer Apple: Oh my god, and gender, and I mean, like, oh my, we could like, yeah, we would be here for a whole new episode.

[47:50] Andrea Grody: We will.

[47:51] Jennifer Apple: Maybe we will.

[47:51] Andrea Grody: I'm done.

[47:52] Jennifer Apple: Let's do it.

[47:53] Andrea Grody: Yeah, let's do it.

[47:53] Jennifer Apple: Um, but for now, in this moment, um, mazel tov to you. That's really exciting.

[48:01] Andrea Grody: Yeah.

[48:02] Jennifer Apple: Um, as we begin to wind down our time, which is wild that this time has just zoomed by so quickly.

[48:08] Andrea Grody: It has.

[48:08] Jennifer Apple: Um, is there anything that you wish that you had known? And you kind of touched on this like earlier in that, like, you know, you could have been told and you will only really learn on the job, but blah, blah, blah. But like, is there anything that you really do wish you were told or taught or knew earlier, or someone you had met earlier? Like, was there something that you wish if you could that you had known when you were first starting out that would in theory save people some time or energy?

[48:38] Andrea Grody: I've got a couple tidbits of wisdom, if I can drop them.

[48:41] Jennifer Apple: I would love the dropping.

[48:43] Andrea Grody: The three things I usually say to people, the three pieces of advice. The first one is do the job you're doing now and do it as well as you can, because if you are always looking for the next thing, you will never be satisfied. Which is another way of saying it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. I feel fortunate to have been at the Tonys with a show that won a whole bunch of Tony awards, and it was an incredible night. And at the end, I took a cab back to the same apartment and went on living my same life. If that's your dream, it lasts a night. And then what are you doing with your time? Also, if every job you're doing is in service of the next one, you're never in the moment. So if you have a job, if I'm a music assistant and what I want is to be a music director, be the best music assistant ever. Learn, listen, pay attention, and do your job.

[49:31] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[49:31] Andrea Grody: Because you can feel when someone in the room is not really present with that experience. And if you don't build the habit of being present with that experience, you will never be present with other experiences, even if you're at the one that was the dream. Because you're not learning how to be in that moment. So that's step number one. Step two, your network is everything. People say a lot of things about networking, and it feels like climbing up. Networking is not climbing up, it is a web. You are looking for your matches. You are looking for the people who you connect with. And I make most of my choices artistically by the people. If someone I'm interested in working with writes to me about doing a show, I will say yes, pretty much point blank, if it's a person I want to work with.

And the people who I have, I think built a solid career off of relationships that have been meaningful to me that I have invested in. I really prioritized Michael's shows. I have collaborators who I feel very connected to, who I want to keep working with and I want to serve them. And whether they're gonna be successful or not, no one can say until they are, and it doesn't mean you made a right or wrong choice. Do you like it? Also, that's arbitrary too. Like, let's be clear. Like the success aspect of it is arbitrary. But absolutely. Are you satisfied? Do you like the work? Great. If you want to make a ton of money, that's kind of a different thing.

[50:47] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[50:47] Andrea Grody: Sometimes they're related and sometimes they're not. But I don't judge my show's success off of whether they've been huge hits, even though financially it does make a difference. But do I feel like I have been able to contribute in the way that's meaningful to me? And that's also specific in this field, especially to the relationships you have. There are composers who want that perspective from me, and those are the people I want to work with. And then the third thing is know what you want. And I say that with a caveat, which is that's always going to be changing. I often compare this to a tree. We grow towards our light. What is your light? As time goes on, you're gonna grow, and then you'll have to prune some branches, but you're gonna keep growing towards your light.

And what I was saying about orchestrating and composing and how I really like music directing and arranging, I've learned that over time. As I've done these projects, as I have been on a piece saying, oh, I feel like there's more I have to give, learning, oh, I want to be arranging, or oh, I want to do this, and then going, I actually don't. Like, I want the credit, the status, whatever it is, but I don't actually want to do that job, which is so empowering.

[51:50] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[51:51] Andrea Grody: To know I don't want it. Someone else can do it, great. If I'm ever feeling jealous of someone, I remind myself that I want different things than they do.

[51:57] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[51:58] Andrea Grody: And I come from a different place, so we just have different lives, and that's fine. Um, and the thing about know what you want is the example I always use is if you're an actor who also loves Arabic music, tell people that so that when they're casting a show like The Band's Visit, they hire you and then create a part for you, Georgia Bood, who was an actor who played fiddle and became part of our actor musician.

[52:18] Jennifer Apple: Yeah, and like if what you love to do is roles where you're like, you know, dancing and working with puppets, tell people so that when they're doing a dance show with puppets, they know to call you. I had an interesting jump in my career. You begin as an assistant, often the next step is to be an associate music director before you are a music director yourself. I was an associate music director twice, once on an off-Broadway show, once on a regional show, before I was music directing a Broadway show. And I did not know what I was getting into. And I talked to people and I had a colleague, a co-supervisor who was helpful, but I didn't know so much about what it means to run a Broadway show. And I didn't know what I didn't know and I didn't know how to find it.

And first off, that's a testament to experience mattering, but also I have made a real point of investigating what people know and how they know it and how we can help them learn along the way. Not saying learn it in school. But things like again, Maestra, uh Maestra's doing all these virtual technical workshops, creating this community. I try to reach out to people and meet them and see if they have questions. If someone is music directing a show on Broadway for the first time and they've come from a different side of the music world, there's lots about like what it is to run the company that is a running show that you can only learn there. And I try I try to be really transparent about money, all sorts of stuff like that.

[53:48] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[53:48] Andrea Grody: So I guess my advice for people is don't be afraid to ask those questions because sometimes the only answers are from people who have done it.

[53:56] Jennifer Apple: Yeah.

[53:57] Andrea Grody: And the second you learn from someone who has done it before, you can take that information and make something new. You can set a new precedent, you can fight for a new precedent, which sometimes takes time, we know. And that's what the journey is. So don't feel bad if you feel like you should have known more in advance. Because really it's about every new problem you face, every new challenge you face, how do you grow from it? Because that's also what the work is.

[54:23] Jennifer Apple: Correct.

[54:23] Andrea Grody: If the work isn't a new challenge every time, what are you doing?

[54:27] Jennifer Apple: Correct.

[54:28] Andrea Grody: All of that is so succinct, helpful, and so you.

[54:35] Jennifer Apple: I'm glad it feels succinct to you.

[54:37] Andrea Grody: No, I mean, succinct in that, like it's so specific and it's so clear and eloquent. Um yeah, you're just I adore you. I think you're, as I said at the top, like so smart and purposeful and creative, and um, you care so much about what you do. And arguably that is also something that I feel is lacking for so many, and that there perhaps feels like the obligation of like, well, I've spent this much time doing it, and so now I'm in it, and now I have to stay here. Um, and yes, that could be hard, and yes, that's a choice. Arguably you can make a new choice and try to pivot or find a different part of something that makes you feel a little bit more excited at this current moment in your life. But for those that are staying, it sometimes feels like the heart isn't fully there, and you're all your heart is always there, um, which I love and admire so so so much about you and the work that you do, and it's just palpable from everything that you work on that you are there because you choose to be there. Um, and there's agency in that.

[55:48] Andrea Grody: Um, so that's just that's just me complimenting you uh for anybody who wants to work with you, who is curious about what you do, who wants to keep up with you on your journey. What within your personal boundaries are the best ways for people to find you and do those things?

[56:04] Andrea Grody: I'm the only Andrea Grody on the internet. I'm not super active on social media. I do have an Instagram. I never post on it, so don't look for interesting things there. I have a website, AndreaGrody.com. If you want to reach out to me, my email's on there. Feel free to reach out. I've got an email. Um those are the main things. I'm on Facebook, but again, I don't mostly I'm posting like who wants to come and sing vocal jams with my friends, and I'll do that like once every two months. So mostly, you know, feel like you should come. It's really fun.

[56:35] Jennifer Apple: I haven't, I don't know why I haven't done that. I guess also because I Facebook is not where I tend to thrive.

[56:40] Andrea Grody: I'll arguably all social media is a place of a void for a lot of things. But yeah, I should definitely come. I'd love to do that. That'd be really, really fun.

[56:51] Jennifer Apple: It's great.

[56:51] Andrea Grody: Yeah. Um, thank you for your time.

[56:54] Jennifer Apple: Thank you for uh your insights.

[56:57] Andrea Grody: Thanks, thank you for your heart, as per usual for this.

[57:01] Jennifer Apple: Thank you for having me.

[57:01] Andrea Grody: Oh my god, that's it.

[57:04] Jennifer Apple: Yay.

[57:05] Andrea Grody: Yay.

[57:08] Jennifer Apple: Whether you are on the music side of things with your career or not, I truly believe that it is incredibly important for all of us to know how every aspect of the industry works. So I'm super grateful to Andrea for the time that she spent sharing all of this information with us to hopefully educate, dispel, and inspire us to really expand the way we think about all parts of the industry and the collaboration needed for all of us to create art together. If you like this episode, please like, rate, follow, and most importantly, review us on Apple Podcasts so that we can continue making this content for you and others who want to be tuning in. If you did not like this episode, just let it all slide.

If you are not yet doing so, please follow us on Instagram at Empowered Artist Collective, on TikTok at EmpowerArtist Collective, more on our website at EmpoweredArtistCollective.com. If you are seeking some merchandise or you want to be kept more in the know, both of those links are in our show notes. As always, I am so grateful that you keep on coming back, and we will be back again next week. Until then,