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[0:00] Jamie DuMont: I'm Jamie DuMont.

[0:01] Rob Russo: I'm Rob Russo.

[0:02] Jamie DuMont: And this is the Fabulous Invalid.

[0:15] Rob Russo: Hi Rob.

[0:16] Jamie DuMont: Hi Jamie.

[0:17] Rob Russo: How's it going?

[0:18] Jamie DuMont: Good, good. How are you?

[0:19] Rob Russo: I'm well.

[0:20] Jamie DuMont: So I have we have to clear something up.

[0:21] Rob Russo: Uh oh.

[0:22] Jamie DuMont: Because last week here, you may be wondering, which was fabulous, by the way.

[0:26] Rob Russo: What's coming?

[0:26] Jamie DuMont: I'm nervous.

[0:27] Rob Russo: Well, you should be.

[0:29] Jamie DuMont: You called 1776 one of your favorite shows.

[0:33] Rob Russo: Did you mean that?

[0:33] Jamie DuMont: Oh, it's brilliant. Absolutely, yeah. I think it's completely underrated.

[0:36] Rob Russo: Well, not underrated, it won Best Musical.

[0:38] Jamie DuMont: Why? Why do you what why do people love this show? I don't get it.

[0:42] Rob Russo: Oh, it's explain it to me.

[0:44] Jamie DuMont: I mean, I I don't understand what people don't love about it. Peter Stone's book is absolutely brilliant. He like dramatizes the process of America becoming a country through this the lens of these like founding fathers who we never see as like real people with like personalities and flaws and okay.

[1:03] Rob Russo: Outside of he plays the violin, name one other song from the show.

[1:06] Jamie DuMont: Oh, but that's a cheap.

[1:08] Rob Russo: Come on.

[1:08] Jamie DuMont: Come on. That's not what a good one. Do it. Do it. I dare you. Do it.

[1:11] Rob Russo: Sit down, John.

[1:13] Jamie DuMont: Sit down, John. Sit down, John. For God's sake, John, sit down.

[1:17] Rob Russo: Okay, get closer to your mic, because I'm using this shit.

[1:20] Jamie DuMont: I am. I did 1776 in high school, and I played Samuel Chase, of course. Rather uh rotund uh delegate from Maryland.

[1:27] Rob Russo: Did you wear a fat suit?

[1:29] Jamie DuMont: Uh I did. It was built into the costume.

[1:31] Rob Russo: Yeah.

[1:32] Jamie DuMont: Uh it was very hot. It was terrible.

[1:36] Rob Russo: Um that's what we do here. Funny how you've grown into this role so fast.

[1:40] Jamie DuMont: I have the solo line song. One auto will open up a window in that song, which is the famous uh I'm usually sleeping by that point.

[1:48] Rob Russo: It's the opening number.

[1:50] Jamie DuMont: My point exactly. Jesus. No, and then of course there is uh that incredible song. Um I was about to say an act two, but it's it's You're looking it up.

[1:59] Rob Russo: I am. You're looking it up. I said name a song, and I didn't say Google it.

[2:03] Jamie DuMont: Molasses to Rum, which you couldn't recall that on your own.

[2:08] Rob Russo: That doesn't count. Don't give me that face, Rob Russo. John Cullum was incredible.

[2:13] Jamie DuMont: John Cullum is incredible in everything.

[2:15] Rob Russo: That doesn't make it a great show.

[2:16] Jamie DuMont: I think it's a great show.

[2:17] Rob Russo: Oh, it's a snooze fest. I don't understand you people.

[2:21] Jamie DuMont: Well, obviously.

[2:23] Rob Russo: That's the only logical answer.

[2:25] Jamie DuMont: But I did like your you that was very good, you may be wondering. I mean, I just have to pick at that one point. But I I thought that was very good.

[2:31] Rob Russo: So thank you.

[2:32] Jamie DuMont: Yeah, it's a fun little, you know, trip down memory lane.

[2:36] Rob Russo: Not memory lane. I don't know. Whatever it is. Let's go. Now let's eat. Come on. Come on, Mr. Chase. Let's grab a burger.

[2:41] Jamie DuMont: Wait, but I love that. Um yeah, I just wanted to confirm that it did win the Tony Award in 1969 because now I started to question myself.

[2:47] Rob Russo: Yeah, but I know. But Follies didn't win the Tony Award a few years later.

[2:53] Jamie DuMont: Later.

[2:53] Rob Russo: Yeah.

[2:54] Jamie DuMont: So it's not a good one.

[2:55] Rob Russo: You know, nothing's perfect.

[2:56] Jamie DuMont: Fraud endeavor.

[2:58] Rob Russo: What's a flawed endeavor?

[2:59] Jamie DuMont: Except it's a fraught endeavor.

[3:00] Rob Russo: Best musical. You know, I mean looking back endeavor.

[3:03] Jamie DuMont: Looking back historically. I mean you're Samuel won best music.

[3:06] Rob Russo: Who talks like that?

[3:07] Jamie DuMont: A fraught endeavor.

[3:09] Rob Russo: It is. No, but looking back, I mean, it's you don't always get it right. It just like they write overtures before the show opens, so they don't know which songs are gonna be the hit songs.

[3:19] Jamie DuMont: You know, in the moment, two gentlemen of Verona just hit in a certain way that overtook Follies, right?

[3:26] Rob Russo: I mean.

[3:27] Jamie DuMont: I still don't get that.

[3:29] Rob Russo: Yeah, well, because we weren't Did you see it at the Delacour?

[3:34] Jamie DuMont: I didn't see it at the Delacour.

[3:35] Rob Russo: They did it in DC at the Shakespeare Theater. Um, and it was fun.

[3:39] Jamie DuMont: Yeah, it's a fun, it's a it's a cute show. It's not I love that score. In fact, I think it's a better score than Hare, which is probably a controversial take.

[3:45] Rob Russo: Because it's actually a score, it actually tells a story.

[3:47] Jamie DuMont: Hair is like a jumble of songs.

[3:49] Rob Russo: All scores don't need to tell a story, Rob Bruce.

[3:52] Jamie DuMont: Well, all scores don't need to have, you know, 15 memorable songs, Jamie, 1776, name me some songs.

[3:59] Rob Russo: You know, it's like I went back once, uh, did a deep dive into theater talk. Every season they do a Tony episode.

[4:06] Jamie DuMont: Well, they used to, because they don't exist anymore.

[4:07] Rob Russo: And one day I was doing some project on just needed noise. So I listened to Michael Riedel and um Susan Haskins.

[4:16] Jamie DuMont: Mm-hmm.

[4:16] Rob Russo: Yeah, um, host this episode from like, you know, 2010 to 2018. And every year they would talk about best musical. They'd get to the category, someone would name a show that was like celebrated an artistic achievement, and every time Michael Reader would say, Well, hum me a song. Hum me the song from the band's visit, or hum me the song from whatever.

[4:35] Jamie DuMont: And I just would sit there and go, that's not what makes a great show a great show, being able to hum a song.

[4:41] Rob Russo: It's cheap.

[4:42] Jamie DuMont: Are you equating me to Michael Reedel?

[4:46] Rob Russo: Not you, but the question and the point of view, yes.

[4:49] Jamie DuMont: The future of our show hangs in the balance on how you answer this next question.

[4:56] Rob Russo: I'm just gonna show you.

[4:57] Jamie DuMont: No, well, no, Stephen Santheim himself, uh, because he's a font of wisdom, once said that when someone says something isn't memorable, uh, isn't uh hummable, what they're saying is that they don't they haven't uh uh uh the internalized it yet, right? That means that it's not familiar to them. That's what they're really saying, because everything's hummable.

[5:17] Rob Russo: Coming from the man who wrote hummable mommable melody.

[5:20] Jamie DuMont: Right, exactly. Write more work hard.

[5:22] Rob Russo: Yeah, yeah. Leave your name at the door, yeah, less avant-garde.

[5:25] Jamie DuMont: And what's brilliant about that moment is that that producer who's saying, um, you know, why can't right? He's regurgitating to them almost immediately while criticizing them that that the song isn't hummable. He's singing it back to them.

[5:40] Rob Russo: Which means that it is hummable.

[5:44] Jamie DuMont: And not only that, but that melody ends up being their hit song in their musical years later.

[5:49] Rob Russo: We started out like a song, started out quiet and slow with no surprise.

[5:55] Jamie DuMont: Um, so it's a be pointed out a key, brilliant moment of Stephen Sondheim. Not only was he poking fun at himself, but he was also poking fun at his critics, and in in the process proving them wrong by repeating a melody that is clearly hummable.

[6:11] Rob Russo: That's great.

[6:12] Jamie DuMont: That's swell.

[6:13] Rob Russo: The other stuff is well.

[6:16] Jamie DuMont: It isn't every day I hear a score this strong.

[6:18] Rob Russo: The fellas if I may, there's only one thing wrong.

[6:21] Jamie DuMont: There's not a tune you can hum.

[6:24] Rob Russo: There's not a tune, you go bum bum bum that up. You need a tune to go bum bum bum it up. Give me a melody.

[6:31] Jamie DuMont: Why can't you throw them a crumb?

[6:34] Rob Russo: What's wrong with letting them tap their toes a bit?

[6:37] Jamie DuMont: I'll let you know what Stravinsky has a hit. Give me some melody.

[6:42] Rob Russo: I know it's not that kind of show.

[6:46] Jamie DuMont: But can't you have a score that's sort of in between? We'll play a little more, show you what I mean.

[6:52] Rob Russo: Wants to live in New York. I always hated the dirt, the heat, the noise, but ever since I met you, I play some noise, maybe it's me.

[7:02] Jamie DuMont: But that's just not a humm-a-mum-ma-ma-mummable melody.

[7:06] Rob Russo: Right Mo Icon. Leave your name with a girl. Less avant-con. Leave your name with a girl. Just write a play an old Mellow.

[7:15] Jamie DuMont: Did you get it?

[7:24] Rob Russo: Thank you for clearing that up for us, Ruff. For an episode that doesn't have Jennifer Leslie, this has the most singing.

[7:31] Jamie DuMont: And the most like the host attention, too.

[7:34] Rob Russo: A lot of tension. Dramatic moments.

[7:37] Jamie DuMont: I think Aaron is saying it's time for the girls to come back.

[7:40] Rob Russo: Yeah, I think so too.

[7:46] Jamie DuMont: This week we are delighted to be joined by Ted Sperling and John Miller, the music director and artistic advisor, respectively, of the new NYU Broadway Orchestra.

[7:55] Rob Russo: An exciting initiative we'll learn more about in our discussion. Ted is a musical director, supervisor, conductor, arranger, composer, orchestrator, extraordinaire, with 15 Broadway credits under his belt, including the current revival of My Fair Lady.

[8:09] Jamie DuMont: And John is a legendary bass player, music coordinator, and occasional actor and vocalist who has worked on more than a hundred and thirty Broadway shows, which I can't wait to talk about. Ted, John, welcome to the Fabulous Invalid.

[8:21] Ted Sperling: Welcome.

[8:22] John Miller: Thank you.

[8:23] Ted Sperling: Glad to be here.

[8:24] Jamie DuMont: Well, for our listeners who have likely not heard about this program yet because it is so new. I was wondering if one or both of you could give a short description of the NYU Broadway Orchestra.

[8:32] Ted Sperling: Ted, you go first. It's a course that we're offering at NYU for undergraduates and graduate students through the Steinhardt Conservatory branch of NYU. And the idea is to train future Broadway pit musicians and give them a leg up. One of the functions is to train the orchestra to actually play productions at NYU. Because there was a desire on the faculty's part at NYU to up the level of the Broadway pits that they were for their own shows. So they get an opportunity to prepare one big project and actually perform it in front of an audience. Then we have these reading sessions like we did each semester we do at least three shows in contrasting styles. And as part of that, um invites people who have played those shows on Broadway to come and sit in with the kids and play alongside them, listen to them, give pointers, share their stories.

[9:23] John Miller: Yeah, it's uh I think from the response that we get from the kids, hearing the the kids have told us that the mentors who were, as Ted said, sitting next to them playing and telling their stories is invaluable to them because we try to have the mentors tell what their journey was, starting from music school to being freelance musicians in New York City, doing tremendous amount of different uh work and doing Broadway shows as well. So I think that's something that the kids have shared with us that's extremely meaningful and helpful to them. And it's the kind of thing that probably only can happen in New York, and with somebody like John who knows every single person's ever played a Broadway show.

I mean, we literally had the original drummer from Dream Girls, not just from the original Broadway production, but from all the early workshops of that show. And he could tell us about how that show developed, how they started actually with just a drummer in the room, not even a pianist. And then he could sit down at the drums and demonstrate for our student drummer exactly how to play these tunes and then listen to our student, do them and give him pointers. But the idea isn't for them to necessarily be wowed by how great these Broadway players are, and more with the Broadway players sharing with them what they've learned. So it's sort of the realities of what actually goes on. Playing in a pit is not all glamorous, it's hard work, and these are the things that they learn.

And part of the class is we talk to them about the reality of what it's going to be like the moment you leave college, and how to best maneuver the minefields and how to best put yourself in positions where people will know about you and talk about the real hardcore realities of freelance work as musicians. And also how to take advantage of their college time to prepare for the real world. I wish that I had had some different training when I was in school that would have made me feel more confident entering the workmark working place.

[11:34] Jamie DuMont: How does one get a job in an orchestra? I'm out of college, I play an instrument. How do I how do I book a gig?

[11:41] John Miller: Well, everyone might give you a different answer.

[11:45] John Miller: My view is that you just must be out there playing all the time, regardless of what it is. You know, us musicians, we do not have agents.

[11:58] John Miller: We do not have anyone who makes money trying to get us a gig.

[12:02] John Miller: And freelance work, other than the real strict classical world, or maybe the world of Radio City, we do not have auditions.

[12:13] John Miller: So if we don't have agents, if we don't have auditions, how does it work?

[12:18] John Miller: My view is it works that you just play everything from a street fair that someone asks you to play to a restaurant to as much out there playing and not just necessarily practicing in your room with the metronome because we never know who we're gonna be playing with, and every other musician is our agent, as far as I'm concerned.

[12:46] John Miller: And that's how the network works.

[12:47] Ted Sperling: I think so.

[12:48] John Miller: It's a lot of bad personal recommendations, yeah.

[12:51] John Miller: And I think if you are very skilled and you seem like a good person, people recognize that.

[12:56] John Miller: We're always scouting for new talent.

[12:59] John Miller: And so you want to make a mark, you want to impress people on the first go-round.

[13:04] Ted Sperling: Right.

[13:04] John Miller: And that we're trying to make sure they make a good first impression, that they don't blow their first chances.

[13:09] John Miller: Um, and we talked to them about all the extra stuff that goes into impressing somebody, it's not just your playing.

[13:16] Ted Sperling: No, it's how you present yourself, it's how you, it's what you look like.

[13:19] John Miller: I mean, not what you look like, but it's how you're dressed.

[13:22] John Miller: It's a lot of things, yeah.

[13:24] John Miller: And that doesn't always get taught either.

[13:27] John Miller: I wish somebody had taught me in college the reality of what life is like when you leave those four walls, because it's not, I don't think it's taught.

[13:35] Ted Sperling: Also, I would say that then translates to the playing too.

[13:40] John Miller: Right.

[13:40] John Miller: I found in these rehearsals I've been having recently where we actually are right now preparing for a concert.

[13:46] John Miller: So it's one thing if we're just reading a show for the interest of reading through Dreamgirls or reading through Hairspray.

[13:53] John Miller: Um, but right now we're doing the program that has a lot of different kinds of material on it, and we're gonna be in front of an audience, and I want them to shine.

[14:00] John Miller: Um, so I'm trying to inspire them to do that extra bit of effort and invest more of themselves in the playing so that it's not just the bare minimum, because the bare minimum won't get you very far in the real world either.

[14:14] John Miller: But even in the world of NYU and in our performance, I want to make sure that they shine and that they are filling the music with personality, with joy, with intensity, with drama.

[14:25] John Miller: And that seems to be fairly new information for some of them at least.

[14:30] Rob Russo: And this concert that you're talking about is this the one on April 10th?

[14:34] John Miller: Yes.

[14:34] John Miller: And this is what we were sitting in at a rehearsal for.

[14:37] Ted Sperling: Correct, correct?

[14:38] Ted Sperling: Normally in each semester, we'd be devoting a big chunk of rehearsal time to preparing the main stage show.

[14:44] Ted Sperling: And this semester they chose a show that had a small orchestration, so not that many students were going to be involved.

[14:50] Ted Sperling: So they decided another way of keeping everybody active and interested would be to prepare a concert.

[14:57] Ted Sperling: And so we're doing a very ambitious program.

[14:59] John Miller: You mentioned Gypsy, we're doing the Gypsy overture, which is very difficult.

[14:59] Ted Sperling: Very difficult.

[15:03] Ted Sperling: You know, it's obviously arguably one of the greatest overtures ever written.

[15:08] John Miller: That's not arguably, it is.

[15:11] Ted Sperling: Nobody's arguing there.

[15:13] John Miller: Yeah.

[15:13] John Miller: But sitting and listening to you guys break it down section by section, like you did, for somebody even from myself who listens to it quite frequently, it was a whole new experience hearing all the pieces.

[15:27] John Miller: Not to mention that you, Ted, gave a bit of history about a certain section that I think is quite famous.

[15:34] John Miller: And I want to say it was Seymour Red Press that played it, but I think I have that incorrect.

[15:38] Ted Sperling: Is that Seymour did play Red?

[15:40] Ted Sperling: We call him Red Press.

[15:42] Ted Sperling: He did play that show, and he does have a solo that's featured in the overture.

[15:45] John Miller: Oh, that's what you were talking about.

[15:46] John Miller: Okay.

[15:46] Ted Sperling: Yes, I was trying to explain to there's a saxophone player who was brand new to the program this spring, so I didn't even know him.

[15:51] Ted Sperling: And this was my first rehearsal with him.

[15:53] Ted Sperling: And he actually didn't even play this solo.

[15:56] Ted Sperling: It was just no one played it, and it went by.

[15:58] Ted Sperling: And I asked him, I said, Do you have this in your music?

[16:00] Ted Sperling: And he said, Yes, but it's a very quick instrument change, and I didn't make it.

[16:04] Ted Sperling: And so I said, Well, you gotta make it because when you listen to the album, it's such an iconic moment, and we actually know the guy who played it.

[16:11] Ted Sperling: So we have to honor, you know, his legacy.

[16:48] John Miller: So that little bit of history, that little story about Seymour Red Press, um, that was one of a few stories I heard you tell.

[16:54] John Miller: You talked a little bit, you also recorded, uh, it's not recorded, you rehearsed Anything Goes, the overture.

[17:01] Ted Sperling: Yes.

[17:01] Ted Sperling: And there was a moment where you stopped and you gave a little bit of history about who Cole Porter was, what his sort of motivation was, how he was unique.

[17:09] Ted Sperling: You talked a little bit about, um, you know, Irving Berlin and the other popular composers of the time, and I thought that's part of the program that these kids may not expect that they're getting, right?

[17:21] John Miller: But that's hugely important.

[17:23] Ted Sperling: I agree.

[17:23] Ted Sperling: I feel like research is discounted these days.

[17:28] Ted Sperling: I see that with singers too.

[17:29] Ted Sperling: They come to people like me for help finding audition material.

[17:33] Ted Sperling: It's like, guys, go to the library.

[17:36] Ted Sperling: Can't you do this research too?

[17:38] Ted Sperling: You're gonna find more unusual stuff that way, and it will be unique to you.

[17:42] Ted Sperling: I did that when I was in college, I took full advantage of our college library, and I listened to cast albums.

[17:48] Ted Sperling: I read all these books about shows.

[17:50] Ted Sperling: And if you're gonna make this your specialty, you've got to be an expert.

[17:54] John Miller: Well, particularly if you're at a school like NYU that's in New York City, we have one of the great performing arts libraries in the country, if not in the world, right?

[18:02] John Miller: It's all there for you to get to.

[18:06] Ted Sperling: And I think knowing the history of how things developed is important, and I may be a little bit, you know, fuddy duddy-ish in some respects that way, but I think you can appreciate contemporary shows better if you know how they got there.

[18:18] Ted Sperling: And you can, um, see so this concert is actually devised to trace the changing styles of orchestration from Show Boat in 1927 to Hairspray.

[18:29] John Miller: And do you do it through overtures or do you do it?

[18:31] Ted Sperling: We're doing primarily through overtures, um, but you know, certain shows don't really have overtures, and overtures are really hard.

[18:38] Ted Sperling: Um, I thought it would be nice to have some singing as part of the program because Broadway is so much about singing.

[18:43] Ted Sperling: Um, we have two great great soloists joining us, Lindsay Mendez, who recently won the Tony for Carousel, and Capathea Jenkins, with whom I've done many, many concerts over decades, one of my favorites.

[18:54] Ted Sperling: So they're gonna be our guests, and we're also gonna have some students from the NYU program joining them.

[19:01] Ted Sperling: Um, so it will be interspersed overtures and solos.

[19:04] John Miller: You know, one of the interesting things when I see Ted tell these stories that are fascinating to me, and I watch the kids.

[19:17] John Miller: And some of the kids, when Ted will say, he'll mention Ethel Merman to make a particular point.

[19:25] John Miller: And we'll see that some of the kids are really sincerely smiling, getting it.

[19:31] John Miller: They have done the research, they know the name Ethel Merman, they know what Ted means and stuff, and they really got it.

[19:38] John Miller: Some of them, and this is just my interpretation, some of them kind of nod out of respect to Ted, and some of them are completely utterly blank.

[19:49] John Miller: When the mentors come in, I can't tell you, Ted, how many times the mentors, after the thing is over, call me and say they were riveted by the stories that Ted was saying.

[20:01] John Miller: Because from their world, everything Ted was saying completely clicked for them.

[20:07] John Miller: They understood it all.

[20:09] John Miller: So it's great that these kids are hearing these things, and it's just sort of interesting, as Ted says, how many of them are really doing the research.

[20:26] Ted Sperling: It really does.

[20:27] Ted Sperling: And for me, I always like to imagine putting myself in the writer's seat.

[20:32] Ted Sperling: Somebody wrote these notes.

[20:33] Ted Sperling: Somebody wrote the songs that turned into these overtures.

[20:36] Ted Sperling: Somebody then orchestrated them.

[20:38] Ted Sperling: Why did they make the decisions they made?

[20:41] Ted Sperling: How can we bring to life what was in their heads?

[20:45] Ted Sperling: We talked about first days of orchestra rehearsals for shows and how nervous-making it can be for the composer and the orchestrator to hear their stuff on the orchestra for the first time and how exciting too.

[20:56] Ted Sperling: But we really do break things down.

[20:59] Ted Sperling: I rehearse sections, you know, just the strings by themselves, or just the brass by themselves, or just the rhythm section, and then build it back up and try to explain from an orchestrator's point of view why it is the way it is, and how they can make it come to life more, if they understand that.

[21:13] John Miller: There was a moment when you were going through the Anything Goes overture.

[21:17] John Miller: And there was a moment where it's supposed to sound like a cork popping.

[21:22] John Miller: And I don't think anybody in the room knew that until you told us all.

[21:26] John Miller: Even I didn't as a big fan of that.

[21:28] John Miller: It never occurred to me that that was what was going on.

[21:32] John Miller: So there has to be a ton of things like that in all scores, in all music that you're working on.

[21:39] John Miller: Um, that where there are these little, what's the term everybody uses?

[21:43] John Miller: Easter eggs, these little hidden things.

[21:46] John Miller: Um, I still don't really know what that term means.

[21:48] John Miller: But I think it means that there's little surprises and things you wouldn't know about.

[21:53] Ted Sperling: And it, I would assume that's universal to everything in music.

[21:57] Ted Sperling: It's true, I'm running out of time.

[21:58] Ted Sperling: I because we have this April 10th deadline, we only rehearse once a week.

[22:01] Ted Sperling: But I could so easily spend an hour on 20 measures, you know, and we could get it better and better, and I could, you know, but there's a limit, so I'm trying to choose my moment.

[22:11] John Miller: Pick your battle.

[22:13] Rob Russo: Rob and I went and listened to a rehearsal of the NYU orchestra, and here's a tiny bit of Ted teaching the class.

[22:21] Ted Sperling: So what song is this?

[22:24] Ted Sperling: You're the top, right?

[22:26] Ted Sperling: So if you had to pick a drink that goes with your top, what would it be?

[22:32] John Miller: What?

[22:34] Ted Sperling: Champagne, right.

[22:35] Ted Sperling: So don't you hear the champagne corks popping in it?

[22:38] Ted Sperling: Right?

[22:39] Ted Sperling: He lived in a world of champagne.

[22:41] Ted Sperling: He lived at the Waldorf Astoria.

[22:42] Ted Sperling: Let's do the You're the Top section.

[22:44] Ted Sperling: Let's do a little slow motion just to get it accurate.

[22:47] Ted Sperling: One, two, one, two.

[23:01] Ted Sperling: A couple of things.

[23:02] Ted Sperling: Anyone hear wrong notes from 140?

[23:04] Ted Sperling: Let's do it a little faster.

[23:06] Ted Sperling: 125?

[23:08] Ted Sperling: One, two, one, three.

[23:32] John Miller: So how long is a class?

[23:34] Ted Sperling: Three hours.

[23:34] Ted Sperling: And it's once a week?

[23:35] Ted Sperling: Once a week.

[23:36] Ted Sperling: Three hours.

[23:37] John Miller: And so that material that you were working on last week when we were in your class, were they all picking it up for the first time, or had they worked on any of it before?

[23:47] Ted Sperling: I think we were rehearsing it for the first time.

[23:49] Ted Sperling: We had given them the music in advance and hoped that they would look at it on their own.

[23:53] Ted Sperling: But I spent the, I think you were at the second rehearsal for this concert, and we had spent one day already doing other pieces.

[24:01] John Miller: I couldn't do the whole program in one rehearsal. I tried this last week and I still ran out of time. There's never enough time, isn't it?

[24:07] Ted Sperling: No. What was incredible to observe though was how you know you would break down the orchestration lines, right? And you'd have just the strings perform, you'd have just the rhythm section perform. And in the process of doing it, not only did the performances get sharper and better because they're working through the material, but also the questions you would ask and the notes you would give and the history you would give, not only just changed the technical performance, but it changed the emotional quality of it, which was something you know to watch happen in real time. You know, that's why I was grinning from ear to ear, because you so rarely ever get the opportunity to hear an orchestration broken down into its pieces and to appreciate the craft that goes into it.

But then also that other element that I think audiences might feel because that's the point, but they don't stop to think about, which is that there is an emotional quality, there is an artistic choice behind everything that happens in that orchestration.

[25:04] John Miller: And I think a lot of people in the workplace too are expecting someone to tell them what to do. And it's easy to fall into that role, and it's also easy for me to fall in the role of the person who tells them what to do. But it's so much more exciting when both parties are bringing ideas to the table. A lot of times that Ted and I are doing, and especially Ted on the podium, are encouraging these kids to give more, give more, and then conductor, conductor. I believe Ted can talk about this with far more experience than I have. But I believe that I always tell players give more, give more, give more, and have the conductors say not so much better than the conductors saying, give me more, give me more.

But I have to recognize that these are young kids, and this class is just part of an extremely full, busy day that these guys have. These guys have to leave right at one o'clock to go on to their next class. Some of them get in a little bit late, not because they're lackadaisical about it, but they probably had a homework assignment that they had to do and stuff.

[26:22] Ted Sperling: So we just try to recognize that they are not professional musicians. They're learning how to be doing that, but they're learning other things as well. I actually had to crack down a little bit this last week. Because I don't want our course to be considered what we called a gut when I was in college. There's actually homework to do for this course. You have to practice. Like I got to the end of the Anything Goes Overture, just the last eight measures, suddenly there are a lot, there's a flurry of notes. We got there and it just fell apart entirely. And it's like, come on, guys, it's not Tchaikovsky, you know. It's not that hard. If you had spent 10 minutes woodshedding these eight bars, we wouldn't be wasting time right now for you to do that in class.

Similarly, if you're doing the Gypsy overtures, don't you think you should know the six songs that it's based on? So when she says, light the lights, you know, like you know, curtain up, like that you can play it with that kind of excitement. You know what the song is.

[27:25] John Miller: Right. You know, same thing with the cork popping moment you mentioned on "You're the Top" from Anything Goes, you know. If you know that song, then you know how to play it in the overture. If you're just reading notes on a page with no words, no context, you're not going to. So how difficult is it? They actually did Anything Goes as the main stage production last semester. So they should actually know that too.

[27:48] Ted Sperling: Right. You know, um, and you can tell when people haven't been rehearsing, obviously, right? That's a clear... not in the professional world. I'm always wondering, I do a lot of guest conducting engagements right now with symphony orchestras, and you know, I'm in awe of these players. And sometimes I can't tell if they're just brilliant sight readers, which I suspect, or whether they've actually prepared for the rehearsal in advance. I think frankly, they do prepare, but they're also brilliant sight readers. And we're trying, John has been constantly asking and reminding that sight reading is something we should be cultivating in this.

[28:26] John Miller: So sight reading is something you can teach, or is it something that you have in you or both?

[28:32] Ted Sperling: My answer to that is it's just something you have to be doing. You have to sit in your room, look at some new music, put the metronome on, and start doing that. And the more you do it, the more comfortable you will be doing it because that is part of the reality of being a freelance musician. And again, I want to sort of reiterate what Ted is saying. When Professor Jonathan Haas first spoke to us, the idea that I think that he wanted Ted and I doing this is to really give these kids a hands-on professional leg up. So these kids are there. It's not an extracurricular activity for them. It's not like a theory class. It's not this supposedly are kids who this is what they want to be doing. So this is real, real, hands-on, professional guidance.

[29:37] John Miller: Ted also stresses in our classes that playing Broadway probably should just be one component of a successful career that the people who play Broadway these days play a lot of other things too. And they can play in jazz clubs, they can play in symphony orchestras and for the ballet, for the opera, chamber music. And that's one of the reasons we have such good orchestras now in Broadway, because they have that flexibility to take shows off to do other kinds of things, and that way we can get the best players to do the shows.

[30:03] Ted Sperling: What is the difference between a conductor, an orchestrator, and a music supervisor? Like what's a... is that too big of a question?

[30:12] John Miller: That's a good question. It plagues and haunts me.

[30:18] Ted Sperling: Sorry.

[30:19] John Miller: No, no, it's a good question. I'm happy to try to explain it. Well, the orchestrator part is pretty clear. An orchestrator takes a piano part and adapts it for an orchestra. And sometimes the composer is given little clues for what he or she would like to hear, but it's the orchestrator's expertise that then translates what is normally on just two staves of music to something that could have 30 staves of music and knows exactly when the flutes should be playing or the trombones should be playing and what notes they play. And then the orchestration can very much change or enhance the character of the music depending on the style of the orchestrator. And I've done some orchestrating work, and I actually won my Tony Award for that on Light in the Piazza.

[31:01] John Miller: Arranging is less about writing for specific instruments. It's more about taking a basic piece of material and adapting it for a specific moment in the show. So dance arrangers use themes from all the pertinent songs and weave together music that fits the dancing the choreographer has in mind. Vocal arrangers will arrange the song for the chorus or for a chamber group of singers. And orchestrators often arrange the overtures for shows. And traditionally, especially in this golden era, that was their responsibility. Music directors are pretty much the point person on a show for everything musical. So they're the conduit through which the composer, orchestrator, dance arranger, vocal arranger do their work to please the director, choreographer, and ultimately the audience.

[31:51] Ted Sperling: Right. And the music director, is he the person that's usually in the pit conducting?

[31:54] John Miller: It can be. I've done it both ways. There are various models. Traditionally, in the old days, it was the same person as the conductor. Sometimes you want a separate conductor for a variety of reasons. I like actually being able to be out in the audience for previews and seeing it from the audience's perspective, listening to the sound design, not being occupied with waving my arms. I can have a clearer view of what's going on on stage and be more helpful to my collaborators. So on a show like My Fair Lady, where I am also conducting, I do take some performances off during previews, so I can just put myself in an audience seat. Because that really informs what else you have to do in terms of just getting everything completed, correct?

[32:33] Ted Sperling: Yeah, the music director is part of a triumvirate usually that's in charge of creating a production. It's the director, choreographer, and music director that make all the big performance decisions.

[32:42] John Miller: And how about a music coordinator? I know, John, that's the title that I threw out in your bio.

[32:48] Ted Sperling: The best part about the job for me is to be able to hire the deserving musicians for deserving work. And the worst part of it is, and it gets to me a lot, is not to be able to hire so many more deserving players. The role of the music coordinator is to make sure that when the conductor gives the downbeat, that the conductor, the composer, the orchestrator, the music supervisor, everyone turns around and says, "This is the greatest band I've ever heard." That's the goal.

[33:25] John Miller: That's a good goal.

[33:26] Ted Sperling: Yeah. Well, you're both very, very busy men, so I don't want to take up too much of your time. Um, but I do have a question. You have other things going on outside of this class at NYU. Are you, Ted, are you working on anything coming up?

[33:41] Ted Sperling: Yeah, the immediate thing that I thought would be of interest to your listeners is three performances of Lady in the Dark that I'm both directing and conducting at City Center with my group Master Voices.

[33:54] John Miller: Excellent. And when is that?

[33:56] Ted Sperling: That's April 25th through 27th. Um, and for those who don't know, Lady in the Dark is a show by Moss Hart, Ira Gershwin, and Kurt Weill, and hasn't been seen in New York for 25 years.

[34:06] John Miller: Oh wow.

[34:07] Ted Sperling: And it's a fascinating show. It predates Oklahoma by two years. It's very experimental in form. It's full of gorgeous music. We have an amazing cast. It's going to be staged and danced, and we have the Orchestra of St. Luke's in the pit.

[34:20] John Miller: Who's in the cast?

[34:21] Ted Sperling: Anyone? Victoria Clark is starring as Liza Elliott. We're about to announce the rest of the cast next week.

[34:29] John Miller: That Christine Eversoll did a lot of it. Christine Eversol did it at Encores in their very first season.

[34:34] Ted Sperling: Is that the one that was 20 years ago?

[34:35] John Miller: Yeah, 25 years ago.

[34:35] Ted Sperling: And John, what do you have going on? You have a band, correct?

[34:41] John Miller: Well, yes, I have a band, but let me first say one of the things that I'm most excited about are two shows that are going to be opening up very soon. One is Ain't Too Proud: The Music of the Temptations and the revival of Oklahoma, and they're both just unbelievably thrilling and imaginative, and I think they're both going to do extremely well, and the musicians are having a fantastic time in it, and rightly so.

[35:15] Ted Sperling: There isn't a week that goes by that we don't talk about Oklahoma, this particular revival on this show. Sometimes I get in the 79 revival, which I was a big, big fan of. Um, and there was one after that that I think there was one in 2000, right?

[35:30] John Miller: I think I was involved with that one.

[35:32] Ted Sperling: Were you?

[35:32] John Miller: Yeah, with after 130 shows, it's probably hard to keep track. That was one that Kevin Stites.

[35:38] Ted Sperling: Yeah, that was the one with Trevor Nunn.

[35:40] John Miller: And Ain't Too Proud, they're about to start, right?

[35:42] Ted Sperling: They're almost about to begin. Uh, we open up in six days.

[35:47] John Miller: Well, there you go. That's incredible.

[35:49] Ted Sperling: Yeah, well, the musicianship on that show is stunning.

[35:53] John Miller: Well, they're they're they're all having a great time. And and uh we had uh I I have my own band, which is made up of uh lots of the you know it's uh it's called the John Miller Quartet plus three. So we have uh we have six other musicians that are all uh key major players in on the Broadway shows. The guitar player is now doing uh Ain't Too Proud, the drummer does a Carol King show, the percussionist does a Carol King show, the saxophone player does a Carol King show when he's not out with the Eagles. Oh wow. Um the harmonica player is the busiest harmonica player in the country. Uh so when we did we did a gig a couple of months ago at uh the city winery, and we had a lot of the kids from the NYU orchestra come down to meet all these players and stuff. And our next gig is at the cutting room on we always play on a Monday night because that's when Broadway players are always available. Um Monday night at a place called the Cutting Room at 9 o'clock.

[37:07] Jamie DuMont: We just love to ask our guests if they can name the show or experience that they had early on in their life that sort of got them hooked onto the theater. So whoever wants to go first. Ted, you better go first because I'm not sure I have done it.

[37:20] Ted Sperling: I think I was incredibly influenced by Julie Andrews, um, and not in the live theater because I just missed her live Broadway performances, but the sort of triple play of Mary Poppins, then the next year Sound of Music, both of which I went to see multiple times in the movie theater. And then her, and I think I then actually Leslie Ann Warren's version of Cinderella, which was close on the heels of those, which of course was written for Julie Andrews originally. I think those three things just sort of hooked me on the idea of singing in a dramatic piece. Um and then I saw, I was lucky I saw some of these big stars. I saw Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, and Yul Brynner in The King and I, also like in high school, and then A Chorus Line was the first thing I bought my own ticket to, and that was very impressive tonight.

You know, we've asked this question. I can't believe I forgot to ask this question. Thank you, Robert. Because we do ask everyone this question, so we've asked it now 30 plus times. You're the first person to say Julie Andrews.

[38:16] John Miller: Oh, really?

[38:17] Ted Sperling: We know we get a lot of King and I, we get a lot of, we get a lot of A Chorus Line, we get a lot of um, but I've got Fiddler and um uh Singing in the Rain. That's a that was a big movie for a surprising amount, not a surprising amount of people, but you're the first Julie Andrews, so that's excellent. Huge influence. Thank you for that. Check our bingo cards. Nothing for you.

[38:36] John Miller: Well, you know, I'm a bass player.

[38:40] Ted Sperling: Yeah.

[38:40] John Miller: And like all musicians, we want one thing only for the phone to ring. So my experience, I can't necessarily say what drew me to theater. I can tell you what got me to be a contractor. I had worked a lot as a bass player with Cy Coleman. And I was involved with an uh a show that he did in the 70s called I Love My Wife. And in the early 80s, he said to me, uh, I have this show called Barnum, and uh I need a contractor. Would you like to contract it? I knew nothing about contracting. Uh I had maybe subbed two or three times on a couple of shows, but I knew nothing about Broadway from a musician's point of view. And I I looked at Cy and I said, Cy, absolutely not. And uh he looked at me incredulously.

He said, he said, why? I said, Cy, I said, uh, I'm a single guy riding my motorcycle, playing bass in the recording studios, running around, and uh, and I didn't know anything about contracting, but rumors that I had heard, whether they were true or not, were back in the olden days when there was kickbacks going on, and something just that just sounded kind of slimy. Whether it was slimy or kickbacks going on, I don't really know. So I said, I said, I said a no. And then he said this great line to me that he loved to say for years. He said, I gotta give it to some schmuck. I just as soon give it to you. So I said what I always say when I don't know what to do, I said, I'll get back to you. And I called all my pals.

I said, What would you guys do? And every single one of them said the same thing. They said, try it. You might like it, you might love it, you might hate it. Try it once. I'm not sure I really I didn't know what I was doing. I had no mentors, and I'm not sure I did, from my estimation, a great job with Barnum, but clearly a lot of people thought what I did was good, and they kept on calling. So my experience with theater comes to it from just a working freelance player.

[41:23] Rob Russo: Oh, yeah, case, and then you see the probably face. Following our sit down with Ted Sperling and John Miller, you may be wondering more about the composition of Broadway orchestras, which, while heard, are often invisible to audiences, or else so professional and perfect sounding that they can be easy to take for granted. It was once common for the orchestra pit in Broadway theaters to be elevated enough so that audience members could not only see the conductor, but also the players. So that's rarely the case anymore. Lowered and sometimes not even visible, you occasionally do see a conductor, or sometimes the band and conductor are hidden altogether, backstage or understaged, as is the case with the new musical Ain't Too Proud.

Michael Bennett famously had the orchestra pit of the Schubert Theater covered with a cloth for A Chorus Line, because he didn't want the audience to see the band. A groundbreaking move, he even forbade the musicians from tuning up as the audience entered so that their presence could be a surprise. In the years since Bennett's innovative move, where to place the orchestra has increasingly become not just a question of utility, but also an artistic decision, central to the staging of several shows. Some houses without formal orchestra pits force creative teams to find novel ways to house musicians when they are used for musicals. At Studio 54, current home to Kiss Me, Kate, the musicians are typically seated in four boxes flanking the auditorium, while Chicago at the Ambassador, Waitress at the Brooks Atkinson, Dear Evan Hansen at the Music Box, Come From Away at the Gerald Schoenfeld, Be More Chill at the Belasco, Oklahoma at the Circle in the Square, and Hadestown at the Walter Kerr all feature their bands on stage, either elevated or else on the deck with the performers. This showcases the contributions of the musicians while also allowing audiences to sit right up against a stage without a pit in the way.

[43:18] Rob Russo: The musicians of The Band's Visit also double as characters, integrated in the staging of the show and supported by a small band off stage. Real estate aside, orchestrations typically dictate the size of a pit orchestra, making it a unique question for each musical production to answer. While it is true that a combination of budget consciousness, new technology, and changing musical requirements has generally reduced the size of Broadway pit orchestras over time, the 2017 revival of Sunset Boulevard made history with the largest Broadway orchestra ever, 40 players seated right on stage at the Palace Theater. The Phantom of the Opera and My Fair Lady are currently tied for having the largest pit orchestras on Broadway with 29 players each, and Wicked and The Lion King are not far behind, with 25 and 24 each.

Like any orchestra, when fully called upon by the score at hand, a Broadway pit orchestra will consist of the typical instrument departments, organized by family strings, brass, woodwind, rhythm, and percussion. Orchestrators decide what instruments will be used, then personnel are arranged, doubling up where feasible. As Ted Sperling points out, Broadway has a long tradition of woodwind doublers, where each musician in the reed section plays three to five instruments, sometimes even more, and that can apply to other sections as well. Synthesizer technology has increasingly allowed for reduced size, with some musicians and audiences worrying whether pit orchestras might someday be replaced altogether with pre-recorded or else electronically generated music, while artistic sensibilities around the vitality of live music make that future unlikely.

[44:49] Rob Russo: The existence of the musicians union, Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, serves as a crucial bulwark for musicians. Under Local 802's production contracts, the union has established a minimum number of musicians for each of Broadway's 41 theaters, that changes based on the size of each house. In 2003, producers tried to get rid of these minimums altogether, resulting in a week-long strike that forced every musical except Cabaret, which had a different contract for its onstage band, to go dark. In the end, the minimums were reduced, but not eliminated. And today, producers are permitted to petition Local 802 invoking a special situation clause to allow the employment of fewer musicians on a show than the established minimum for the theater, but only if the union agrees that the artistic conception of the show itself does not call for a standard sized orchestra. This option is now flexed often, and a negotiation made on a show by show basis.

[45:41] Rob Russo: Another aspect unique to Broadway orchestras is the frequency of subbing, which allows musicians to pursue other gigs, permits an infusion of new energy, and keeps the pit from growing stale. It's not uncommon at any given performance for a conductor to look out upon an orchestra peppered with unknown faces. And some subs can play multiple shows in any given week, presenting new challenges and opportunities for musicians and orchestras alike. As this episode has shown, there is nothing like a Broadway orchestra. The playing of show scores at this professional level is a unique experience that requires unique skills. And that's what makes the NYU Broadway Orchestra such a special and exciting new program. Next time you see a musical, make sure you give a nod to the musicians and make a habit of checking to see where they are and how big the ensemble is.

[46:41] Rob Russo: You can hear us anytime on iTunes. The Fabulous Invalid is a production of OM, etc. and the Fabulous Invalid LLC. Our theme music is by Lucky Chops. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Aaron Kaufman. Find us online at the FabulousInvalid.com and on social media at Fabulous Invalid and on iTunes, Spotify, and wherever you find your podcasts. And be sure to tune in next Wednesday.