Posted by js on July 07, 2002 at 00:33:47:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rehearsal Horror Stories posted by Broadway Musician on July 06, 2002 at 23:08:46:
The rehearsal (one read-though of the book only - each time a show comes into town) lasts from 9:00 A.M. until about 3:30 with two ten minute breaks and a lunch break. There is a sound-check at 5:30 and a show the first night (often on a Tuesday) at 7:30. I'm wasn't going to go about cutting-and-pasting a bunch of stuff between 6:55 and 7:30, and the books are secured (not allowed to be taken out of the theatre) even if I felt like being a good Boy Scout on a subsequent work day. (Your "cut and paste" job would have taken several hours and would not have done any good, since the conductor changed his mind [without admitting it] about where I was to play and not to play all week.) The show's pianist/assistant conductor was the librarian, and could have done this but didn't seem interested. (Curiously, the assistant conductor conducted the last two shows [Sunday] and never gave me a cross look.) My concern for the situation was no less than the touring musicians who created the situation through their decision to not develop a proper book. I guess my professionalism (as you imply) was at no lower level than that of those in charge.
The "half-assed job", again, would have been impossible to "full-ass", due to the fact that all week the "ass"---- conductor kept changing his mind (Remember, this was the second city on the tour to add tuba to the orchestration.) and pretended that it was me - failing to remember his instructions...He would gripe if I played something so I would circle it. The next time, I wouldn't play it and he would glare and me and scream-whisper "PLAY!!! PLAY!!!" Funny, that kind of sh*t hasn't happened to be before or since, but if you prefer to blame it on my incompetence since I'm a dumb southerner who "thinks" he knows how to play, that's OK.
My book wasn't very hard at all on that particular show, because I was mostly just playing bass lines. The only difficulty came from not being furnished one unified and properly marked book, and the conductor not having made decisions (though he pretended to have) about where and what the tuba was to play. I'm as certain as I can be that the woodwind books in particular and a couple of other books are nearly always more difficult on the road because of the condensed orchestration. Typically, my friend who plays "the" horn part (not "first" or "second" horn - "the" horn) is also playing first trombone, third trumpet, and often second clarinet parts. Obviously, his parts are usually more difficult that the NYC first horn books...almost no rests (really, rarely more than a measure or two) at all and wild range and volume skips jumping from horn to trombone to trumpet to woodwind lines. Over the past ten years or so, the "road" orchestrations have absolutely been skeletonized.
As far as freshness of cues, in towns like Memphis (about a million population and due to the type of local economy you can probably cut that by 2/3 for figuring the number of times the theatre can be filled, compared to other cities of equivalent size) we rarely run shows more than a week. There's no time to become lackadaisical. The shows are still quite "fresh" and we're all quite still "on our toes" when the shows end.
As to conductors, I'd worked with this particular (_!_) before on two other shows and was quite familiar with his temperament. Having honked Broadway tuba parts in pits since about 1978, this was the first and only guy at which I would consider thumbing my nose. This person, in particular, had made a notorious ass of himself each time he rolled into town, though this was the first and only incident with me personally. I would never speak to any other touring Broadway conductor (that I've met so far) like that - only this super-(_!_). As a matter-of-fact, ALL of the other road conductors that I've worked with have been REALLY nice guys and (contrary to your observations) pretty good conductors.
As to in-City playing vs. road, I'm sure that they're both tough in some ways and easy in some ways. On the road, again, the condensed scoring (like my horn-playing friend always seems to get with his "catch-all" parts) and "quick study" pressures are there. In the City (though I've never experienced it and certainly never will) there's probably the struggle to not lose attentiveness brought on by over-familiarity, show-after-show-after-show dealing with others' personality and playing quirks in close quarters, and many other factors of which I'm sure that I have no idea.