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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000009.txt from 2003/03
From: "Philip McKenzie" <philclimb1@-----.com>
Subj: [DR-L] Professional Musicians' Plight - ancillary topic
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 09:21:22 -0500
A freelance oboist friend of mine forwarded the following article by Jimmy
Breslin. While the article is ostensibly about a trumpeter, it is about
technology replacing live musicians on Broadway. All of the New York area
listserve members are already aware of the looming strke.
To those not interested in or already pursuing a career in music, this
article is probably just spam - no need to read further. Apologies.
Philip D. McKenzie
philclimb1@-----.com
=====================
Humans Make Sweet Music
Jimmy Breslin
New York Newsday
March 2, 2003
Ken DeCarlo had his trumpet in his hands and a mute stuck under his arm. He
had just finished playing his part of "La Boheme" with his sound, such a
clear sound, a thrilling sound, running excitedly around the room. Now he
rolled his head dreamily and hummed as the rest of the orchestra played a
passage in "La Boheme," in the Local 802 union hall on Friday.
"La Boheme" is on Broadway and yesterday the musicians walked down to the
union hall for a recital to lift the spirits of the members waiting around
for news of a strike, which is threatened to happen on Sunday. DeCarlo is in
"La Boheme" and also plays in the Philharmonic, once under Leonard
Bernstein's direction, and the Met and Broadway shows. You can't do much
better.
"I love the music," he said. He looked at his trumpet. "I love the trumpet.
I love the sound. I love playing melodies on the instrument."
DeCarlo used his horn in conversation. When he talked, he stopped to sound
notes to illustrate what he was saying. He talked about his first
professional job, playing in the band at the feast of Our Lady of Mount
Carmel in Williamsburg. "I played for eight hours. I wore the T-shirt and
beret like everybody else. I can remember the tunes."
He lifted the trumpet. "March Royal!"
He played a series of staccato notes. Da-da-da. Da da.
"The Giglio song. Do you know what it is?"
"Yes. All these men carry a big statue and make it dance."
"That's right. That's what we played." Now he played a tune that went around
the hall, unmistakably Italian.
"The man who hired me was from Staten Island. He went into his pocket and
out comes this huge roll of bills. He gave me twenty-five. I couldn't have
been happier. I loved playing more than I did getting paid for it."
He has loved and played and practiced on the trumpet since he was age 7. He
now is 44. He has a life invested in this sound that he can make and that so
few others are able to approach.
The producers want to replace many live musicians in Broadway shows with
what they call "Virtual Orchestra" - computer music to take the place of
real musicians who spent their lives learning in attics or basements, trying
to endure the excruciating work of learning to bring a fine sound out of an
instrument, doing it for hours of every day for decades. They lift the
listener with the indescribable beauty of music played by great musicians.
The people come from everywhere in the world to New York because of
Broadway, because of the sounds of Ken DeCarlo and those like him. The music
plays all over the world for decades.
No person of any taste, of any excitement in them, and of any value to life
in New York, comes here to see some antiseptic architecture at the old World
Trade Center that calls to attention that this is a grave.
The people come for Ken DeCarlo's sounds. They are supposed to be the
irresponsible ones, but so much of this is a fable. Musicians are the
disciplined people, who practice for hours every day, who go through life
with their ears cocked for beautiful sounds.
They are the schoolteachers of the nighttime, the most trained and
accomplished and the least paid.
And now producers want to take people like Ken DeCarlo, vibrant, exciting
lovely people and replace them with an inhuman computer whose sound, as you
go along, deadens the imagination. DeCarlo, slim with short black hair and a
quick smile and laugh, with blue eyes that fix on you, is out of Sunset
Park, where he practiced in his room from age seven on. His father played
bass in Broadway shows and that set the atmosphere in the house. From
grammar school on, he had a teacher, Paul Kovareck, who came from Queens.
Kovareck played on big jobs in Manhattan but he developed a group of pupils
who lived near each other in Brooklyn and he could go from one to the other.
He saw DeCarlo for 45 minutes for eight dollars every week. Those in music
know that their horns are not oil wells. At all times have something else to
do, for landlords know only one tune. That is the Lettuce Sonata. It heralds
the arrival of the rent.
Through teaching and school and practice, DeCarlo went to the top of the
world's trumpet players. He went to John Dewey High School. "They had
wonderful music programs," he said. "I hope they still do." After that, he
was at Manhattan School of Music and then into a world he conquered with his
sweet trumpet.
And he had worked with Leonard Bernstein. DeCarlo came to the Philharmonic
on a morning in 1985. They were on the stage at the Alice Tully Hall in
Lincoln Center, 110 musicians in a two and a half hour rehearsal of
Tchaikovsky's Fourth.
"He called out, 'Brass!' Then he told us how he wanted it played. He didn't
just tell us. He did it by singing." Now he shivered. "I can't tell you what
it was like to have all this force and love of music coming at you."
If there ever is such a thing as the strike of Broadway show musicians on
Sunday, as gloomily spoken of in the union hall here on Friday, DeCarlo will
undoubtedly be out, as Kovareck before him, giving trumpet lessons to some
wonderful young man with weak lips. And the losers will be this city, and
all those with taste who want to listen to music played for them by human
beings.
