Klarinet Archive - Posting 000123.txt from 1994/01

From: Jordan Selburn <jselburn@-----.COM>
Subj: REALLY hard keys in musicals
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 1994 12:59:06 -0500

With all this discussion about keys in musicals, I have to relate an
incident from a few years back. At the first rehersal for "Dames at Sea"
(a spoof of movies from the 20s - a pretty forgetable show except that even
with an intermission the show ran well under 2 hours), we started to play
one of the dance numbers. A quick switch to alto sax, a key change and
HUH? The massive amount of sharps caused me to double take and count.
Sure enough, there were 8, count 'em 8 sharps (8th sharp being F##)! The
orchestrator apparently only know enough about alto sax to add 3 sharps to
whatever the concert key was - in this case B which correctly puts the
altos in G#, i.e. 8 sharps. Of course, we would have preferred playing in
Ab, but this was an interesting challenge. Claudia Zornow (hi, Claudia!)
got off easy - she was playing tenor sax and only had to deal with 7
sharps.

Jordan
jselburn@-----.com