Klarinet Archive - Posting 000788.txt from 1996/10

From: Jacqueline Eastwood <eastwooj@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Watch the Conductor! Was Re: Berlin Phil clarinetists?
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 18:44:07 -0500

Just to clarify the issue... I was really referring to OPERA orchestras
here, but I didn't explain that part! I agree with you that musicals are
usually pretty "straight-ahead".

Sorry for being vague -- it's my advancing age. (I turned 30 last
Friday, and am feeling every year of it and then some!)

Jacqueline

On Tue, 29 Oct 1996,
Fred Jacobowitz wrote:

> Jacqueline,
> Since you ask my opinion... It really depends on the situation.
> If the show is easy and everything is by the numbers, there's not much
> reason to watch the conductor. He's (not to be sexist - just using the
> conventional English here, folx) there more for the singers than for
> the band. However, if it's a complicated show, you obviously need to
> watch him as much an necessary. In general, pit conductors are even
> worse, if such a thing is possible, than regular ones because they are
> actually pianists or composer/arrangers who are put in charge of rehearsing
> the cast and then inherit the responsibility for the pit orchestra at the
> last minute. So they usually have little or
> no conducting training (not to mention concept of beat, cuing, etc.).
> Luckily, most musicals really aren't too difficult to follow once one has
> read through them a few times, so these music directors can't do much
> harm.
>
> Fred Jacobowitz
> Clarinet/Sax Instructor, Peabody Preparatory
>