| These days...the finances of musicals....allow for only so many musicians in the pit. 15/16 is a lot these days. A whole other discussion, but when I started conducting on Bway...22-26 was the norm. With the many songs to be chosen from the long and enviable career of Prince Hal....and the different orchestras/orchestrations the desire was to make the orchestra sound big/small and cover all the colors necessary. So the orchestra has a brass section, reed section, string section and rhythm section to cover all the contingencies. The sections may not be as large as they were originally but they are represented. The instructions from Music Supervisor/Guru JRB was to give the intent of the originals and to fulfill the needs of this celebration of Hal Prince's legacy. There are so many songs that I wish were included but I wouldn't question the decisions made by Hal, Susan Stroman and JRB for this show. Believe me...they know what's missing too. JRB is very clever and assigned me, Charlie and Sam the numbers that suited our talents the best. As for the songs that are missing, we will have to wait for POB Part Two and perhaps Three and Four. Whatever the show is, it's great news to be celebrating the contribution of Hal Prince. He is one of the greats. LB |
