A crying shame that with Broadway still working on recovering from 9/11, the musicians union and producers of musicals can’t come to terms over the number of musicians required for any given show.
The current situation stems from the fact that the musicians union has a mandated minimum of 26 musicians for a musical (although I’ve heard it also variously reported as 24.) The producers are saying, “Enough of that, we want to be able to have as few as 16 musicians” (also variously reported as low as 14.) Both sides can claim it’s a matter of artistic integrity (musicians want to protect the rights of audiences to the full rich sound of a full orchestra) and producers claim their musical directors should be free to mount the show as they see fit without having extraneous musicians. Of course, what it all comes down to really is money: The union wants to guarantee employment, the producers want to save money.
You can see both sides to it, I suppose, but several things come to my mind. First, to the best of my knowledge, actors unions don’t get guarantees of a minimal number of dancers or singers in a chorus. Tech unions, I don’t think, have minimum number of people for a lighting crew. If that’s so, I’m unclear as to why musicians should get special treatment. Second, when I was in a community theater production of “Man of La Mancha,” we had an eleven piece orchestra. I, accustomed to shows wth a pit consisting of a guy on a piano, a drummer, and a guitarist if we were lucky, was impressed by the number of musicians. And the music director told me that a full blown orchestra for a production of MOLM only required fourteen musicians, so we were actually pretty close to Broadway level. And it sounded just fine to me.
That’s the real problem the musicians union is faced with. As much as they claim they’re protecting audience rights, audiences *don’t* really know, *can’t* really tell. Most audience members aren’t going to sit there in a show and say, “Ðámņ, you can really tell they need at least two more violins.” As long as the singers stay in time with the orchestra, everyone’s happy.
The alternative is recorded music. Me, I hate that idea, not because of the sound, but because if something goes wrong on stage, you want a conductor who can make split-second adjustments. No conductor means the cast is working without a net every single night.
C’mon, guys. Let’s say, for sake of argument, that the producers are really saying 14 and the unions are saying 24. Let’s split the difference at 19 and move on, okay?
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