Posted by Anthony Labelle on March 08, 2001 at 00:06:25:
In Reply to: what are conductors thinking? posted by in disbelief.... on March 06, 2001 at 20:20:40:
I had a humourous experience playing in a pit orchestra while living in Stratford, Ontario. If you haven't been to the Festival Theater in Stratford, the pit is actually located in a "loft" ABOVE the stage. In a production of the music man, much of the music called for the pit to be playing along with some of the on-stage actors(mainly some drummers, and some low brass). The way the stage and pit are set up, there is absolutely NO way to coordinate this(they use "timing lights", but those only really work for the actors, NOT the musicians), we were directly above the actors. On the final night, at the end of a rather tedious season, we completely fell apart, and the music turned into a huge ball of intelligible noise...
thinking quickly, our Harold Hill(played by a bright young actor who now stars in some evening mellodrama abour firefighters) yelled up to our conductor "Take it from the top, Frank!". Our conductor opened the loft window to the audience, and received a standing ovation from a crowd of several thousand Stratford Tourists. A great way to finish the season.
Anthony