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By Bruce Pomahac, Director of Music

You're going to produce a musical, and you've turned to the back of The R&H Theatre Library catalogue to check the instrumental breakdown. The title you have in mind calls for an orchestra of thirty. Suddenly your heart sinks. You've loved this score for years, and the sound of the Overture still thrills you each time you hear the original cast recording, but thirty players! You've got room for twenty, a budget for ten, and if you're lucky, a 50/50 chance of finding five who can make your dates. What are you going to do?

Relax. Robert Russell Bennett, Hans Spialek, and Don Walker, the brilliant orchestrators who worked for Rodgers, Berlin and Kern in Broadway's golden era have already addressed your concerns. The arrangements they created had to function for the large compliment of players that would be engaged for the New York production as well as for whatever reduced instrumentation would be required on the road and in subsequent (smaller) revivals. By applying the classic rules of harmony and voicing, cross cueing and much musical ingenuity, these instrumental masters fashioned orchestrations that can sound balanced, blended and full even when performed by a handful of players. I often tell customers and colleagues who call with questions about instrumentation that what matters most is not the number of but the quality of the players available to them. Bring in the very best musicians you can find, fit, project over and afford. Then make sure you're (at least and hopefully more than) meeting the aural expectations of your audience. That's the right number of players for your orchestra.

Can OKLAHOMA! Be effectively presented with just a piano for accompaniment? Yes, if it makes sense in your performance space and flows naturally from your production concept. Can THE SOUND OF MUSIC work with five players if five is your absolute limit? Why not! Start with a keyboard, and then, as you consider which of the instruments available to you best serves the score, build an ensemble from there. Working with a musical director and taking into account the acoustics of your auditorium will present you with options that are both practical and artistically satisfying. And to make these options easier to access, The R&H Theatre Library is currently offering full orchestra scores (partiturs) for several classic titles. These partiturs make great tools for planning your instrumental strategies, and their rental costs are easily offset by the mistakes they will help eliminate. How many string or brass players are absolutely required for ANNIE GET YOUR GUN? How important is the bassoon in CAROUSEL, the banjo in SHOWBOAT or the harp in ONCE UPON A MATTRESS? A partitur, containing each instrumental and vocal part in full score format, can assist any musical director in navigating these and other conundrums. Be sure to ask if a partitur is available when you are inquiring about a particular title.

Instrumental music is a key ingredient in any musical performance, even as important as a character or a location. When a full orchestra can be accommodated, the audience is in for an incomparable thrill. Original orchestrations have become the backbone of successful productions such as the Encores! Series in New York, even as the current crop of Broadway orchestrators are being asked to work with fewer and fewer musicians.

It's good to keep in mind that the orchestra, along with the words, music scenery and costumes, is telling the story. And it never hurts to remind the players themselves of this. The more emotionally involved they are in the show, the more of themselves they will give to it, and the better the story will be told. There is nothing that can add the color, the atmosphere, the excitement, the glamour and the magic to a theatrical performance as effectively as can an orchestra. Each time the Overture begins we sense it instantly, viscerally, and we are swept away with the joyful sound of instrumental music.