Cinderella's Pit

"Cinderella" February 16-28 at the Detroit Opera House

The orchestra pit for the national tour of Cinderella has become my home away from home these last two weeks. We’re in there for eight magical shows a week so most of us have carved out our own personal space amongst the music stands and lights, microphones and cables, video and audio monitors, cases and cameras. It can be a hazardous place to walk; it’s dark in the pit, there are wires and cables everywhere and we could hit our heads on the conductor’s camera hanging from under the stage. We have been very lucky so far, in part because the company has marked off some of these areas with bright green duct tape and, with only fourteen musicians in the pit, we have a lot more room than usual.

When you’re at work six days a week the tendency is to camp out in your space. It’s very clear where my space is. In addition to the flute stands for my various instruments (flute, piccolo and alto flute), I keep a water bottle and tea cup, heating pad for when the air conditioning is on, instrument cozies to keep the flutes warm and protected when I leave the pit, something to read, and a knitting bag. I also have a couple sweaters of different weights for the widely varying temperatures in the Detroit Opera House pit.

I like to arrive about 45-60 minutes before show time. It’s a good time to sit in my own little corner and play long tones, tune each instrument with the tuner, warm up with scales and other warm-up exercises, look over the music for the show and maybe bring something else to practice. By that time other musicians have arrived and we have a friendly chat or teasing banter, whatever the case may be. Lately there has been discussion about the presidential primaries and some predictions of who will win the nominations. I heard a rumor about a little town in Canada that’s losing population and is mounting an ad campaign to lure Americans in case Trump is elected (!). Tonight, I was informed of the difficulties and frustrations in finding a good clarinet reed. After catching up with my colleagues I’ll walk around, get a cup of tea, see if anyone brought yummy snacks to the orchestra room, return to the pit and settle in for the show.

A few nights ago almost everyone arrived early. A bad storm was predicted and we were warned to allow extra time. Sure enough, a portion of the highway was flooded and I had to find an alternate route. I still got there over an hour early. Of course, the show must go on and I’m sure the 400 or so audience members who decided to brave the storm were rewarded for their intrepidity.

It’s interesting to gauge the audience’s reactions to the show. They are quite predictable; at various points the audience always laughs. They sometimes applaud the prince when he stands up to his bullying advisor (but we can’t figure out why some audiences have no reaction at all). When the actors use funny voices, the children laugh. Children’s shows always throw in some adult humor as well. It’s best when you hear lines in context but I’ll give you a few that always get a laugh:

Cinderella after being told the nice man she just met is the future king: “That man a world leader? But he appears to have a heart, mind and soul!”

Fairy Godmother after she magically transforms from a beggar: “You’d be surprised how many beautiful gowns have crazy women in them.”

One of the stepsisters (the nice one) talking about her mother: “Madame isn’t always so terrible – sometimes she sleeps.”

Cinderella, who always has a kind word, commenting about her nice but goofy stepsister’s boyfriend: “He is a good man and seems angry for all the right reasons.”

The boyfriend to the stepsister when he picks her up for their date to go help out at the soup kitchen (!?!): “I much prefer you in this simple attire – you no longer look like a carnival attraction.”

As you can see, the production has been updated and modernized for today’s audiences. What you can’t see from this description is how the show as a whole comes across. It appeals to a wide demographic. I thought I would see primarily families with young children but, although every audience has its fair share of little girls wearing sparkly dresses and tiaras, there is a pretty good cross section of the general population at every performance. Last night as I was leaving the hall I saw a group of youngish to middle aged ladies posing for a picture on the sidewalk - they were all wearing tiaras.

What brings people to this show and what do they leave with? Well, joy for one thing. Everyone looks pretty joyful as they walk to the parking garage after the show. I sure am. Every night. The music is infectious, especially the dance sequences. The waltz at the end of the first act and the soft shoe number in the second act are just as fun in the pit as they are on stage. The conductor checks the metronome at every performance for some crucial numbers. At the right tempo the beautiful gowns at the ball look like jelly fish on the lifts and open up like parachutes when they come down. I have to take the conductor’s word for that because I can’t see a thing. I also can’t hear much of what is happening on stage when the band is playing and we are playing most of the time. In fact, I am so busy switching from piccolo to flute to alto flute and turning pages at the same time, I hardly have time to think of anything else but what is coming around the next corner.

A positive feeling is engendered throughout the production team of Cinderella. The theme of the show seems to cover kindness, compassion and forgiveness. The audience gets that from Cinderella’s character but what they don’t see is the character of the people in the pit. The musicians who travel with the show - a conductor, keyboard 1 and keyboard 2/assistant conductor – are still engaged after many months of touring in a different city every week or two by taking notes and discussing ways to improve the music.  They have traditions which they share with the home band - they mark the place and make a memory of each city by taking a band picture during intermission of the first Sunday matinee; they invite the local musicians to join them for bagels, cream cheese and coffee on Sunday; they also invite us to join in their tradition of wearing tiaras for the Sunday performances.

photos by David Ammer

It is a custom in touring companies on Friday nights to sell raffle tickets backstage for a 50/50 raffle. Half goes to the winner and the other half goes to a charity. The Cinderella team has decided to support The Trevor Project, a teen suicide prevention organization.

Another way in which the conductor engenders positive feelings is by handing out compliments generously. She tells us after every show, “Excellent show!” and occasionally approaches individual members to tell them something specific that she likes about their playing. She smiles at me when I play my favorite alto flute solo (I missed it one night because of a page turn gone wrong and she started singing my part), dances along to the music, reacts to things that happen on stage and talks to the audience during the exit music, even allowing a little tiara-wearing girl to conduct us after one performance! One more very thoughtful thing about this conductor is that she invites us, one at a time, during the only long dialog scene to stand by her podium to watch that little portion of the show.

I’ll miss Cinderella when it goes on to Fayetteville, Tulsa, Appleton and beyond . . . but it closes this May so if you want to see it, you’d better hurry! Now I’m off to buy my tiara.

In the Pit of a Touring Broadway Show

    Occasionally the musicians in the pit of the Detroit Opera House are called upon to play for touring companies of Broadway shows and, less frequently, one of the woodwind books includes strictly flute doubles, meaning that whoever plays that book only has to play flute, piccolo, sometimes alto flute and, at times, recorder.  Usually the woodwind books include instruments that most legit flute players don’t play, like saxophone and clarinet. I have fond memories of playing shows such as Man of La Mancha, Carousel, Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, Music Man and Phantom of the Opera, to name a few.

    In the days before electronic keyboards there used to be full orchestras in the pit but now the shows usually travel with a conductor, two keyboard players who round out the orchestra with sampled sounds of strings, harp, oboe, bassoon and whatever else they need, one doubling as assistant conductor (so the conductor can have one show off out of 8 shows per week), and, depending on the show, possibly a trumpet player, guitarist or percussionist. In Lion King, for example (my favorite show) the flutist travels with the show, carrying along numerous members of the flute family, including all sizes of ethnic flutes to make the show sound more authentically African. The audition process for this show is grueling – the flutist practically has to be a professional pan pipe player as well as other end-blown and transverse bamboo flutes– and a very few have devoted their professional careers to travelling with the various touring productions of Lion King.

    I have enjoyed meeting the travelling musicians in these shows and I admire their patience in teaching us the books they know so well, every week or two a new batch of musicians in a new town. Again, Lion King stands out for the generosity and humanity of the flutist who has been to Detroit at least twice. Kay Ragsdale not only plays and takes care of the many flutes she plays in the show (I think it’s 15!), she also has her own personal collection of ethnic flutes which she keeps in a large trunk that travels with the show’s equipment. She offered to give a demonstration to any interested flutists and students while the show was in town so I put together an assembly of locals and she literally gave us a tour of the flute ‘world’ with demonstrations, stories and myths accompanying all the various flutes in her collection. It was fascinating! If you want to know more, just google Kay Ragsdale, Lion King flutes.

    Not only did Kay take much of her free time to give us the demonstration but she offered to let one student at a time sit in the pit with her during a show and watch over her shoulder as she played. Two of my students took advantage of her generous offer and so did I! This behind-the-scenes peek into the life of a pit musician was inspiring for them. She also gave each of them a gift – a hollow clay bird that you play like a whistle and, when you put a little water in its belly, it chirps and warbles like a real bird.

    Kindness and generosity abound in these touring companies. When Mary Poppins was in town, Nicolas Dromard, the actor who played Bert the chimney sweep (who, by the way, walks upside down across the proscenium during the big “Step in Time” dance number), came into the pit before one of the shows and introduced himself to me. As it happens, he played the flute and liked to meet the flute players in all the towns where they played with hopes that they might want to play duets sometime.  That opportunity came and we got together a few times to play duets and talk flutes. He had a lovely flute and we had fun playing duets. I brought a few of the books in my collection of flute duets from Mozart operas and mentioned in passing that I had lost my favorite one, duets from the Magic Flute. To my surprise, not long after that I received a new copy of the Magic Flute duets with a sweet note from him. Not only kind and generous, but thoughtful too.

    As I write this, I am in the middle of playing two weeks with the National Tour of “Cinderella”. We have one day off, then eight more magical shows. I’ll write about that in my next post.

The Harpist and the Bride

Earlier this week I attended the Local 5 (Detroit) Musician’s Union annual 30/50 party.  Last year was the first year I qualified to attend because I had finally been a member of Local 5 for 30 years.  It is hard to believe it’s been that long.  It has actually been longer than that for me because I was a member of Miami’s union for about ten years before that, so I may qualify for a 50-year membership in ten years.  When you reach these milestones, it gives you pause for reflection.  It also gives you a chance to see old friends.  In some cases conversations take up right where they left off last year at the same gathering.

This is what happened when I sat next to the same person two years in a row, a harpist who has a son around the same age as my son.  We were commiserating last year about our children and revisited that conversation briefly this year, too.  Then the discussion at our table turned to more professional talk and my harpist friend told of a recent Facebook message she received from a woman who remembered that she had played at her wedding 20 years ago.  The woman related that her husband had died ten years ago, both of her parents had passed away in the last few years and she was left with nothing . . .  but memories of her wedding and the beautiful harp music sustained her through her sorrow.  She remembered the harpist’s name and looked her up on Facebook.

 What an incredible testament to the power of Facebook to connect these two people after 20 years!  The harpist and the bride who, under normal circumstances, would never have seen each other again after the wedding were now in communication about a moment 20 years earlier, a moment of music that was tinged with bittersweet memories for the bride and carried her through her sorrow and sadness.  

To the harpist, that wedding was probably like any other gig – brides and weddings become a blur after a while.  We musicians tend to look at wedding gigs as a way to pay the bills but they are usually not musically rewarding experiences.  We tend to become inured to those once-in-a-lifetime special occasions.  For us, it’s about doing our job well and getting paid.  As I reflect back on all the weddings I have played, they run past like pictures in a slide show, indistinct, details fading from memory.  What comes to mind are general concerns such as ‘where do we set up?’ and ‘who do we see to get paid?’

I take away from this story a reminder that we never know who is listening to us and what meaning our music has for them.  A quotidian gig for a musician could be a life-changing experience for a listener.  The bride may be too busy or distracted to come up to the musicians after the wedding to tell them how much the music meant – she may not even realize it until years later when she reflects on happier times.  Playing music cannot simply be a way to make a living – if we look at it that way we will be poor indeed.  We are enriching people’s lives by giving meaning and memories and, in doing so, we are elevating ourselves in intangible ways.

Playing Piccolo in the Opera Orchestra

May 17, 2015

I'm excited to post my first blog post here today. It has taken me since last May to get around to it, so that explains the discrepancy in dates. Well, here it goes! I hope you like it.

How many people can say they love their job?  I count myself among the lucky ones who are absolutely enthralled with what they do.  When I go to work all the cares of the world melt away and I am transported to a place where my heart is filled with beauty.  I don’t go there alone, either.  Fifty or so of my colleagues in the pit and another group of approximately that number or more on the stage, along with hundreds of audience members, are taken to that place too, transported by the music of opera.  I am an opera musician and I have the best job in the world!

Throughout Michigan Opera Theater’s run of Gounod’s Faust, we have had one glorious performance after another.  The soloists of both casts are awe-inspiring, the chorus is brilliant, and the conductor brings power and freedom to the score, allowing the musicians to play with their hearts (but more about conductors in another post). 

Usually by the second weekend of the run we are on auto-pilot.  It takes a couple dress rehearsals, opening night and one more performance to get to the point where we know what to expect, then it’s just “relax and have fun”. 

Ha!  It’s nice when it works that way but the life of a piccolo player is sometimes fraught with terror.  Most of the time I sit there, counting rests, trying to stay awake.  Sometimes I tacet a whole number, in which case I can close my eyes and wait for the applause to wake me up and start paying attention again.  As I am the only piccolo player in the orchestra, if I come in on a rest or play a wrong note it is obvious who made that mistake.  I will undoubtedly get a dirty look from the conductor.  There is nothing like fear to make you stay awake.   Part of the life of a piccolo player in the pit is spent trying to stay awake and another part is spent in sheer terror waiting for a big exposed solo with a cold, temperamental instrument, not completely comfortable with what is going to come out when it’s time to play.  The rest of the time is great fun.

One of those fun moments in Faust is during the dance at the end of Act II when the orchestra is playing a rousing waltz and we can only imagine what is happening on stage.  I imagine a crowded ballroom with dancers and I want to get up and join them.  The music lifts me out of my chair and transports me to the ballroom where I am swept off my feet by one of the handsome dancers and I am twirling around the dance floor in a beautiful costume . . . time to wake up!  There is actually no time to daydream during the waltz.  The orchestra is very busy creating the ambiance for the dancing and it is one of the times when we can really open up and play.  So much of the time in opera we have to play very quietly so we don’t cover the singers but there is always a dancing scene in French opera so the orchestra switches gears from opera to ballet.  I must confess that I love to play waltzes, even the “Waltz of the Flowers” in the Nutcracker ballet - that much maligned waltz that orchestra musicians love to hate because of its repetitive nature.  I love it because it builds with each repetition until it reaches the climax.

The second waltz in Faust is also fun to play.  It is the famous “Jewel” aria which Marguerite sings after Mephistopheles leaves her a box of jewels.  It features the two flutes in little duet vignettes, a very dainty and feminine aria but a show stopper for the soprano.

I can’t talk about Faust without mentioning my favorite aria and one of the most beautiful tenor arias of all time, “Salut, demeure chaste et pure”.  It is pure magic and we had a chance to hear two wonderful tenors sing it because the show was double-cast.  The tenor who sang the final performance is a star of the popular singing group, Il Divo.  His name is David Miller and I was a fan before he became an international sensation.  I don’t know why I remembered his name, it’s such a common-sounding American name, but I remember his voice singing Lenski’s aria in Eugene Onegin many years ago.  It ripped my heart out with its passion and poignancy.  He came back a few years ago to sing Tamino in The Magic Flute, another memorable performance.  In Faust’s aria, he did not disappoint.

Sitting in the pit at such times can be quite frustrating.  I want to see what is going on and watch the singers but it’s impossible from where I sit just under the lip of the stage where, if they were using stage fog, it would fall right on top of me.  As a matter of fact, when they turn on the air conditioning, the breeze coming down from the stage is so strong, it turns our pages for us – at all the wrong times!

Occasionally I can hear that the singers are at the downstage edge and I can twist around to see the tops of their heads.  Last Sunday was one such occasion.  As I heard the voices getting closer to the edge of the stage, I leaned forward and looked up.  It was exciting to see David Miller with his mouth wide open, singing his heart out.  There was something else interesting about seeing opera from my unique vantage point - I am probably one of the few people who can say they have looked into David Miller’s nostrils!