(a series of articles about how new musicals come to pass)
Preproduction: the period of time during when work is done on a show prior to the first rehearsal.
Perhaps it's an attempt to save money, or more likely because decisions are not made soon enough, but more often than not an orchestrator gets handed the bulk of the music for a new show just a few weeks prior to the first orchestra rehearsal. Money gets saved because there's little time for because people to change their minds forcing the orchestrator and copyists to redo work -- and the decision to give the orchestrator the go ahead doesn't get made earlier because, well, no one wants to be responsible for the expense of a number having to be reorchestrated or recopied when they come up with a better idea for it.
So... the orchestrator's been given the go ahead (we'll go into more depth when we cover orchestrators at some point down the road) and when he's completed (hopefully) a number it gets whisked off to the copyists.
Many times, with shows in the state of flux that they're in in preproduction, a number will be "released" to the orchestrator in sections, as in: "Okay, do the introduction and the first verse, skip the bridge because we're going to make some changes, do the next verse and skip all the dance music until we've hired a new choreographer, then do the last chorus, but leave off the ending because they're writing a new one." This is one of the reasons why in the program you see:
...but if you look at the orchestra books you see:
Of course, the music is released to the orchestrator this way because, "well jeepers, we better give him something to do." |
Small shows may be able to get by with a single copyist, but on larger shows (especially when the orchestrator is trying to crank out the bulk of the show in the last week before the first orchestra rehearsal) you'll usually find a team working under a supervising copyist (matter of fact, if a show is running that far behind, there may actually be a team of orchestrators). To other members of the production, the supervisor will appear pretty much
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