Why do some musicals have an orchestrator AND a dance music arranger?

[HorseTears]

Posted: 11/25/14 at 3:51am

Surely it's not because the orchestrator can't handle uptempo music, right? Is the dance music arranger actually writing original music or is s/he, as the job title says, simply arranging music the composer has written? School me.

[temms]

Posted: 11/25/14 at 8:53am

They're two totally different jobs. The dance arranger is in the room with the choreographer as the dances are being developed coming up with the specific music to fit the choreography. It's based on the composer's themes, but it is really is composing in a sense since you're creating variations on the themes that the composer has written.

Once the routine is set and finished, the arrangement gets written out and then it goes to the orchestrator, who expands it from something written for a piano to a full orchestra chart where he/she assigns specifically what every instrument in the orchestra plays in every bar of the score.

The dance arranger is creating new musical material based on the composer's melodies. The orchestrator is taking the finished material and putting it into orchestral format.

[Demitri2]

Posted: 11/25/14 at 10:11am

Which brings us to that old question, "Did Sondheim actually write the "Bolero D'Amour" music in FOLLIES or was it someone else? Pssibly Jonathon Tunick (orchestrator), John Berkman (dance arranger) or Harold hastings (musical director)? Or none of the above?

I've seen FOLLIES with and without the bolero number as well as COMPANY with and without the "Tick Tock" number. Which makes me wonder, "Did Sondheim write or not write that too?"

[temms]

Posted: 11/25/14 at 10:40am

The story I've head is that Sondheim wrote the basic tune for "Bolero d'Amour" in a taxi and then handed it off to Berkman who did the full arrangement in conjunction with Michael Bennett in the dance rehearsals, and then Tunick laid it out for orchestra.

"Tick Tock" was famously put together by David Shire. It of course uses a number of themes from the show, mostly "Poor Baby". I far prefer the show with it included.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 11/25/14 at 12:00pm

Dance arrangers are the unsung geniuses of the golden age of musicals: Trude Rittman, Peter Howard, Luther Henderson, John Kander, Wally Harper, Mark Hummel, David Chase...



DANCE MAGAZINE: “They are the unsung heroes,” says choreographer Sergio Trujillo

[HorseTears]

Posted: 11/25/14 at 3:48pm

I knew you guys would have an answer lickity-split. Thanks so much, temms, PJ and Demitri.

So is it a hard and fast rule that the dance aranger's work stays at the piano or do some dance arrangers also orchestrate the dance sections of a score?

Updated On: 11/25/14 at 03:48 PM

[temms]

Posted: 11/25/14 at 6:00pm

It's rare that the dance arranger also orchestrates. They're really two vastly different things. Most pianists don't naturally make great orchestrators - the way you make sounds and effects on a piano is totally different than the way you do them orchestrally, and many pianists don't spend a lot of time in the orchestral setting where instruments play one note at a time and are controlled by breath or bowing. Orchestrators tend to be band or orchestra musicians first and learn the craft that way. Dance arrangers learn their craft playing for rehearsals and improvising.

Luther Henderson is one of the few who did both, but I'm not aware of others. Since we've named most of the great ones, I should also throw out Genevieve Pitot as one of the masters.

[Wilmingtom]

Posted: 11/26/14 at 1:42am

The brilliant Trude Rittmann (2 "n"s, please) was one of the few who did both dance and vocal arrangements as well as incidental music arrangements.