Muzakal! Canned Music in Theatrical Performances

When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey, the bustle and grooves of live music exposed me to their colors and emotions. Clare, the faculty member of my private school for special education in Waldwick, known as the Forum School, used to accompany us on a live, acoustic piano during circle-time. There were no backing tracks or smarm from kiddie pop stars (they were allowable in the classrooms only) - just the assistant principal providing the background for a great sing-along. On special occasions, a local Irish dance troupe replete with fiddle and accordion or a woodwind quintet (yes, a real woodwind quintet) livened my experiences. Also, I went to Walt Disney World in the heyday of the 90's, when a live band with some taped music used at the very minimum still accompanied the Castle Forecourt stage show, and I cruised with Carnival, where its shows are accompanied in the same fashion. Before the year 2009, the stage show Mickey's Twas the Night Before Christmas, then a sole survivor of axed shows with quasi-live music, had its magic. Even with the novel articulated heads, the live band still played on until facing the wrecking ball about to raze the old Galaxy Palace Theater in Tommorowland (in the Magic Kingdom, mind you). I attended a real Broadway show, exactly on Broadway (Beauty and the Beast, to be exact) and two ballets (The Nutcracker at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn and Cinderella at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark), all with live orchestra. A few years after moving from New Jersey to Florida over a decade ago, I heard and noticed that more and more shows, ballets, and so on feature muzak, which I apply to all canned music in general.

Of course, I can roll with some Disney park stage shows, dance recitals, talent shows, and singing competitions (nearly all of them containing muzak), but some of the others need room for improvement. I am a fan of live music, having grown up with it, played with it (as clarinetist, violist, cellist, and pianist), and now realizing it in my dreams. Proms and other dances (say, a wedding reception) are not as spunky as ages ago, when bands big and small accompanied them, as do theatrical productions with muzak.

The fuss over muzak in theater started as early as the Great Depression, when mechanized music took over cinemas, picture houses, and vaudeville houses. As technology advanced, pit music went the same way, and as musicians put it, in the wrong direction. In the late 1980's the Virtual Orchestra premiered at a contemporary opera, then pervaded other operas and other theatrical performances, drawing ire from patrons and musicians alike.

In the Pits
In early 2003, orchestra pit musicians organized a strike, and it's not wage-related. They were up in arms with a Realtime Music Solutions product, the Sinfonia. The company states that it's designed to supplement a pit orchestra, but musicians think of it as a completely cheap replacement, thus fueling the fire of the labor dispute, then quelled by an agreement with the American Federation of Musicians, Local Chapter 802, and theaters. On the other side of the Atlantic, the same machine is used in the Queen's Theatre production of Les Miserables in the West End, after its run at the Palace Theatre. That made up for the restricted space of the orchestra pit in the former, as well as axing a portion of its musicians. Despite all the labor disputes, the company assured them that it can't completely surrogate acoustic musicians, and I partially agree with them, for they used the dreaded MIDI. Then again, if they had designed it to be a one-man-pit-orchestra, they would be like Suncoast Systems, who conceived Synthia. Like the Sinfonia and other "virtual orchestra" systems, it provides accompaniment to congregational singing by being plugged into a MIDI-assisted keyboard (Allen organs, for example) and programmed to play the liturgical music needed for a service like a robotic player piano or phantom organist. I'm a bit against virtual orchestras providing entire musical accompaniment, but it's OK if there are a certain number of musicians being enhanced by it.

During Christmas, 2008, two brothers, professional clarinetist John Bradbury and professional cellist Adrian Bradbury, took their kin and wives to see The Wizard of Oz in the Lowry Theatre in Salford Quays, they paid their hard earned cash, and the theater duped them. There was nothing behind the curtains and the house's orchestra pit laid empty. They quickly ascertained that backing tracks accompanied the musical, with its tap-dancing and those of the dancers' off-sync. They soon sued the theater for audibly hoodwinking them, using Sir Harrison Birtwistle as their musical expert. He describes a musical with no live musicians (musical director included) is akin to karaoke. They won the lawsuit, with their costs of their tickets reimbursed and their pieces of mind received. I mostly agree with Birtwistle and the Bradburies, for many community theaters in the US are trading off trombonists with synthesized ones or recordings. On the bright side, I would rather see a show with semi-live (musicians enhanced by virtual orchestra) music than completely taped (unless it's Disney's).

Each Christmas season, many balletgoers and balletphilic children flock to their local Performing Arts Center to see The Nutcracker (with the exception of most figure-skating versions and rock ballets), only to find out in certain cases that muzak accentuates the dancers' movements, from their ports de bras to their arabesques. Same thing holds true when they see other year round classics, like Swan Lake or Carmen. To me, ballet in that manner is banal and lifeless unless the company stages a dance piece to rock music.

A Pet Peeve for Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh Ballet Theater ended its 2004-2005 season, and was drained of money and profits. With their budget so parsimonious, they decided to pare down costs, starting with the orchestra pit. For the next season, they utilized their weapons of mass elimination - backing tapes. The orchestra pit musicians retorted by picketing outside the venue, with concerts by the Pittsburgh Symphony Brass and other live music, as muzak played Bizet, accompanying every dansuse, principal ballerina, and corps de ballet member in tow. Musicians from Carnegie Mellon and Dusquene universities and professional musicians from far away as Toronto also joined in the ranting. The general public was not alone in the ranting - balletgoer Ray de Rise stated that the interaction between musician and dancer is imperative. Two seasons later, the ballet company's management and the pit musicians agreed to have them play in two of the five performances. That is a bold resolution, although more work could be done.

Wal-Ballet
Other companies struggling with tight budgets are not so fortunate. In 2008, the Texas Ballet Theater, which struggled financially, staged their production of Cleopatra, which had Tchaikovsky hurling in his grave. They offered the orchestra a job, all right, at least in China (National Ballet of China's house orchestra, that is) - but they recorded it as backing tracks and shipped them back to the USA. It became an impetus for protest, staged outside Bass Hall in Fort Worth, and many patrons thought, "Nice dancing, shame about the music." Ballet with muzak, in my own point of view, is just a mere dance recital at its professional best, and the orchestral music may be as well marketed as a classical album at Walmart.

There are deciding factors to whether the production may use muzak or not - but some reasons are often overlooked.

The Understandable
As we plod on through the recovery phase of the recession, we already know that even the most prestigious theaters keep a budget. To help pare down costs, they usually use a backing track of the production desired in lieu of their pit orchestras, To the musicians, the move is more harmful than it seems - not only musicians are not needed, but they struggle to make ends meet. Even at the best of times financially, they take the wrong step of using muzak for their high-end performances. Rafael Bautista, an assistant professor at the School of Music in the University of South Florida, says that although he would prefer live music in performances, running it is more difficult - one has to conduct the musicians and correct their intonations and imperfections. The scheme's impetus is understandable, but there's more to it than cranking out angry patrons and critics.

The Underlying Problem
To every situation that captures my full attention, there is a theory and a hypothesis. In the case of the usage of muzak in theatrical performance (not counting most theme park shows and all the Disney Cruise Line shows, which I don't mind), I hypothesize that if school districts keep paring down budgets and set high standards for academic assessments (in reading and math) causing the elimination of scholarly music programs, then there will be either tape oozing from the speakers or one-man-bands.

Should we bother if the music at any theatrical production is live, taped, or in between? If you don't care much on either, that's fine. But if you want a more fulfilling experience from a live performance, here are some tips:

• Give to Music Charities
  Don't just give money to the AFM or other music unions - give to music education groups and associations too. As I said before, the state of music education determines whether the music in a ballet program is going to be live or not. Hold a fundraiser, sell something profitable, or whatever.
  
• Tell Legislators About the Issue
  In the world of politics, education matters, so write to your senators or representatives to set aside funds for music education. Write to the President that you really care about school music!
• Don't Be Afraid to Voice Your Concern!
  If you notice that people are disappointed by a performance of a musical, ballet, or other theatrical performance because it has muzak, join in!

For me, I prefer live music, but if tight budget makes it not so possible, I'd convince the theaters to make it at least semi-live. A small group of musicians with taped music in the pit is better than none.