Standing ovations and Les Miserables

I remember playing in Les Miserables a few years ago.

I had been the rehearsal and audition pianist on the show in the West End for years, and was head-hunted to take on the keyboard 1 part on the national tour. For those of you who don't know the show, it lasts three and a quarter hours (all but four characters are dead by the end - it's a fun evening). So doing 8 shows a week and two rehearsals calls for a fair amount of stamina.
Now I don't know about the new arrangement that's in the West End now, but in the original version keyboard 1 plays the entire show. And I mean the entire show. There are four volumes of music to play through each performance. In Act 2 there are two breaks, and the second one used to be just long enough to swivel 360 degrees (I was on a typist's chair) and start playing again.

Of course, the best show was when the barricades got stuck. That means just one thing for the musicians - overtime!

Les Miserables is such an extraordinary show, and we used to get standing ovations every night. After about six weeks of this, we started to judge how well the show had gone on how long it took the front row of the audience to stand up. Less than 3 seconds was a good show, more than about 6 seconds and it was definitely dodgy.

The human brain can get used to anything, even success.

Jeremy is the co-author of Successful Singing Auditions

Visit http://www.vocalprocess.co.uk/ for the latest downloads:
the Vocal Process eZINE (free electronic magazine)
86 things you never hear a singer say (free ebook)
Looking at a Voice (endoscopy video download)
Constriction and Release (opening the throat on video - the latest endoscopy video download)

The Vocal Process website has a series of free articles on vocal technique and style, memorising and different musical genres.

My first West End audition

I've got my jobs in a variety of interesting ways.

When I first moved down to London (after three years with Opera North in Leeds and a summer season with the Scarborough Spa Orchestra), I didn't have any work to come to. I decided that there must be some area of the business I could target that would be relatively easy for me to break into. Well as a sightreader and a theatre animal I thought it best to target the rehearsal and audition pianist arena. So I wrote some letters.

750 of them.

All aimed at producing companies (theatre, film and television) in London and the South East.

I actually got 49 replies. Those of you who are familiar with marketing statistics will know that a 6.5% return on an unsolicited mailout is pretty impressive.

Of course, 48 of them said thank you but no thank you, although they did all say they would keep my details on file. The 49th said "We're looking for an understudy pianist for our West End production, would you be interested in having an interview?"

Well of course, the answer was yes, so I duly presented myself at the producer's offices for an interview (again, no piano) and got the job. I was to be understudy pianist on The Sneeze, a set of 8 Chekhov plays starring Rowan Atkinson. Each play has its own specially composed incidental music, and it had to be played live rather than pre-recorded, because there was interaction between the pianist and the stage.

(There's a fascinating twist to this - I didn't find out until after I got the job that the composer was none other than Jeremy Sams, musical director, translator, director and blast from the past - see previous blog Chutzpah and my first professional audition). Jeremy had nothing to do with the job interview here but was delighted I was going to be involved in the production.)

In fact, the situation got even more interesting, because a couple of months later, I had a call from the same producers saying "We've got another show on around the corner, could you understudy that as well?" This was Re:Joyce, the show about Joyce Grenfell starring Maureen Lipman. I was to understudy Denis King, who was onstage throughout the show and had songs and dialogue too.

So within a few weeks of moving to London, I was working on two different shows in the West End.

But hey, that wasn't really enough for me.

I had bumped into an old college pal one day who offered me rehearsal pianist on the D'Oyly Carte's production of Pirates of Penzance during the day, so in fact I was working on three West End productions at the same time.

You certainly need some stamina in this business.


Jeremy is the co-author of Successful Singing Auditions

Visit http://www.vocalprocess.co.uk/ for the latest downloads:
the Vocal Process eZINE (free electronic magazine)
86 things you never hear a singer say (free ebook)
Looking at a Voice (endoscopy video download)
Constriction and Release (opening the throat on video - the latest endoscopy video download)

The Vocal Process website has a series of free articles on vocal technique and style, memorising and different musical genres.