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Broadway's Electric Conductors

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June 8, 2001, Section E, Page 1Buy Reprints
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A ONE, a two, a one-two-three!'' With that time-honored call to musical arms, ''The Full Monty's'' pop overture is off and pulsing. And so is Kimberly Grigsby. Hips twitching, toes tapping, hands slicing the air, she does not merely conduct the music. She becomes the music, like one of those novelty-store mechanical flowers that shake, rattle and roll to the strains of a Top 40 tune.

Ms. Grigsby, 32, is standing on the conductor's platform, perched at the vertical midpoint between the stage and the orchestra pit of the Eugene O'Neill Theater, her shoulders, back and long brown hair visible to the Wednesday matinee crowd. Several feet below her sits the other, unseen audience for whom she is swaying, the 12 members of ''The Full Monty'' band: trumpet, trombone and keyboard players and musicians on percussion, clarinet, flute, guitar and saxophone.

Their cramped habitat, with its black walls and view limited to a section of the theater ceiling, may sound like ''The Full Monty,'' but it feels like ''Das Boot.'' The O'Neill pit is sort of an isolation booth, a virtually enclosed chamber both removed from and integral to what is happening onstage. As conductor, Ms. Grigsby alone is the link between the realms aboveground and below. Down here, experiencing the musical is possible only by gazing up at Ms. Grigsby's expression as she watches the action onstage, her face aglow in the lighting.

Still, the musician's-eye view of ''The Full Monty'' yields secrets no ticket holder can learn. For instance, Ms. Grigsby conducts the entire show barefoot.

Ms. Grigsby is one of the few women among the conductors of the 21 orchestras playing on Broadway, although there are several more female associate conductors who preside over some performances. (A 22nd musical, ''Contact,'' has a recorded score.) And she is not the only live-wire orchestral presence. Slowly but surely, more and more productions are finding ways to train a hotter spotlight on the conductor, reminding audiences of an aspect of musical theater that is sometimes taken for granted: the contribution of live musicians.

During ''42nd Street,'' for example, the conductor Todd Ellison, wearing a $2,000 Zegna tuxedo, rises from the pit on an elevated platform in the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, as if he were the centerpiece of a Busby Berkeley extravaganza. At the start of ''Urinetown,'' a musical spoof set in a police state that is soon to move to Henry Miller's Theater on West 43rd Street, Ed Goldschneider is dragged along a series of catwalks, reaching his piano at stage right under the escort of actors playing policemen.

At ''The Music Man,'' David Chase and 12 of his colleagues, dressed in turn-of-the-century band uniforms, perform the overture onstage. The director, Susan Stroman, has even given them a bit of comic business.

The featured moments, the conductors say, are especially gratifying, given the subservient role in which many orchestras on Broadway have been cast in recent decades. In shows like ''Cats,'' theatergoers could be forgiven for believing that the music was piped in: the band was hidden in the wings. (Former ''Cats'' musicians say that to ensure that audiences knew there were actual human beings with musical instruments in the house, the conductor's name was announced before each performance.)

The conductors also note that although a special Tony Award was given on Sunday to the veteran conductor Paul Gemignani, currently of ''Kiss Me, Kate,'' there has been no standing award for either Broadway conductor or music director -- the person most responsible for the overall musical performance of the show -- since 1964.

Adding Color

Mark Bramble, director of the Tony-winning revival of ''42nd Street,'' was nostalgic for the days before the synthesizing of sound on Broadway, before horn and reed players blew into microphones mounted on music stands, when the score was not mixed by engineers in the bowels of the theater and channeled back through speakers. Showcasing Mr. Ellison was one way of remembering.

''So many orchestras today are smaller, and the conductor is so wired up with technical accessories, that I really did want to pay homage to the old-fashioned Broadway orchestra,'' Mr. Bramble said. (While Mr. Ellison wears no headphones, the 23 musicians do play into microphones.) ''The audience loves it,'' he added, of Mr. Ellison's ascension. ''Todd gets a big round of applause every time he comes up.''

If the predominant notion of the Broadway conductor is of a fairly drab, anonymous eminence, then young, energetic conductors like Ms. Grigsby, Mr. Chase and Mr. Ellison, all in their 30's or early 40's, are adding new colors to the portrait. That in turn is helping to provide new rationales for conventional elements that have been disappearing from musicals, like overtures and entr'actes.

''I always thought it would be fun for a woman to conduct this show, given the subject matter,'' said Ted Sperling, music director of ''The Full Monty,'' the story of six working stiffs who become male strippers for a night.

It is no exaggeration to say that Ms. Grigsby throws herself into her work. ''The music makes me do that,'' she said, over lunch before the show, of her highly physical style at the rostrum. ''This music is rock music, and I think to myself, 'O.K., I'm going to bring this music to them.' I'm part of telling the story.''

''The Full Monty'' is not her first Broadway gig. A graduate of Southern Methodist University and the Manhattan School of Music, where she earned a master's degree in piano accompaniment, Ms. Grigsby conducted the 1999 revival of ''You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown'' as well as Jeanine Tesori's score for the Lincoln Center Theater production of ''Twelfth Night'' that starred Helen Hunt. But it was not until the San Diego tryout of ''Monty'' that she realized all the theatrical possibilities. For one performance, she decided to put on a backless gown. It got an ovation.

''So the producers said, 'You can only wear backless dresses from now on,' '' she recalled. When she got to New York, a woman handed her a card after a performance and said, ''I'm going to dress you for the Tonys.'' The woman, Randi Rahm, a Manhattan fashion designer, eventually lent her about 20 gowns, skirts and dresses, which means she has a lot more costume options than the people onstage.

Ms. Grigsby chooses outfits according to the time of day: lighter dresses for matinees, darker for evenings. On this recent Wednesday afternoon, she is featuring a flesh-colored gown of lace and chiffon that brushed against her bare ankles. (Going barefoot, she says, eases her performance jitters.) The sartorial contrast could not be starker: she is dressed for Carnegie Hall, and the dozen men in the orchestra are ready for yard work, in T-shirts and jeans. A horn player, Jim Hynes, is wearing workout pants.

''She's a crystal-clear conductor,'' says Mr. Hynes, who is leaving the show to tour with Paul Simon. ''She's so focused.''

The O'Neill's pit is equipped something like a recording studio. The drummer is behind a plastic barrier, to protect the eardrums of his neighbors, and small television monitors are placed strategically among the musicians. Few have an unobstructed view of their conductor, so they follow her tempos on television. The debris on the floor looks like the aftermath of a five-hour flight: reading matter that the players devour between songs. (One Broadway pianist recalls that during his stint in ''Cats'' some musicians became so bored they actually took to reading magazines while they were playing.)

'Acting! Acting!'

At ''The Full Monty'' no such antics occur. Ms. Grigsby runs a tight pit, yet the spirit is loose, without tension. Before the show the players jam a bit, and during it they kid around when they can.

At one performance, when Ms. Grigsby finishes a brief turn as a performer, tapping on castanets during the song ''Life With Harold,'' one of the keyboardists holds up a handwritten sign: ''10.'' On the television monitors the conductor is laughing.

The following night, a Thursday, Mr. Ellison is making what seems nerves-free small talk in the belly of the Ford Center on West 42nd Street, just moments before he is to face his public in ''42nd Street.''

If the O'Neill has the Yugo of orchestra pits, the Ford boasts the Cadillac Seville, roomy and loaded with extras, including an elevator for the disabled. And this is not to be confused with the temporary conductor's elevator that has been installed at the front of the pit, the very elevator that got stuck in the up position during the first performance, for which the associate conductor, Fred Lassen, was called on to pinch hit for Mr. Ellison.

When Mr. Bramble told Mr. Ellison that he would be on a platform that would lift him nearly to stage level, he went into denial. ''I thought, 'That's the first thing that will get cut when the budget goes south,' '' he said. But the elevator was a keeper. ''It's a little rickety,'' he said. So, apparently, was his stage persona.

Joop van den Ende, one of the show's producers, advised him to be bigger, more flamboyant. ''It's not in my nature to be that showy,'' Mr. Ellison said. ''Joop said: 'You must turn around, you must bow. Acting! Acting!' ''

Acting, yes, but with feeling. The conductors all agreed that being able to embody the emotional essence of the score is ultimately more important on Broadway than technique.

''You can't just beat time,'' Mr. Ellison said. ''You have to color the conducting with ideas and accents.''

Mr. Ellison, 41, trained as a classical pianist, like many Broadway conductors. But in college he realized that he liked Hammerstein more than Haydn. He took up a career on the musical circuit, conducting ''Cats'' on the road and later leading orchestras for Broadway shows like ''How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying'' and Michael John LaChiusa's version of ''The Wild Party.'' He left ''A Class Act'' when it was still off Broadway last fall to accept the job in ''42nd Street.''

Along the way, too, he has conducted cast recordings and other albums, and rehearsed Nicole Kidman, who had to sing two songs for her audition for ''Moulin Rouge,'' Baz Luhrmann's bravura movie musical.

''She had to learn 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend' and 'Nobody Does It Better,' '' he said, adding that at the time she and her husband, Tom Cruise, were staying in Sting's apartment in New York. ''The nicest people,'' he said. On New Year's Eve that year Ms. Kidman asked Mr. Ellison to come over and play for the couple. ''I did, like Strauss waltzes, and they danced around the living room.''

Living Those Taps

In the pit Mr. Ellison climbs to his platform, which rises as the overture begins. Bathed in white light, he turns to the audience and smiles. Sitting at the piano, Mr. Lassen whispers, ''I think Todd conducts from memory.''

One of the show's great conducting challenges occurs during the ensemble numbers, when Mr. Ellison must ensure that the tempo of the 23 musicians adheres to the rhythms of the 40 tapping dancers.

The sensation, he says, is exhilarating. For the Act II tap ballet of the title number, in which the dancers climb and descend an illuminated staircase in unison, Mr. Ellison invited a visitor to stand at his side, a step or two below him on a staircase, and see the number from the conductor's perspective. The effect was dazzling, like feeling 40 lightning strikes at the tip of your nose.

Two days later, during a Saturday matinee of ''The Music Man,'' Mr. Chase is in his conducting perch, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a sky-blue marching-band uniform that make him look like a well-read drum major. Actually he was a Harvard biology major who studied piano as a boy but did not get serious about music until after college. His résumé includes the music direction of ''Damn Yankees,'' ''Side Show'' and the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall.

Unlike most pit conductors, his performance begins onstage. With baton in hand, he takes his place for the overture on the mock-up of a circa-1912 railway car, which immediately afterward will be occupied by the traveling salesmen for ''Rock Island,'' the spoken number that opens the show.

''Stro knew she wanted to see the band at the top of the show,'' Mr. Chase says, invoking Ms. Stroman's nickname. ''She called me and said, 'I don't know what this means yet, but you are going to start onstage.' ''

Mr. Chase, 37, appears to have had none of Mr. Ellison's initial qualms about his moment in the spotlight. ''I'm up there doing what Harold Hill wishes he could do,'' he says of the show's musically challenged hero.

Powerful Impressions

The rich aural universe under the stage of the Neil Simon Theater provides a deeper appreciation of ''The Music Man's'' orchestrations (by Doug Besterman); it's like listening to a cast recording in 3-D. The pit at the moment is home to some of the most sought-after musicians on Broadway, veterans like Richard Sarpola on bass and Danny Cahn on trumpet. Their round tones and crystalline solos, not the actors', make the most powerful impressions down here.

So powerful that many of the musicians wear earplugs. Joel Fram, the show's pianist and associate conductor, says eight performances a week can be brutal on the eardrum. Strangely, though, most of the audience never gets close to the pure sound the orchestra produces. Past the first few rows, the music is received chiefly via the amplification system.

After Eric McCormack, the newly installed Harold Hill, finishes ''The Sadder but Wiser Girl,'' Mr. Chase scribbles a note and drops it into the pit. ''Can you imagine what it would be like if the audience could experience the thrill and joy of hearing this band so viscerally?'' it says.

So near and yet so far. As the actors ebulliently receive their applause at the curtain call, the musicians in the pit play along. They hear the clapping. They can even watch as Mr. Chase acknowledges the crowd for that familiar tip-of-the-hat moment to the orchestra. But their faces are impassive. They do not really see the people they play for.

The actors float out on adrenaline highs. The musicians fold up their music, pack up their instruments and head home.

Don't Miss The Overture

The musicals mentioned in Peter Marks's article:

''42ND STREET.'' Ford Center, 213 West 42nd Street, (212) 307-4100. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $25 to $90.

''THE FULL MONTY.'' Eugene O'Neill Theater, 230 West 49th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $30 to $85.

''THE MUSIC MAN.'' Neil Simon Theater, 250 West 52nd Street, (212) 307-4100. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $40 to $90.

''URINETOWN (THE MUSICAL).'' American Theater of Actors, 314 West 54th Street, (212) 239-6200. Mondays, Wednesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $40 and $45.

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