Introduction
A couple of weeks before the performance of Chicago at college, I was asked if I could help out by playing piano in the pit band. As I had never played in a pit band before, I was very excited to take up this challenge as it would allow me to develop my sight reading skills as well as understand the inner workings of a pit band. The Chicago score is also quite jazzy and therefore , I really enjoyed listening to and playing the music.
Research
The Alhambra pit band experience, which I spoke about in another tab gave me a huge amount of information and understanding on the requirements of being a pit band musician. This included, how the musicians reacted with one another as well as how they followed the musical director. I have played in a wind orchestra in the past and therefore have some understanding of how to follow a conductor, however that was in a group of over thirty people and therefore although they were dis encouraged, mistakes could slip under the radar, whereas with the pit band there was a lot more focus on me.
Initially when I was asked to play in Chicago, I had a listen to the soundtrack on Spotify which was really helpful as it allowed me to have a basic understanding of the songs that I would be playing as well as some of the piano parts.
After John had given me the score for the musical, I began to practice some of the songs to the soundtrack as well as a few little parts to a metronome in order to keep me in time. Most of my research for this project however, came from primary research which me practicing with the pit band. I will try and break down some of the rehearsals and talk about the development of the band over the two weeks that we had.
Rehearsals
04/03/2019
On Monday 4th March, I took part in a full day of rehearsals in the live room with the rest of the pit band and the singers from performing arts. I was fully sight reading for most of this session, as I didn’t really know many of the songs other than all that jazz. WE had a great session of rehearsals and got so much work done. There were a few areas where I felt that I could improve upon as well as some parts where I could write out some clearer notation and label the chords a bit better. However , I felt that the rehearsal went well and that I gelled with the band very quickly as well as understanding my part in the pit band.
05/03/2019
On Tuesday 5th March, I took part in a second day of rehearsals. These were in the theatre where the final performance would be which allowed us to understand the cues between the scenes and the songs.
11/03/2019
On Monday the 11th March, we took part in a second full day of rehearsals in which we ran through the full play a couple of times as well as addressing certain parts of the play such as the cell block tango.
Performance
12/03/2019
Dress Rehearsal
Overall I think that the dress rehearsal went really well. I slipped up in a couple of areas, however the general standard of my playing was very high. The areas that I struggled in were the songs, that until the previous day I hadn’t received the chords for. These were songs 7 and 15. In order for them to be stronger in the next two performances, I decided to practice them through a couple of times with a backing track. This allowed me to understand the cues and timing in the songs.
Matinee Performance
The matinee performance was quite straightforward in that we all performed to a good standard and personally I made few mistakes. It was great to play in front of an audience and overall it was a really fun experience. The only part that I had to adapt to was playing in the dark with quite small lighting, however this wasn’t too difficult to adapt to.
Evening Performance
Here is the video of the evening performance, showcasing the entire pit band performance. Unfortunately I am off camera to the left hand side, however this video gives a great representation of my playing in the band as it was a really great performance by all of us.
Unfortunately this was the only video that I was allowed to use to document this process.
Evaluation Vlog