Now is the right time to become an American Federation of Musicians member. From ragtime to rap, from the early phonograph to today's digital recordings, the AFM has been there for its members. And now there are more benefits available to AFM members than ever before, including a multi-million dollar pension fund, excellent contract protection, instrument and travelers insurance, work referral programs and access to licensed booking agents to keep you working.
As an AFM member, you are part of a membership of more than 80,000 musicians. Experience has proven that collective activity on behalf of individuals with similar interests is the most effective way to achieve a goal. The AFM can negotiate agreements and administer contracts, procure valuable benefits and achieve legislative goals. A single musician has no such power.
The AFM has a proud history of managing change rather than being victimized by it. We find strength in adversity, and when the going gets tough, we get creative - all on your behalf.
Like the industry, the AFM is also changing and evolving, and its policies and programs will move in new directions dictated by its members. As a member, you will determine these directions through your interest and involvement. Your membership card will be your key to participation in governing your union, keeping it responsive to your needs and enabling it to serve you better. To become a member now, visit www.afm.org/join.
The new Ludwig L204SF Speed Flyer single foot bass drum pedal features an improved beater with traditional speed sizing and increased weight, improved heel with smooth action bearings, improved toe clamp to reduce hoop damage with secured grip, new ergonomic wing bolts and attached drum key, improved baseboard for added strength, orientation marks for easier cam adjustments, and anti-slip cam features
for maximum stability.
In this book, Grammy Award-winning jazz drummer, composer, educator, and producer Ulysses Owens Jr. explains the history of the development of the brushes in jazz along with exercises and illustrations for better performance. Includes: play-along tracks and demos, instructional videos, bonus interviews, and a comprehensive list of recordings of jazz brush players.
by Ulysses Owens Jr., Hal Leonard, www.halleonard.com.
Wynton Marsalis once introduced his friend and jazz orchestra drummer Herlin Riley to an audience as, “A master of the New Orleans drum cadence, tambourine, washboard, cowbell, and many other things that can be hit and grooved upon.”
And that is certainly a fitting description. Because to Riley—who has been playing drums since he was three years old and has been a professional musician and a member of Local 174-496 (New Orleans, LA) for 45 years—playing with confidence and with intensity is all a part of being creative.
“Almost everything can be a percussion instrument; if it has a sound and has a timbre when struck, you can create music with it,” he says. “I often play a local club called Snug Harbor, and there’s a four-inch pipe that has resonance in the corner of the stage where the drums setup. I always play the pipe in my performances, and my audiences have come expecting me to hit it in my shows. I’ve been known to hit music stands, mic stands, and any other object that has a sound and is in range of my drumsticks.”
“The essence of improvisation is being creative and uninhibited,” Riley continues. “It’s the same creative and uninhibited expressions I see when I watch people of color dancing to samba, salsa, rhumba, or a Second Line groove on the streets of New Orleans. The integrity of the art form of jazz revolves around being creative, freedom of expression, and utilizing whatever objects or sounds that are available to aid in the creative process. That’s the true essence of jazz music.”
And, man, has he made some jazz music through the years.
Riley is best known as a member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, led by Wynton Marsalis, of Local 802 (New York City) and of Marsalis’ small groups. But Riley’s story is much more than that.
He grew up in New Orleans inside a musical family. His grandfather, Frank Lastie, played drums with Louis Armstrong. Frank had three sons who were also musicians (and AFM members): Melvin (trumpet), David (saxophone), and Walter (drums), who played in a combo as well as individually with musicians such as Fats Domino, Little Richard, and King Curtis. Riley was raised mostly by his grandparents, and his uncles typically rehearsed in their house. “Whenever they rehearsed, they would roll my crib into the room and I would check out the music as an infant,” Riley says. “So that was my beginnings.”
As he grew up imbibing the music-filled air of New Orleans in general, Riley’s grandfather would show him different drumbeats, using butter knives on the kitchen table, and challenge Riley to repeat the patterns. At age 12, Riley began playing and studying trumpet—after his Uncle Melvin sent him one from New York City—and played that all through high school. He went back to the drums in college.
During the early 1970s, Riley joined the Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band, which was a youth brass band run by Danny Barker, a guitarist who played with the likes of Cab Calloway and Billie Holliday. Riley credits that experience as one of the seminal moments in his musical life because it exposed him so directly to New Orleans music and culture. It was also the first time he ever met his future bandmate Wynton Marsalis.
“Wynton and I used to argue about that,” Riley says with a laugh. “He said, ‘Man, were you in the Fairview?’ And I said, ‘Yes, were you in the Fairview?’ And I said, ‘Man I never saw you there,’ and he said, ‘Man I never saw you there either.’ Ironically, someone came up with a picture of Wynton and myself playing in the trumpet section together. I must’ve been about 12 or so and Wynton was about eight or nine.”
It was actually while he was in the Fairview marching band, at age 16, that Riley joined the AFM. “My uncles encouraged me to join,” he says. “I was playing in the Fairview and playing little gigs around town, and my uncles said it would be good for me.” While Riley does not remember exactly why they said it would be a good thing to join, he does remember how quickly he learned it would be beneficial.
In the early and mid 1970s, when he was playing in New Orleans, the AFM was strong and club owners had to pay wages based on the union pay scale. But when Louisiana became a right-to-work state in 1976, many club owners started paying less, and even pitting musicians against each other in order to get jobs. “A lot of club owners were undermining musicians because the union had been diminished by the law that was passed,” Riley says. “To me, that was an important lesson: I learned that it was very strong to have the union in your corner. It gave me a basis on how to negotiate and how to be paid properly for the amount of work that you are doing, and how the union functions as one voice.”
Riley said this lesson also extended to recording work, whether for albums, movies, or television. “If you’re in our union, you know a base price that you should be paid and what you’re worth,” he says. “I think that’s vital to know, and that’s why I encourage musicians to join—because you should be paid what you’re worth.”
Local 174-496 President Deacon John Moore lauds Riley’s continuous membership since joining the AFM at the age of 16 “under the tutelage and mentorship of a talented family of luminary musicians and music business pros, who instilled the values of unionism that he has carried with him throughout his illustrious career.” Moore calls Riley “a world-class master drummer and percussionist, comfortable and excelling in all genres of jazz,” and a musician “with a technique paramount in the artistic expression of the many facets of the roots music—gospel, blues, Latin and rhythm & blues—that tell the story of his unique heritage, having been raised in the palm of the hand of the very best people in the land where jazz began.”
Riley started playing professionally right out of high school in 1975—his first gig was in a burlesque club, playing behind the dancers and the novelty acts. He went on to play as a member of pianist and Local 802 member Ahmad Jamal’s group, and has played and recorded across the US and the world with musicians such as the late Ellis Marsalis, George Benson (Local 802), Harry Connick, Jr., (Local 802), and Wycliffe Gordon (Local 802), to name only a few. In 1988, Riley became a member of the Wynton Marsalis Quintet, and joined the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in 1992. Riley played a large part in developing the drum parts for Wynton Marsalis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album, Blood on the Fields, and went on to lead his own bands.
“My experience with Wynton in a big band was so unique, so important to my life because I got to play so many different styles of music playing with him,” Riley says. “I really had to hone my skills as a reader, to read and learn music quickly, so my skills became sharper.” Wynton Marsalis also pushed Riley to begin to teach drums, because the orchestra would teach kids about playing music in every city they stopped.
“I told Wynton, I don’t know how to teach because I didn’t learn in a formal way. He said, ‘Well, you play drums don’t you?’ I said yes. He said, ‘Well, tell ’em something. Just figure out what you’re doing and tell ’em something.’ So that pushed me to really think about what I was doing and get it to my students so they could understand what I was doing. And to this day I don’t teach from a book; I teach from a practical kind of setting to show them what they need to know, not just necessarily what’s in the book.”
The two main lessons he tries to teach every student are to 1) play with intensity and to 2) play with balance and control. By intensity, Riley does not mean volume, but rather playing with confidence, and a certain integrity and commitment, he says. “Learn the history and as many styles of playing the drum set as you can, so that you allow yourself to become like water (musically) and adapt to any musical environment you’re asked to perform in. It’s important to have solid understanding of the role of the drums, bass, and rhythm section as a whole. I would say all music starts with rhythm, no matter the instrument, but in order to groove, the rhythm has to be played with an intensity. … To be able to really develop a groove, that confidence is the belief in yourself, the belief in the rhythm that you’re playing.”
To have that confidence and belief in yourself also extends to life generally. As a Black man in the south, Riley has dealt with his share of racism, he says, and watching the cultural awareness coming out due to the Black Lives Matter movement has been encouraging. Doing gigs back in the ’70s, he would often be the only Black person in the club. He remembers one particular club where the owner—who was also a musician—would get drunk and tell jokes that always had a black person as the butt of the joke.
Riley, supported by his bandmates, asked the owner to stop, to which the owner would apologize and say he would, but the next night he would start drinking and telling jokes again. “So, long story short, I quit because of my pride and integrity as a Black man. This musician was very successful and affluent and probably had the highest paying gig in New Orleans for a sideman. But I just couldn’t continue under the owner’s mindset, which was ingrained in his consciousness from his childhood,” Riley says.
He sees the Black Lives Matter movement as shining a light on these injustices against Blacks that have been ongoing for decades—and it’s because everyone has a cell phone and these actions and events can be photographed and recorded in real time. Riley understands this better than most, in fact, because his nephew, also a musician, was killed by police in 2004. “They said they thought he had a gun. He had a trombone in his car, and they riddled his car with bullets because they thought he had a gun,” Riley says. “So often injustices have happened to people of color and the police, DA, judges, and the white establishments have been able to justify their unfair practices with a flat-out lie.”
Racism is an uncomfortable subject and conversation, Riley says, but it’s a necessary conversation that is needed in order to make changes. “Everybody deserves to be treated fairly and to be treated like they would like to be treated. The golden rule always applies: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s a great way to live: with respect for other people.”
Riley tells the story of a concert he played with his group The New Orleans Groove Masters, comprising himself, Shannon Powell, and Jason Marsalis, of Local 174-496. They played on March 3, 2020 at the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music in New Orleans.
“Mr. [Ellis] Marsalis was in the audience along with his friend, Ms. Germaine Bazzle, who’s a singer. Ellis said, ‘Man, I want to sit in.’ Whenever Ellis Marsalis wanted to sit in with any band that I was a part of I was always honored, and the answer was always, ‘Yes, of course!’ He always invited younger musicians who were developing to sit in with him on his bandstands, including me. He played three songs with us that night: His original ‘Tell Me,’ featuring his son Jason on vibes and me on drums; he played ‘Miss Otis Regrets’ as a duo with Germaine Bazzle, his longtime friend; and ‘Tootie Ma,’ the last tune of the night. We had a great time and the audience was dancing in the aisles.
“Ellis Marsalis passed away on April 1st from the coronavirus. In hindsight, that March 3 performance was a special moment at the close of his life and career. He played with his longtime friend, his youngest son, and in the venue that bears his name and was built in his honor.”
“I have a dream job,” says Jauvon Gilliam of Local 161-710 (Washington, DC), principal timpanist for the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO). “Rarely am I the superstar or the soloist and I relish that. I like being the main support system, like the load-bearing wall, if you will.”
From his riser in the back of the orchestra, sequestered in a fortress of drums, Gilliam has a unique vantage point. With this position, comes great responsibility. The timbre, the resonant, rumbling sound, the thick, velvet tones pulsate over the orchestra like a heartbeat. Often called the “second conductor,” the timpanist drives the rhythm of the music. Gilliam’s spare but powerful notes must be exact, his timing perfect. The power of the timpani is such that if the conductor and the timpanist were out of sync, the rest of the orchestra would fall in time with the sound of the timpani.
Gilliam shapes the energy of timbre by adding layers to the orchestral rhythm. “If I didn’t really like where this note was placed, I’m going to change it the next time. Or the color just didn’t work for me. Maybe I’ll try a different stick or a different beating place,” he says. “There are so many different variables from note to note; it makes it very interesting for me day to day.”
Gilliam cut his teeth in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra for seven years and was timpanist for the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra (and former member of Local 190 in Winnipeg). “It was a great band in a great community and I learned the ins and outs of figuring out what works for me,” he says.
His competitive streak in sports extended to his passion for music: “Work harder and smarter so that when the time comes, your average is better than everyone else’s best,” he says. When he was preparing for the NSO position, Gilliam played for several major timpanists between Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and Washington, DC. In 2009, he packed up his drums and made the 26-hour cross-country trip to the US capital twice to audition. It’s a process, he says. “You have to gel with the sections in order to fit.”
Not unlike a choir, orchestral musicians strive to blend their sound. Because of its dynamic range, the timpanist must assiduously calibrate his instrument. “I have to work on being as clear as possible in a concert hall, which is designed to resonate, which is designed to amplify,” Gilliam says.
The great majority of timpanists in the US use the American system of timpani, but there are a few schools that teach the German technique, notably the Cleveland Institute of Music, where Gilliam studied. With the placement of the largest drum on the right and the pedals on the inside of the drum, it’s designed to produce a clean, warm sound. “Hard sticks will get you to sound clean, but they won’t get you to sound warm,” Gilliam explains. “If you use super soft sticks, you’ll be warm, but you won’t have any clarity. So being able to do both simultaneously is where I try to find the balance all the time. Every single note that I play, I want to be clean and warm. That’s different for Mozart than it is for Mahler, but Mahler still deserves the same clarity that Mozart does.”
Growing up in Gary, Indiana, in the 1980s, there was plenty of opportunity for a kid to get into trouble. While some of his peers were hanging out on the street, Gilliam was busy with sports or music. His mom was the breadwinner and his dad was “Mr. Mom.” “My dad used music to keep me away from the drugs and guns,” he says. “I was always busy playing basketball or swimming or playing piano.”
Gilliam won his first national piano competition at 11 years old and earned a scholarship in piano performance to Butler University. In his sophomore year, he met timpanist Jon Crabiel of Local 3 (Indianapolis, IN). Gilliam was immediately enthralled with the timpani and switched to percussion full time.
Crabiel had inroads to a world of virtuoso players, like former Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra principal timpanist Tim Adams and the Cleveland Orchestra’s principal timpanist Paul Yancich, both of Local 4 (Cleveland, OH). Crabiel became a mentor and a friend to Gilliam. “I’m the human being that I am because of him. I’m the musician I am because he put me on this path.” As the director of percussion studies at the University of Maryland and a coach for the National Youth Orchestra, Gilliam says he tries to “pay it forward” with his students. “I try to give them as much information, as much help as I can because if you have a kid who’s willing to put the work in, the sky’s the limit,” he says. “I see that because it’s what Jon did for me.”
Gilliam has been a union member since his days in Canada. “Without [our] union, the National Symphony Orchestra isn’t the NSO. You must have people who are likeminded across the country who can join forces to collaborate, to hold everybody together, from the bottom up,” he says. “It’s unique, like a team. Being a part of a strong union is vital to my career. It’s vital to making sure that the collective stays whole.”
On the NSO’s role in the union, Gilliam says, “When there are rough times, we can all help each other out. We are always able and willing to pitch in both as an organization within the musicians’ union and individually. … We have brought people in to supplement the core group to perform with us when we go on tours or when we make recordings. And when other orchestras around the country fall on hard times, we will also invite them to perform with us. We’ll also make financial contributions to their local union. So, if it’s a family, you’ve got to have that in order to stay strong. There is strength in numbers.”
Among the most impressive parts of Gilliam’s job is its physical location. The National Symphony Orchestra is housed in The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. As its artistic affiliate, the NSO plays in the Concert Hall which, with a capacity of more than 2,400 seats, is the largest performance space in the cultural complex. “It’s a fantastic place to work,” says Gilliam. “The fact that it is the nation’s living memorial to the arts—and I’m there a lot—I’m still humbled. I don’t take for granted that I get to drive up to that massive place. There are about 17 performing spaces under one roof and they just opened up the Reach, which is the brand new wing of the building, which, I think, has another 11 spaces.”
Gilliam says it was President John F. Kennedy’s vision that the arts would be a vital part of the nation’s fabric. To that end, as a flagship institution, the NSO participates in a robust community engagement initiative. For an entire week, the orchestra is embedded in a different DC neighborhood, momentarily taking the music out of its grander concert hall and making it available to everyone across the city. Whether it’s a presentation in a public school, a master class, or a night club, musicians aim to build deeper connections with audiences in their own local venues.
In DC’s diverse city schools, where Gilliam teaches percussion clinics, he reflects on what it means to be that one person who could influence students striving to fulfill their own potential. “I think what was important to me was seeing people who looked like me, who do what I do,” Gilliam says. “When I met Jon’s teacher, [percussionist and professor] Tim Adams—when I talked to Tim—he looked just like me. He was a skinny black man, glasses and a short cropped haircut, wearing a suit—the perfect ideal of what I wanted to be, what I thought I wanted to be. So seeing him, even though I didn’t know it at the time, allowed me to say, ‘Hey, this is something that I can do because I see that this guy is doing it here.’”
For his part, Gilliam says, he wants to encourage students to do what they love. “At the end of the day, if it ends up being classical music, great. If they want to be a doctor, great. I just want to instill in them the first thing is, in order to be happy in this life, you have to do what you love and then everything else will fall into place,” he says. “So, I think that for me it’s more of a philosophy of just paying it forward: Being a good human being and, you know, everything else is secondary.”
The LSG1465 “Bold Spotted Gum” snare drum features Spotted Gum wood, a hard and high-density wood growing in the Oceania area of Australia. The LSG1465 offers a dry and solid sound without sacrificing the deeper low end. A Super Sensitive Hi-Carbon snare wire provides a crisp and articulate snare sound, while the triple flanged 2.3 mm steel hoops provide a “wetter” sound than die-cast zinc hoops.
Teaming up with innovator Billy Miller, Grover Pro has created the ultimate triangle triggering device. Their machine accommodates triangles up to 10 inches in size and comes with a Grover Pro Brass Tubular beater. The fully adjustable machine allows multi-percussionists to play a triangle with their hands or mallets. The angle of the beater can be set at either 90 degrees (for a focused sound) or at 135 degrees (for creating a spread of overtones).
Rocking Stage and Studio, Inspiring Hearts and Minds
Rich Redmond leaves a piece of his soul behind wherever he goes—whether he is drumming, producing, writing, acting, teaching, or speaking. As he says, “I’m a people person with a lot of heart. I bleed passion.” Drawing on his formal training, experience, and drumming virtuosity, Redmond has parlayed his considerable success—and energy—into a powerful tool to help others jumpstart or reset their careers. His “C.R.A.S.H. Course for Success” (and companion book, with Paul Deepan) is a unique educational program that combines motivational exercises, music, and drumming for musicians and professionals of all stripes.
“I tell students, your attitude is going to be 99.9% of life,” he says. “It’s literally everything because enthusiasm is contagious, and people want to be around musicians that are positive and that can take direction and are team players.”
Redmond of Local 257 (Nashville, TN) speaks from experience. He is now an award-winning recording and touring drummer based in Nashville and Los Angeles who has played with some of the biggest names in the music industry—Jason Aldean, Ludacris, Kelly Clarkson, Bryan Adams, Bob Seger of Local 784 (Pontiac, MI), Joe Perry, and Garth Brooks, to name a few—but he spent years of hard work, dedication, and rejections to get to where he is.
He started playing drums at age six. At age 13, when he heard the The Police’s 1983 album Synchronicity—specifically, the drumming of Stewart Copeland of Local 802 (New York City)—that’s when he knew he wanted to play drums for the rest of his life. In high school he joined every band there was—concert, symphonic, marching, pep—and on nights and weekends had his own garage bands. He was a Texas all-state drummer for two years. In college at Texas Tech University he studied percussion and music education and played in every band he could. He went on to get a master’s degree in music education at the famed University of North Texas, and taught percussion in high school and college.
“Then I kicked around Dallas and played on cat food jingles and played in society bands and played smooth jazz and backed up jugglers and kicked jokes for comedians and played in killer Top 40 bands and in original music bands, and just played and played and played,” he says.
He became a member of Local 72-147 (Dallas-Fort Worth) in 1993, where local President Ray Hair (now AFM international president) was his “go-to guy.” In 1997, Redmond moved to Nashville to become a session player. “On my first day in Nashville I joined the local union,” he says.
He has spoken often about the benefits of joining the AFM and why he is a member, he says, because he wants musicians to know a professional organization is out there to help them. He loves the community aspect of the Federation, that musicians mix and mingle together, that the union creates a paper trail for its members’ contracts and payments and “always has your back and continues to get you paid,” he says.
One aspect of union membership that Redmond considers “priceless” is the affiliation with the insurance company that provides musical instrument insurance. “That’s a great reason right there to be in the union, that insurance plan,” he says. “It covers you 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, anywhere in the world from everything but locust attacks and nuclear war.” He says most insurance companies won’t cover instruments but, for someone like him, where his equipment is his livelihood, insurance is a must-have. “So, the union is like solidarity. It’s a fraternity. It’s a community of like-minded individuals. There’s the protection; there is a team mentality of someone watching your back and going after your money. The professional support is great.”
For the past 20 years, Redmond has been Jason Aldean’s recording and touring drummer. He is a three-time Modern Drummer Readers Poll winner in the Country Drummer category, a 2010 winner in the clinician category, and in 2011 he was named Best Country Drummer by Drum! magazine. He has played on 26 No. 1 hit songs, as well as co-produced and written three no. 1 hit radio songs.
When he’s not in the studio or on tour, Redmond is writing songs, producing records, authoring books, and acting. One of his great passions is motivating others with his “C.R.A.S.H. Course For Success: 5 Ways To Supercharge Your Personal and Professional Life”—a motivational speech program that he has been giving for the past decade, and about which he published a book by the same name earlier this year.
“The message is basically built on an acronym, which stands for Commitment, Relationships, Attitude, Skill, And Hunger. These are five things that anyone from any walk of life can use to cultivate more success, more enjoyment in both their personal and professional life,” Redmond says. As he writes in his book, “In my experience, people who show unshakeable Commitment to their dreams, to their craft, and their Relationships while maintaining a positive Attitude and rejecting complacency are the ones who tend to be ‘lucky’ enough to be in the right place at the right time. … The CRASH! formula gives you a method for working hard, executing your plans effectively, and transforming your life.”
Redmond uses his drums during his motivational speeches in a talk-play-talk-play format, which resonates with people young and old, he says. Whether he is talking to Fortune 500 company executives, pharmaceutical reps, real estate agents, or high school and college students, Redmond’s message is the same. He urges his listeners to have a laser focus and a vision for their future, a lot of determination and solid follow-through. “Hard work will trump raw talent every time, but if you have both of those things, you really can be unstoppable. It’s a universal message, and a customizable message,” he says. “And I wrap it all up by saying you have to stay hungry for success. Whether you’re a first-year musician or, like me, I’ve been playing the drums for 43 years. I’m only going to stay relevant by staying hungry for success in realizing that passion is my engine and hard work is the fuel. So, if I’m passionate about music, it doesn’t feel like I’m working hard and the harder I work, the luckier I get, which becomes a cycle of self-empowerment.”
To learn more about Rich Redmond and his course, visit his websites at richredmond.com and crashcourseforsuccess.com.
Springs for Percussion is a fascinating piece that demonstrates the ability of percussion to work up kinetic energy through pattern repetition and then “spring” into action. Each of four percussionists uses two drums and a set of three chosen percussive “instruments”—woods for one, metals for another, glass for the third, and plates or flowerpots for the fourth. The instruments should create “relatively harmonious cacophony.” Repeated rhythmic passages grow in intensity before springing into new patterns, and this is repeated throughout.
Springs for Percussion, by Paul Lansky, Carl Fischer Chamber Music,
www.carlfischer.com.
Local 406 (Montreal, PQ) percussionist Aldo Mazza wrote this method book from his 16 years of experience facilitating KoSA study programs in Cuba and working with many important Cuban drummers in developing rhythms. He presents popular, authentic rhythms along with conga “language” exercises to build sound and groove. The book comes with a disc of 75 play-along audio tracks and 30 video clips, plus, access to charts for two original songs composed and recorded in Havana by Cuban drummer Giraldo Piloto and his group Klimax.
Cuban Rhythms for Percussion & Drumset: The Essentials, by Aldo Mazza, KoSA Publications, www.kosamusic.com.
by Tony D’Amico, Theatre Musicians Association President and Member of Locals 9-535 (Boston, MA) and 198-457 (Providence,RI)
Summer is AFM conference season, and the Theatre Musicians Association kicked that season off with our 22nd annual set of meetings held in Phoenix, Arizona, July 31 and August 1. It proved to be a pair of jam-packed days featuring presentations, reports, and discussions on many subjects of interest to theatre musicians. Attendees were treated to a pension presentation, facilitated by AFM President Ray Hair and a panel of AFM-EPF trustees, lawyers, and actuaries. A representative from the Actors Fund spoke about health care, and what we might expect from proposed changes to the Affordable Care Act. Chicago TMA Chapter Director Heather Boehm offered some useful member recruitment ideas that have proved successful in her city.
I’d like to extend a huge “thank you” to Local 586 (Phoenix, AZ) President Jerry Donato, Secretary-Treasurer Doug Robinson, as well as TMA Phoenix Chapter Director Jeff Martin for their help organizing the conference and welcoming us to their city.
I am happy to report that Heather Boehm was elected by acclimation to serve as TMA’s national vice president. I look forward to working with Boehm as we continue to build upon the past successes of our organization. My thanks to outgoing Vice President Paul Castillo for all the dedicated work and invaluable assistance he gave me during my first year as president. Castillo will continue to work for TMA as the Southern California chapter director.
During my opening remarks to the conference, I spoke a bit about what I see as perhaps the major issue for theatre players across the US and Canada—the continual downsizing of pit orchestras as technology advances. One player now does the job of what once took an entire section of musicians to perform. Imagine my surprise when, during a trip to a Boston theatre a few years back to see a performance of The Book of Mormon—the epitome of a blockbuster show—I looked into the pit to discover that the percussion-heavy score required not one single piece of percussion, never mind a percussionist to play those sounds.
Of course, this is not a new issue for us. Technology has inevitably improved over the decades, and the practice of acoustic instruments being convincingly mimicked by other means has been going on for decades. While, to me, the computerized or sampled sound of an oboe played on a keyboard cannot compare to the artistry a real oboist brings to the part, in the grand scheme of the modern musical, the nuance is lost in the greater spectacle. In other words, by and large the public doesn’t notice. This is where we can make progress in our fight to keep our pits filled with professional musicians.
The key (as with most things) is education. We must continue to educate the public. They need to know that often they are not getting their money’s worth. A show that used 15 musicians on Broadway will use six on the road, but continue to charge theatregoers the same Broadway ticket prices. Only with an informed public can we ensure the continued integrity of our art form. Only the audiences can demand quality.
The public does notice. During a recent Boston run of a touring show I played, the pit consisted of one trumpet, one trombone, one violin, a bunch of keyboards, and a rock rhythm section. More than one acquaintance of mine commented to me that things sounded quite thin, with one friend even saying the violinist should have just stayed home, since she was contributing so little to the overall sound of the show. An audience would not stand for paying full ticket price for a performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony by the Boston Symphony Orchestra with a choir of 10 people along with some sound “enhancement,” or even worse, with the low brass parts played on a keyboard. Of course, that’s ridiculous.
I believe one of TMA’s main missions is to shed light on this subject and let the public reach the natural conclusion: a show utilizing more highly skilled musicians results in a better theatre experience.
Of course, the question is how to go about getting this message out. Some ideas that have been recently tossed around include educational leafleting in front of theatres before performances, letters to the editors responding to reviews (criticizing a show for a small pit or praising it for healthy numbers), as well as social media campaigns. I’d welcome your comments and suggestions. I can be reached at: president.tma@afm-tma.org
