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By Susan Ludmer-Gliebe |
. . . December 1994
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By Susan Ludmer-Gliebe |
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His name lights no theater marquee but John Miller '68 is a very familiar face to the denizens of Broadway. Walk down the Great White Way with him and turn right, away from the total cacophony and onto the relative calm of West 45th Street. Pass the Minskoff Theater. Continue by the Booth and the Plymouth, the Music Box and the Royale, toward the Imperial.
Traversing this single city block will go slowly because every few steps somebody--the sound operator from Les Mis(erables), a bass player with Phantom of the Opera--stops to chat with Miller, or he with them, about rehearsal times, previews for a play or reviews of a musical. "New York seems like a small town to me," Miller says as he walks around his domain. "It's where I've operated out of since I returned from my student days at Michigan. I'm deeply ensconced here, and I love it." Miller, 49, likes nothing better than "shlepping" one of his basses--he owns five electric and three uprights--to a gig, whether it's a recording session, commercial work, or a movie, TV or social function. But around this part of town he's best known as a music coordinator, the person charged with assembling musicians for pit orchestras. Music Magazine says Miller is responsible for the hiring of more musicians than anyone in New York City. Miller's music coordinating career began in 1978 when he was chosen as one of four musicians who also had to sing, act and "be able to put one foot in front of the other without tripping" for Cy Coleman's production I Love My Wife. Coleman has also worked with Miller on several recordings, "so when he did Barnum," Miller recalls, "he asked me to be the music contractor, as the job was known then. Cy said, 'I have to give it to some schmuck, I might as well give it to you.'
Miller is one of only three major music coordinators on Broadway. He says the job is a combination of talent scout (Miller estimates that he knows the work of 5,000 musicians), casting agent, psychologist, employment agency, labor negotiator, management employee and crystal ball reader. Last season alone he put together the musical teams for the $14-million-plus Wait Disney extravaganza Beauty and the Beast, the Tony award-winning shows Tommy and retro J.B. Priestley thriller The Inspector Calls. The first thing he does when putting together a musical team is to sit down with the, producer and composer and learn about the show. Then he searches for professionals whose musical strengths and personalities best suit that show. "As far as the pit orchestra goes, most of the musicians I know are 'industrial-strength' players like myself," he says. "They can play anything. But I ask myself who's going to get the essence of what each show needs; whose musical style resonates with the music of the show?" "I try to imagine that this band is on a bus and it breaks down in a snowstorm on 1-94. If the people like each other and respect each other's talent, that can be a terrific upbeat adventure. But if they don't, it'll be one of the worst experiences that any of them will have. It's not about the bus breaking down, it's about who's on the bus. Because buses break down." The right personality requires forbearance in the face of literal pitfalls. "Sometimes you have to put a net over the pit to protect the musicians from props that might fall, or from a dancer who might trip," Miller says. "And when smoke machines are used, you have to make sure fumes don't seep into the pit" And then there is the decibel problem. "Broadway pits were designed for shows like Annie Get Your Gun, not for loud rock-and-roll shows like Tommy," Miller says. "To make a show with a rock style sound convincing, it has to be played convincingly, which means very loud. It's a problem to make sure the musicians' hearing isn't permanently damaged, but also that the sound is appropriate. In Beauty and the Beast, the flute players were sitting in front of the French horns, who were in front of the trumpets. We had to rearrange them to make everyone comfortable." Despite music's soothing charms, the pit can be a stressful place. An Inspector Calls requires 20 minutes of music and 90 minutes of sitting still, with the first row of the audience seated so close they can read the music on the stands. "You have to be centered," Miller says. "You can't leave, you can't read, you can't talk, and you can't fidget." It's hard to imagine Miller fidgeting for anything. He oozes equanimity, a trait he showed even as an undergraduate. "I'm not susceptible to the panic of the urgency of the moment," he explains succinctly. When he was in the U-M Jazz Band on a 13-week State Department tour of South and Central America in 1965, the band members found themselves in the Dominican Republic during a revolution. "We were in the hotel, swimming and drinking pina coladas while hand grenades were going off," Miller recalls. "As we were waiting in the hotel parking lot for the US Marines to evacuate us, someone yelled, 'Hit the dirt!' Evidently the rebels were also staying at the hotel. Being 19 years old I thought it was great fun." The fun continued when Miller returned to Michigan. "The formative roots of my professional life are in Ann Arbor," he notes. And, by coincidence, so is his first string bass teacher, Stewart Sankey, who lived a block from his parents' apartment in New York City, but later became a U-M professor. Much of Miller's education in Ann Arbor was extracurricular, learned in venues like The Canterbury House, Blazos, The Ark, The Rubayiat, The Old Heidelberg and the Falcon Club, where he "played everything from German oom-pa-pa to jazz and Dixieland." What does Miller do when his work is done? Nothing's changed since his college days. "Only now instead of wheeling my bass to the Ark after a day at the Music School, I throw it in the back of my station wagon and drive a couple of hours to play free with a guitarist friend at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Because if you choose a career you love, you'll never have to work." Susan Ludmer-Gliebe is a New York City freelancer.
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"The basic scale for pit musicians is $978 per week--more if they double on more than one instrument," Miller reports. "The fee is set by the collective bargaining agreement between the League of American Theaters and Producers and the Associated Musicians of Greater New York, Local 801, American Federation of Musicians." (Music coordinators like Miller negotiate their fees independently with the producers.)