Orchestration for Pirates of Penzance

Date: July 14, 2010

I will be serving as music director for The PIrates of Penzance this fall. I will have fairly limited space for the orchestra. Does anyone have experience conducting this piece with a reduced orchestra? If so, could you 1) recommend a particular reduced orchestration that has already been produced or 2) give some advice as to which instruments in the orchestration are not absolutely necessary? Thanks, in advance, for your assistance.

Sincerely,

Dr. Greg Ramsdell

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Barbara Heroux on July 15, 2010 7:53am

Hi Greg --

Talk to the Lamplighters in San Francisco. (I'm the Artistic Director, but you should talk to our music librarian/orchestra contractor, Diana Dorman.) We use a reduced orchestra of 21 or 22 pieces, and have done reduced orchestrations for all of the G&S shows for that size orch, which we rent out at very reasonable rates. We're doing "Pirates" this summer. Email Diana at ddorman(a)lamplighters.org.

Barbara Heroux

Lamplighters Music Theatre

www.lamplighters.org

Kyle Weary on July 15, 2010 11:12am

Greg,

Are you renting the materials from a company? I played the synthesizer part in the "newer" (Papp) version rented by Music Theatre International. It is a rather small orchestration, but sounds very full.

http://mtishows.com/show_detail.asp?showid=000061 is the link for the show with the orchestration breakdown.

Hope this helps!

Kyle

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