News From the Pits
Representatives from the Nederlander Organization, which owns and operates the 2,000-seat Shubert Theatre, and the Chicago Federation of Musicians Local 10-208 met last week to begin ironing out a new contract for orchestra pit musicians to replace one expiring at the end of this month. The likely outcome? That Shubert audiences will wind up hearing smaller live orchestras for long-running touring productions, even though ticket prices only seem to be getting higher. Observes federation vice president Ed Ward: “The sad part of all this is that people are going to forget what a full live pit orchestra sounds like, and more and more young people today already think music comes out of a box.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
A new pit musicians’ contract would replace a one-year agreement signed last year, the first the union has had with Shubert Theatre operators since 1988. “We operated without a contract for the last few years when the Shubert Organization owned the theater because so few shows played there that it wasn’t really a concern,” notes Ward, who says the negotiations thus far have been relatively cordial. By August 1991, when the Nederlander Organization purchased the theater, the Shubert Organization had practically given up on booking it because of lackluster business, and the handful of shows it did bring in were mostly nonmusicals.
It may well turn out the union chooses not to fight the Nederlanders on the six-week rule under the assumption the Shubert won’t be getting many musicals that could sustain a run of more than six weeks. (Nowadays most of those shows wind up at the Auditorium.) But Ward and others interviewed clearly indicated that the trend in many touring musicals is toward smaller orchestras. Some of that decrease can be attributed to producers’ efforts to cut costs; the rest can be blamed on a wave of shows with a heavily electronic sound. Among them is the new production of the Who’s rock opera Tommy, directed by Des MacAnuff and expected to arrive in Chicago next fall. Tommy is touring with an orchestra of eight players plus a conductor, and no additional musicians are likely to be hired for the Chicago engagement. A revival of Guys and Dolls, due at the Shubert in June for a four-week run with a $57 top ticket, will use a 17-piece orchestra (versus 22 plus conductor in the current Broadway mounting at the Martin Beck Theatre). Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is using a 15-piece orchestra plus conductor at the Chicago Theatre and charging a top ticket price of $62.50. If you want to hear what pit orchestras at the Shubert sounded like 15 years ago, visit the Auditorium Theatre, where producers Cameron Mackintosh and the Really Useful Theatre Company are employing a generous 25 pit musicians for The Phantom of the Opera. But such luxury comes at a dear price: $65 for an orchestra seat on a weekend night, Chicago’s highest price ever for theater.
