12px: For orchestrator Daniel Kluger, reinventing this Rodgers and Hammerstein classic was all about uncovering what was already there.
14px: When musicals are revived on Broadway—especially older musicals—a new orchestration has become almost par for the course. For producers watching ballooning budgets, it’s an easy place to cut costs, thanks to new technology that makes it possible reduce the amount of musicians without sacrificing that big Broadway sound.
16 px: Economic considerations were not, however, the inspiration when composer and musician Daniel Kluger was brought on board to pen new orchestrations for a completely re-imagined production of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s classic musical Oklahoma! at Bard College in 2015, a production that transferred to Off-Broadway’s St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2018 and opens next month on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theatre.
18 px: “The jumping off point was ‘what would the musicians be at a pot luck?,’” remembers Kluger about director Daniel Fish’s initial concept.
24 px: Kluger was tasked with removing the tell-tale signs of the typical golden age Broadway sound from Robert Russell Bennett’s original orchestration, which mainly meant dispensing with instruments playing the melody underneath the singers and trading big sections of instruments for purposefully isolated single players.
36px: “A lot of reductions try to get the biggest sound you can with whatever tools
Save the Date Alert