AMONG the uncommon pleasures of the 2003 Broadway revival of “Wonderful Town” was that you could actually see the orchestra, arrayed like a decorative garland of brass and polished wood across an onstage bridge. Another was that there was enough of an orchestra to be worth seeing. Nearly matching the original 1953 instrumentation, the show’s producers sprang for a hefty complement of 24 musicians. At least at first.
After a while, though, as is not unusual with shows anxious to maximize profit, the ensemble was cut back to 20, still well above the Al Hirschfeld Theater’s house minimum of 14 (including conductor) as stipulated by agreement between the musicians union and the league of Broadway producers. If not exactly a symphony, this was a number capable of producing, with amplification, a moderately rich sound not unlike what the show’s composer, Leonard Bernstein, might have imagined when he wrote it.
But audiences attending a performance of the production’s nonunion tour — which stopped last Sunday at the Tilles Center on Long Island and continues on the road through May — are seeing, and hearing, something quite different. The orchestra is down to 12 traditional instrumentalists, including four reeds and three horns, with only a lonely violin and cello to sweeten the mix. So why does it seem as dense as it did on Broadway? Why is the string sound so big, if not exactly Bernstein-y?
That would be the work of musician No. 13, sitting behind the reeds at a Qwerty keyboard attached to an ordinary PC running a software program called Notion and wired into the sound system. This copy of Notion has been loaded with all the string parts for “Wonderful Town,” broken down in individual instrumental lines that can be muted or played at will, all triggered by a finger tapping the rhythm on any key in the A-S-D-F row. If the conductor speeds up, so does the finger, and so does the music Notion produces. If the leading lady lingers over a note, or skips six bars, the finger can too.
