The husband jiggled his foot irregularly, shaking our entire row of seats. He cleared his throat loudly, then stretched his arm out to check the time. As Sarah’s harp grew delicate, the wife crinkled cellophane in her bag, its chain shoulder strap rattling. She popped a cough drop in her mouth and crunched. Flipping through the program, she studied a page of restaurant endorsements from actors. One of my show’s stars had just been recruited to appear on the page. He didn’t get to pick the restaurant or write the description of his dinner but he ate free in return for the quote.
“I think it’s almost over,” said the wife, tugging her husband’s cuff thirty seconds into the eleven-minute Rondo. Gathering their shopping bags, they left noisily.
After the show I took Eric to Café des Artistes as a romantic finale to our night out. Seated in the casual bar area hidden in the back, we ordered martinis and split an order of steak tartare. After laughing over the stuffy couple, talk turned more serious as we discussed marriage, children, and a new career for me. Eric said he’d help me find my way.
Next morning I called City College to ask about remedial math courses. A grouchy man answered the math department’s phone. He asked how old I was, and why I wanted to enroll. I wasn’t sure if he was a graduate student doing work-study, a professor, or office staff. Upon hearing the answer, he said they didn’t offer that elementary a course and told me I was lucky to be a musician.
“Please,” I begged. If so many people wanted to be musicians, why did the National Endowment for the Arts say the number of people playing and performing classical music had dropped by half?
“Musicians are good at math,” he replied. “If you need help at your age, there’s nothing for you here.” He slammed down the phone.
I wondered if I’d been the victim of a phone prank. Even so, maybe he was right, and adults couldn’t learn math. As I kept searching, I didn’t find a beginning course except at Columbia University, which cost $2,500 and carried no credit. Finally, Eric found a course at the New School: ten weeks for $500. I could go Saturday mornings before my matinee.
Filled with optimism, I climbed the stairs to a class of all women, every one Latina or African-American except for me. A rainbow of gaily colored notebooks and sharp pencils lay on the desks. A woman next to me tore the cellophane off a new calculator.
Here in the classroom, I felt I’d joined the world that existed outside classical music. I sat, pencil poised, as a little man strode to the blackboard and scratched aggressively in chalk. He turned to us with a sneer, and all the women tensed their faces to study his scribblings:
-4,928/249–217/1099 – x/91,043 = 1/31 + 8,007/x–7,391/1,835
What was the x for again? I didn’t remember which part of the fraction got divided or how to add negative numbers. A few women hunched over their desks, concentrating. Most stared forward vacantly. I could tell the woman next to me was about to cry.
After class, I dragged myself uptown for the matinee while planning how to maximize my dinnertime booze consumption. The show went slowly; I fought back tears, feeling like a spoiled brat to be upset while I had this high-paying job. When Eric picked me up for dinner, I whimpered about the teacher, the women, and my hopelessness.
“This is fucked,” he said. Grabbing my wrist, he led me to Coliseum Books. Eric had rarely seen the inside of a bookstore, but he marched to the information desk and found the class’s assigned book in no time. The text started with one plus one and included a toll-free homework help number.
After dinner, Eric went home to read, and I returned to Miss Saigon for the evening show. The night flew by as I started reading my new math book. By the final curtain calls, I could already solve some simple problems. Maybe there was hope after all.
I walked home to burn off my new energy. In the window of the 72nd Street HMV store, big cardboard cutouts of the Three Tenors posed corpulently next to a CD jacket photo of violinist Vanessa-Mae Nicholson, the sheer sleeve of her white blouse slipping off her bow arm’s shoulder.
Pushing open the door, I took a break in the store’s air-conditioning. I looked for the classical CDs and found they’d been crammed into a back corner. The area was nearly deserted, except for two college-age guys. One of them had rented Amadeus the previous night.
The pair cruised down a quiet aisle, passing Bach, Copland, and Mahler before finding Mozart, Mozart, and more Mozart covering the store’s entire back wall. The Jupiter Symphony took up several rows, as nearly every orchestra in the world has recorded it at least three times. It was only one of over six hundred of the composer’s works.
“Why are there all these CDs of the same piece? Are they really all that different?” asked one, sounding as if he felt stupid. The men stared at the vast selection for a moment. “And which ones were in the movie?”
“I dunno, man,” said his friend, looking around nervously. “This classical stuff is over my head. Isn’t there an Amadeus soundtrack or something?”
Overhearing their conversation, I felt both distressed and relieved. I was sad that classical music was so confusing to newcomers. At the same time, the two guys had articulated something I’d always wondered. Why were there all these recordings of the same old pieces if classical music sales were already so low? No pop star in her right mind would put out an album of the same songs as a competing artist.
It took a couple of strange men who didn’t know anything about classical music to make me realize I wasn’t nuts after all. I was in a narcissistic industry that was stuck in the nineteenth century. At that moment, I gave myself permission to escape.
CHAPTER
19
Smoke and Mirrors
I OPENED THE Broadway Theatre’s stage door for Eric, who had wanted to come and see what my job was really like. Just inside, an actor was rummaging through a large paper bag full of day-old bread, which was distributed weekly to all Broadway theaters by neighborhood restaurants. Eric flattened himself against the bulletin board as a dresser heaved his basket of costumes up the narrow stairs. I explained to him that the dresser was a wardrobe expert who organized costumes. He was assigned to one or more actors to make sure their clothing changes went smoothly, and also maintained a system of washing and mending costumes and sending them out for dry cleaning and dying.
The Broadway Theatre had been built in 1924 as a movie palace and converted to theatrical use in 1930. Although it was one of Broadway’s largest houses, with 1,700 seats, the backstage was still cramped from the days when shows didn’t need the extensive sets, electronics, and other items that were now crammed in every corner. The actors’ dressing rooms were on the theater’s upper floors, and the pit was one floor down.
When the dresser passed, Eric pointed at a poster for Broadway Bares, a fund-raising event for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. ”Stripping for a sexually transmitted disease?” Eric said. I shrugged. The stairwell had emptied, but he lingered, reading the actors’ sign-in sheet, ads for massage therapists, and forms to order house seats. His eyes settled on a party invitation.
Celebrate Five Years at Miss Saigon!
INVITING ALL CAST AND CREW
“No musicians?” Eric asked. “Isn’t it musical theater?” I shrugged again. Since synthesizers hit Broadway and technology developed, producers hid us more with each show that opened. First came sound systems, blaring in 1920s theaters built for acoustic instruments and natural voices. Pits had shrunk and been lowered, causing the musicians to drop out of the audience’s sightlines, ever since the 1950s, when theaters added an extra row of seats and extended the stage until the opening, for the orchestra, allowed almost no sound to escape except through the sound system.
We had become so peripheral, the union required a photo of the orchestra to be posted in the lobby at some shows. A Chorus Line had completely covered the pit. At Cats the band played in dressing rooms upstairs and had to follow the conductor and band through video and sound monitors. Now that synthesizers could replace instruments, producers wante
d to reduce the minimum number of musicians our union required them to hire, which varied with theater size. The days of “walkers,” extra musicians hired because of the minimums and paid not to play, had ended. With a new “special situations” clause, several producers had already won the right to hire smaller bands, based on artistic concerns—which were shifting from live performers to the special effects that thrilled moviegoers.
Eric and I continued downstairs. In the band room, musicians sat around a long table littered with takeout from Mee Noodle Shop. Someone rustled through a locker marked COFFEE SUPPLIES AND SHIT, while a violinist folded her cot up after a nap. Four guys playing poker regarded Eric with mild interest, probably thinking he was a new sub.
I grabbed a big black shirt for Eric from my locker and led him to the dressing area beneath our stage. A washing machine was spinning costumes washed after this afternoon’s matinee. Eric peeked into the hair room for a closer look at the Asian wigs on their disembodied Styrofoam heads. Huge electronic consoles, an insulated box for the dry ice used to produce fog, and the wardrobe staff’s systems for storing the stockings, costumes, jewelry, headdresses, and shoes needed during split-second costume changes filled every space in the old theater. Eric did a double take as he ran into the burly transsexual stagehand, who was wearing a ruffled blouse and heels.
In the pit, I pulled Eric’s chair close to mine to give Lino enough space. I played a few notes, turned on my tuning machine, and watched my A register 440 cycles per second. Perfect. I tucked the music under my chair, out of Rieling’s sight, and placed my math book on the stand.
Timmy’s last-call sub was yammering on about a sore finger, her lack of work, and why she didn’t get called more often. I dreaded these bottom feeders who tormented the regulars with talk about their career failure. She started warming up full blast on piccolo.
I handed Eric a fresh pair of yellow foam earplugs, squashing another pair in my own ears. Clapping on gun mufflers, I set my calculator on the stand and opened the book. Ready for blastoff.
Rieling fumed onto the podium in a dark cloud, where he stood watching the red lightbulbs that the stage manager would switch off to indicate curtain time. The lights went out and Rieling gave the down-beat. Eric jumped, stuffing in his earplugs, his eyes bulging as if he he’d been caught in a powerful jet blast.
Loud, he mouthed, emphasizing the ow.
A union official had measured our pit with a sound meter, finding peaks around 130 decibels, about the same as a gunshot, though solo flute can equal levels of chain saws and dance clubs. In our enclosed space, the acoustic sound bounced around, as well as being augmented by sound monitors that piped in the actors’ voices and instruments from the other side of the pit.
There must have been a producer in the audience tonight. Rieling bent over his stand, giving his players nasty looks. “Violins!” he shouted, and then hissed at the woodwinds and snapped his fingers in the beat pattern. The band jumped to satisfy him, half of them trying too hard and racing ahead until we were barely playing together. Musicians in this band had played in the Met orchestra, the Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, and numerous legendary shows, some of them in an era preceding our conductor’s birth. Yet the connection between respect and results had not dawned on our maestro. I opened my math book.
Suppose that an object is thrown with an initial velocity of 96 feet per second....
Suppose a textbook was hurled at the podium. Would that be enough to kill a conductor? Eagerly, I turned on my calculator as the first wisp of fog curled around the stage lip, spilling over the synths. More fingers of fog seeped above the percussion and over the brass, until a gaseous waterfall poured into the pit. A pregnant violinist slid open the door and left. She’d already miscarried twice.
Stage fog had become a health issue for theatrical productions. At Beauty and the Beast, musicians had developed eye and lung irritation, sinusitis, nausea, flulike symptoms, rashes, and asthma attacks. Woodwind players’ reeds tasted of smoke and chemicals the next day. Many musicians wore gas masks, as recommended by doctors at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine who had studied their work environment.
Some of the glycols contained in stage fog were identical to those used in antifreeze. Other fog-bound irritants included palm and mineral oil and glycerin. The stage fog came in plastic jugs with printed warnings not to use the products in theatrical settings or around asthmatics. The sulfur dioxide gas used in the show’s pyrotechnics was even worse, as masks couldn’t filter it out.
After unproductive talks with producers, musicians had hired an engineering firm to devise an “air curtain”—a primitive set of pipes to blast fog into the audience rather than allow it to sink into the orchestra pit. Now the kiddies who made up much of Beauty’s audience were inhaling the stuff too.
Less than two feet away, Lino played a high passage on E-flat clarinet. Timmy’s sub shrieked on piccolo, horrendously sharp. Music stands crowded against our chairs, and trumpets and trombones played loudly ten feet away.
As the air thickened, Eric shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He hyperventilated and, flushed with panic, fled. The door slammed shut behind him.
If a Broadway hit is starting its fifth year, how many shows have been performed? Answer: 1,664.
Soon I’d have a chance to start fresh: Les Miserables had run so long its oboist had retired. I’d replace her in two weeks, escaping Rieling forever.
Except for the show, life had improved dramatically since my Caribbean adventure. I was enjoying a terrific relationship for the first time, I had taken steps to learn enough basic math to go back to school, and for the first time in many years I was in control of my future.
I quickly felt at home in Les Miz, where I had first played as a substitute ten years before. As the show’s music director, Bob Billig, coaxed sweet sounds from his bored players, I remembered what these pit musicians had looked like a decade before. Everyone was a lot younger then.
Since the show started, one trumpeter’s hair had turned gray. His daughter had grown into a beautiful actress. A cellist’s toddlers were now starting high school. Two violinists had paid off their houses, and another had started a family. The guitarist had logged years with Buster Poindexter’s band. The flutist, Jackie, had raised her children and now spent the days teaching school before coming in to play Les Miz. Mitch, the clarinetist, had celebrated his sixtieth birthday but didn’t slow down, subbing weekly at the Metropolitan Opera.
I was thankful to be here. My job at the Hudson Valley Philharmonic would disappear soon. The orchestra had once been regarded as a treasured community resource but had financed itself hand-to-mouth in recent years, just like many other small American symphonies with yearly budgets under $2 million. Instead of cutting costs, the orchestra gambled on a single investor, a disbarred lawyer who promised to fund a summer “Tanglewood on the Hudson.” The orchestra’s board bought the spiel, despite the fact that Frank Zarro’s background included a personal bankruptcy, default judgments, lawsuits, an offshore Bermuda account, and eleven tax liens. Though Zarro refused to post money in advance, the board—including one banker—signed anyway. Euphoric local media people regurgitated press releases, suddenly declaring the depressed Poughkeepsie area a mecca for the arts.
The opening concert was disastrous. Like an omen, a violent thunderstorm ruined the outdoor performance. Patrons rushed to escape lightning on the exposed hillside. Buses collided on the muddy slope as someone set off 1812 Overture fireworks as evacuation lighting. The ensuing stream of bad publicity repelled audiences and donors, leading to bankruptcy for the orchestra. The Hudson Valley Philharmonic finally settled its $600,000 lawsuit against Zarro for only $50,000.1 Zarro himself faced thirty years for swindling $25 million from various investors.
Les Miz, I thought, was virtually the only employment I still had.
I straightened the new accessory shelf on my music stand with pride. I was going to start out on the right foot with this job. I’d gotten
new swabs and even fresh instrument pegs that held my oboe and English horn when I wasn’t playing them, erasing all memory of those years at Saigon. And I was finally rid of Rieling, the one uncontrollable factor that made me miserable.
At intermission, the personnel manager made a brief announcement. “We’ll be getting a new conductor next month,” he announced. “Dale Rieling will be moving over from Miss Saigon.”
My heart sank. I could be working with an insulting boss until Les Miz closed. The show had already been running for nine years and would probably last for as many more. Even though Les Miz would pay $10,000 more because of overtime pay, I wished I’d stayed at Miss Saigon.
Since Eric had seen Rieling in action, he knew I wasn’t exaggerating my situation. Over the next few weeks he tried to comfort me, but our relationship began falling apart. I lost the momentum I’d built for changing my life. Within weeks I had reverted to my old dreary self. I was bitchy and awful to be around. I had ruined our relationship, allowing the misery to infect everything around me.
Broadway started to look inescapable again. Eric’s low salary outlook suddenly frightened me; I might eventually have to support both of us. At the same time, Eric was saying he was very unhappy living in the big city. He became an insomniac, and I sensed he was planning to leave.
“Your world looked great from St. Thomas,” he said, stuffing clothes in a duffel bag, “but you’re out every night. You’ve turned into someone else.”
My eyes welled with tears as he told me he needed to go away for a while to help a relative move cross-country. I knew he wouldn’t be back.
CHAPTER
20
Les Miserables
ANGELO HACKED AT the decorative cast iron outside my window, smiling proudly as he pulled off a large section. A brick crashed six floors down, bouncing off a car before shattering on the sidewalk. Joan, the former singer who lived on Twelve, waddled past below, hunched like Quasimodo, her matted dog sniffing the brick shards. Angelo jiggled my new air conditioner between the jagged metal pieces and slammed the window shut.
Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music Page 28
