Introduction
In approaching this year of study I came with a level of confidence in my capabilities as a musical director (MD). During my undergraduate degree I worked as an MD on numerous extra-curricular projects, before following that with a year of full-time work in education as a music teacher, tutoring in more classical contexts as well as working as musical director on school shows. Considering this, I have sought to use my placement opportunities as way to expose myself to professional weaknesses that I may not be fully aware of and subsequently address them, as well as continue to develop pre-existing skills.
As a musical director I tend to draw upon my experience as a musician who has come up through the Classical tradition, particularly the choral side. I often employ approaches that were used by my own directors and conductors. A significant portion of my placement experience came in recognising when and where these approaches were effective and when they weren’t at, encouraging myself to develop and adapt my approach as a leader and a musician.
Literature on the role of the Musical Director is rather sparse, I therefore sought to also draw upon literature about stage directing as this seemed like a clear comparison, within a similar theatrical context. Within this reading I found similarities were often drawn between directing and conducting, with one author going so far as to say ‘The relation of the stage-director to the actor is precisely the same as that of a conductor to his orchestra’(Craig, 1963). In hindsight I would perhaps question how many conductors Craig actually had exposure to, as through my placements, I found there are stark differences in these approaches. Whilst a classical conductor and musical theatre MD might seem like two sides of the same coin, whilst there are many transferrable skills between the two roles, there are just as many differences. This journal aims to develop an understanding of these differences through its reflection of my placement experiences.
Overview
Across the past seven months I have had the pleasure of working and observing a range of placement opportunities. Performance Projects for the MA Company exposed me to an array of musical experiences through the lenses of different roles under the MD umbrella. Assisting on the 3rd year production of Into The Woods offered the opportunity to work full-time as an assistant on a full-scale. Whittington written by Leeds Conservatoire alumnus, Evie Press, was a particularly unique experience in working on a piece that was literally having new material added into the process overnight. London to Broadway, the MA Company’s showcase gave an insight to working as an arranger as well as pit musician. Finally, John Barrowman’s Camp as Christmas UK Tour (a one man cabaret style show), gave an insight into the world of working on a large scale tour with a big name star. I shall now reflect upon my experiences, what I have learnt from them, and what I want to take forward into my own professional work.
Camp as Christmas UK Tour
John Barrowman’s Camp as Christmas UK Tour visited eighteen different venues over six weeks. As part of my placement I joined and observed for three performances: Bromley, Crewe, and Peterborough. The former came at the beginnings of the tour, being only the second performance in early November, whilst the latter were stops thirteen and fourteen. Across just the three performances that I joined I travelled around 425 miles, giving a look into the intensive experience of touring, a situation that a professional MD or pit musician can often find themselves in. Through my personal experience, my observation of Ben Papworth (Musical Director) and crew, as well as conversations with Ben, I found that the touring lifestyle is one that requires extensive stamina and self-care/maintenance in order to maintain a high standard performance. Within the industry we can often consider our work to be simply contained within the two to three hours of a performance each night when so much more can impact us, even something as simple as moving from place to place, a consideration that I had never considered as something that could impact my role as a musical director.
Whilst it may not be a regular experience of a musical director, potentially with success can come the opportunity to work with “celebrity” performers. This placement gave an insightful look into this particular type of work. Whilst collaborating with an incredibly talented and experienced star might have many rewarding aspects to it, I found that, in this instance at least, this came with other undesirable qualities. This was particularly reflected in the fact that in the month between performances that I was observing, the show had gained 40 minutes to its runtime, yet no extra music, with these minutes being gained through self-indulgence of Barrowman. An example came from Barrowman’s decision in Peterborough to engage with a heckler in the first half and then going into an expletive ridden rant regarding this backstage at the interval. This created an uncomfortable working environment for the production, in particular for Ben and I who experienced the whole thing coming through the dressing room wall. This particular experience of my placement really exposed that “celebrity” isn’t necessarily as glamorous as one might expect and going forward in my own career is something I should be wary of the impact that can be had on an otherwise healthy work environment.
A final take-away from my experience on the tour was highlighting how varied the role of MD can be. Whilst the musical director is often hidden away in the pit, occasionally only seen as the back of a floating head, here Ben was fully visible on stage and having to engage constantly almost like the other half of a double act. A position that I feel could have the potential to be very exposing and even draining due to the impact of so many more external influences that a pit removes. Whilst performing visibly on stage may be potentially gratifying in the moment of audience reaction, it is not one I would actively wish to recreate within my own professional career.
Into the Woods – 3rd Year Production
The most significant of my placement opportunities came in the form of working as Assistant Musical Director (AMD) on the third year production of Into the Woods. This project offered a huge range of learning opportunities. Firstly working full-time, collaborating with numerous departments, over a rehearsal period of 5 weeks, provided an experience closest to working on a professional production. Secondly, the experience of working specifically as an Assistant Musical Director, a position new to me, but a vital one to experience, as in the early stages of my career I am more than likely to find myself in assistant positions. Finally, working with a completely new cast, as whilst on the MA Company Performance Projects I had developed a working relationship with both the Company cast and my fellow musical directors, here I was starting from scratch in developing my working relationships, a situation resembling a typical professional environment.
Over the project I found the role of AMD to be far more versatile than I initially thought, requiring me to be adapting rapidly to the different situations I encountered. My expectations were rather stereotypical, expecting most of my work to come in the form of running warm-up and subbing in on the keyboard when the MD was either wasn’t present or no longer had the desire to be playing. Whilst these were responsibilities that I did find myself taking on, there was also much more.
A significant portion of my role involved work that might traditionally fall under the umbrella of musical supervision (a role that I had brief experience with working on the second performance project, Final Act), as for this production we were using a completely new orchestration and cast doublings that had not traditionally been used. This meant we had a live version of the score that I had to maintain and edit within the rehearsal room as adaptations and cuts were made, particularly ensuring these were reflected within the band parts. This required me to rapidly develop a proficiency working with the notation software Dorico, as this was what Andrew had used to produce our productions new edition, having historically worked in Sibelius. Regarding my personal professional development this provided me with an indispensable skill as the industry is gradually moving towards Dorico being the industry standard following the removal of ongoing support for the software Finale.
The number and occasional brutality of adaptations made was certainly something that I was not expecting, but reflected a professional approach to adapting the music to fit our specific production. Coming from a classical background where the score is often treated as gospel this is something that I personally would have not considered doing. For example, the score often featured extended passages of traveling music, but as our woods were significantly smaller, this music was superfluous to our requirements and therefore cut. Another example came as a result of our cast doublings, the roles of Lucina and Red Riding Hood’s Grandma, not traditionally played by the same actress, had lines in extremely close proximity to one another, which was simply impossible with our doubling. The solution we found was giving Grandma’s line to Red Riding Hood whilst keeping dramaturgical logic. A similar instance occurred due to our untraditional doubling of Mysterious Man and Cinderella’s Prince, however, in this case there was not a dramaturgically viable option, so we simply cut the Mysterious Man’s line. Experiencing these adaptations and the creative discussions that were had about them highlighted that even in professional contexts as a musical director you are still likely to encounter awkward problems and that you have to be musically adaptable, as well as dramatically aware, when you tackle them, in way that a classical conductor might not be.
The first day of rehearsals was certainly one of my most significant learning experiences. As I outlined earlier, an expected part of my role would be to play keys when the Musical Director was not present, I however, had not quite envisioned this being for day 1 of rehearsals when we were to be doing a read/sing through of the whole show. Upon reflection I feel this was a challenge I tackled successfully, largely due to the way I effectively adapted my approach to the score. Sondheim’s scores are infamous for their difficulty and scale, with Into The Woods featuring over 70 individual cues and songs, the opening spans fifteen minutes by itself. An important personal realisation was that for the purpose of this sing through I needn’t play every note on the page and occasional wrong notes are not the end of the world as long as it doesn’t impede on the cast’s ability to perform. I got through the score well enough to allow the sing through to serve its primary function as an overview of the whole piece, rather than a focus on precision. When we reached the most difficult corner of the score, Your Fault, I let it be spoken through rhythmically, rather than sung, as I recognised that my attempts to play would not be useful for the context of the sing through. I feel this was an appropriate application of Church’s point of view that the ‘Classically trained music directors working on a stage production should not expect, nor do they require, the rigour of a classical choir’ (Church, 2015, p. 210) and it is not necessary to impose that expectation upon myself or beat myself up over within the context of a sing through. Reconciling this difference from my historically classical approach and subsequently maintaining this mindset will let me have a healthy mental approach to my professional practice, particularly with regards to where I place my focus in different rehearsal contexts.
The full scale nature of this project allowed me to both observe and personally work with a professional team, including a Director, Choreographer, and Intimacy Co-ordinator. An aspect I found interesting to explore was how these different individuals communicated about music. Rozow makes wh useful observations about talking music with non-musicians, telling them ‘not to use music terminology at all. I ask them to speak to me about story, drama, emotion, colors, feelings, shapes – anything that helps them express what they’re after, forget music terminology. It is my job [as musical director] to translate what they are looking for into music.’ (Rozow, 2025). Sometimes in the rehearsal room we would simplify this even further and developed a language in the room that allowed “bom, bom, bom, bom, bom, bom, bom di dum” to be clearly understood as a specific recurring musical figure. This approach became one I also developed using with the cast, though I shall address them momentarily. Having never worked on choreography heavy projects before, working with a choreographer also helped me develop a smoother internal translation between dance language (talking in 8’s) and music language (talking in specific bars), which going forward in professional work will allow for me to have a clearer communication with choreographers, who I will collaborate with often.
Another aspect of working with such individuals became balancing when to intervene on a musical front during a choreography or blocking rehearsal. Laster suggests that ‘These musical errors should be corrected sooner rather than later. Do not let musical mistakes go uncorrected, even during these blocking sessions. Once music has been incorrectly learned and reinforced with a physical action, the mistaken version will be so strongly supported by the physical movement.’ (Laster, 2001, p. 51). I found I had to be slightly more balanced and tactful in my approach, ensuring that a rehearsal in flow wasn’t disrupted, unless the error itself could be detrimental to the blocking. An approach I found useful was to highlight minor inaccuracies with individuals at a rehearsals conclusion or whilst they were not being used directly in the blocking or choreography at that time. This approach to intervention allowed me to correct errors soon enough for them to not be reinforced by action, whilst also not disrupting the primary focus of the rehearsal.
A prime example of this balancing came during the intimacy blocking rehearsal of the song Any Moment in which the only people present in the room were the two cast members involved, the intimacy co-ordinator, and myself at the keyboard. During this rehearsal there were certainly smaller musical inaccuracies occurring, largely due to focus being understandably elsewhere, though due to the sensitivity of the rehearsal I actively chose to not bring up these points so as not to disrupt, fixing them at the rehearsals conclusion. However, when the cast members managed to skip a whole verse of the song whilst blocking, something that went unnoticed by the intimacy co-ordinator, I had to tactfully intervene immediately, as blocking and narrative flow had rapidly become misaligned with the score. Experiencing this moment in allowed me to start to develop an understanding of when musical intervention is necessary, especially when dealing with sensitive material such as onstage intimacy, and how to strike a balance that does not risk disrupting other creative’s rehearsals. Going forward in my own professional work maintain an awareness of this balance will incredibly important in allowing me to help maintain a healthy and productive working environment.
The most significant experience of this show came from working with and developing an incredibly strong relationship with the cast. Due to the score and story being incredibly fragmented, it was rare that more than five of the cast would be onstage at any one time, this allowed me to run a breakout rehearsal room where I could tackle tricky corners of music with the cast that had perhaps been causing issues within blocking rehearsals, or had not been covered thoroughly enough in prior music rehearsals. This allowed me to gain vital experience of building strong working relationships with the cast within my own individual rehearsals, where I was able to focus on my personal approaches instead of assisting Andrew’s process within the main rehearsal room.
Church encourages that ‘Most coaching sessions involving a musical director and singer are very friendly, frank, and efficient.’ (Church, 2015, p. 188) and in order to achieve this I found it necessary to develop a strong social foundation with them, through eating with them, socialising in breaks, and even getting involved in the game of cast Traitors (that I went on to win). Doing so subsequently allowed me to have a good personal rapport with them all that could then feed into a healthy and successful rehearsal rapport.
When it came to the musical part of my breakout rehearsals, I found it very useful to inform my approach through the writing of Jordan and Walker on the overlap in vocal pedagogy between choral music and musical theatre, an absolute gem of an article for me personally, being a musician who bridges this specific overlap. Due to the immense difficulty of Into The Woods’s score, fine tuning these techniques was especially important in order to achieve a successful final product from my rehearsals. Jordan and Walker highlight that ‘The singer participates by understanding what’s happening in the piece as a whole, not just the vocal part.’ (Jordan and Walker, 2022, p. 53), this became one of my primary tenets of my rehearsal process, especially when working with such a complex score where the vocal and instrumental parts are so intrinsically linked. However, this is not an approach in which industry standards are useful, as so often rights holders only provide casts with librettos and vocal books, in which the only notation is the vocal line, with no wider musical context. On a practical basis this only impacts musical rehearsal negatively as singers are so often lacking the basic musical information that I try to highlight as useful to them. Even with a basic level of music reading ability they would be able to identify by themselves with more information, and thus be more prepared in rehearsals.
Furthermore, Jordan and Walker highlighted that ‘If a singer understands what they’re trying to express in relation to the rhythmic and harmonic vocabulary, they’re participating in the moment that the composer and lyricist were creating’ (Jordan and Walker, 2022, p. 53) and therefore cannot only produce a more accurate performance but allow it to become more nuanced, by informing their performance from the score. Ulrich posits that ‘Conductors must not fall into the trap of learning the composition from a recording’ (Ulrich, 1993, p. 35), and I wholeheartedly agree and feel that this should also extend to casts. So often I would hear the phrase “on the recording they do this” , and whilst in our contemporary age of streaming it is impossible to not have a level of familiarity with recordings, using them as a crutch is often unhelpful. Performers on recordings can often take liberties with the score and more generally just lead individuals into recreating another performers interpretation instead of developing their own rooted in their interpretations of what is on the page.
Using this score informed approach to my rehearsals, even if only using the most basic or even no musical terminology at all was always an incredibly useful tool within my rehearsal room. However, my use of terminology is something that has definitely had to change over my placement experiences, as I have found that the musical capacity of a Musical Theatre ensemble won’t match my previous experience of classical rooms, this has led me to often being as simple with my explanations as “you can get your note because here as the flute plays it just before you”. Going forward from this experience I shall always actively encourage the casts I’m working with to utilise full vocal scores (and in the case of my work as musical supervisor on Final Act, I ensured this was possible), even if they don’t believe themselves to be the most proficient musician, in order to both help themselves understand the music they are performing from a logistical point of view of you, as well as allowing it to inform a far more nuanced performance. This approach acts as an excellent example of where some aspects of my classical training can be very useful, such as a focus built on the score, but that I need to ensure I am adaptable with my terminology to allow performers of different musical abilities to find this approach accessible.
MA Company Performance Projects
If Into The Woods was a five week long marathon, the MA Company performance projects were a series of intensive sprints, providing exposure to an array of different musical theatre genres, as well as directing and supervising opportunities. A significant learning experience I have drawn from this particular series of projects has come from reflecting on my approach to communication styles, however, as this was the primary focus of my case study presentation, I shan’t address that directly within this journal.
Our House, the first and most intensive turnarounds of the three performance projects, being put into a performance within 10 rehearsals, was my first exposure as a musical director to working on a jukebox material. Whilst only a short exposure, it is one that will prove very important one in my own personal professional development, as the genre of the jukebox musical is becoming more and more popular, therefore I am highly likely to encounter working on one in the future. In particular, working as the keyboard conductor for the process helped me developed the specific approach to leading and playing within a Jukebox context.
Final Act was the most fruitful for me personally in terms of my professional development as it gave me exposure to working as a musical supervisor, and the skills involved, that I would subsequently go on to develop on Into The Woods. It was especially useful, as the revue nature of the piece allowed me to work simultaneously on four incredibly distinct musical scores. Furthermore, this experience absolutely challenged my adaptability, as mere hours before the performance I found myself having to learn the keys parts for the Fun Home quarter of the score due to illness in the band. My performance was far from perfect, but similarly to the Into the Woods sing through I made sure that not impeding the singers was my primary focus, over note perfect accuracy. This was a very useful experience, as this will be far from the last time I will encounter last minute and unavoidable absences. Further developing my sight-reading skills through specific drills and general exposure to a wide range of repertoire will allow me to better handle such a situation, for example deputising within a pit band.
Wonderful Town was the performance project I had the least involvement with due to its simultaneous occurrence with Into The Woods, however, in a way this was a learning experience in itself. This concurrence of projects combined with an incredibly challenging score highlighted the importance of communication and delegation. A stark difference occurred between how the music team communicated with itself in comparison to how the wide creative team communicated with the music team, at times significantly impacting the success of rehearsals. These differences have been more specifically outlined within my case study, but is definitely the aspect of my placement that I would approach most differently in hindsight. Within professional work juggling multiple projects is often common place and this experience highlighted that in such situations strong established communication is vital to success.
Conclusion
To conclude, the placement opportunities that I have had over the past seven months have provided me an invaluable insight into the professional domain of the Musical Director. It has highlighted to me the wide range of responsibilities that in professional contexts can fall under the umbrella of musical direction. From performing onstage with a “star” soloist to completing supervising work that an audience might never even know has occurred. Through observing Camp as Christmas I found the role of an MD could very much just act as a singular individual who’s primary purpose is to play the piano, whilst Into The Woods showcased how the role can function as a cog in a much larger machine. The process has highlighted how other roles that I might undertake, such as assistant musical director or musical supervisor, interact with the role of musical director, as well as highlighting the extensive overlap of skills that can occur between these roles.
With regards to my personal work, these opportunities have allowed me to develop an array of skills, some of which I already had, such as my keys playing, arranging, and conducting, whilst also introducing me to skills related to assisting and supervising that I had never previously experienced. In particular, these experiences have led me to reflect on how my classical training interacts with my work as a musical director and how often it is an incredibly useful tool, whilst in other instances I have been trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Most importantly, I have been shown that developing personal connections and collaboration is just as valuable as musical talent in fostering an effective and healthy working environment.
Bibliography
Church, J. (2015) Music direction for the stage: a view from the podium. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press.
Craig, E.G. (1963) ‘The Artist of the Theatre’, Directors on Directing. N.Y.: Bobbd-Merrill, pp. 149–57.
Jordan, R.C. and Walker, C.A. (2022) ‘Vocal Pedagogy in the Overlapping Rehearsal Contexts of Musical Theatre and Choral Music’, The Choral Journal, 63(4), pp. 50–61.
Laster, J.H. (2001) So, You’re the New Musical Director! An Introduction to Conducting a Broadway Musical. 1st ed. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881837341.
Rozow, S. (2025) ‘How to Talk About Music With Directors & Producers – Shie Rozow – Composer, Music Editor’. Available at: https://shierozow.com/how-to-talk-about-music-with-directors-producers/.
Ulrich, J. (1993) ‘Conductor’s Guide to Successful Rehearsals’, Music Educators Journal, 79(7), pp. 34–68. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/3398614.
