Great orchestrations are like a great dish. You may not taste each ingredient individually but they all blend into something great. Same goes for good orchestrations. I hate it when you can hear all the instruments try and blend and not sound harmonious. I'm curious to hear your opinions.
I love the massive amounts of percussion in Celebration. Also, the orchestrations to the original Madrid recording of Evita are sumptuous. But as far as ingenuity, I think Company and Into the Woods are tops.
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian
I, too, love the original "Company" and the Original "Funny Thing...Forum". And though I think it is a little too chorded in parts, "Sweeney Todd" has some excellent passages.
I know I will probably be killed for saying this, but "Little Women" has some gorgeous scoring, especially in both of Marme's numbers.
And, Wildhorn's "Camille Claudel" and Brown's "Parade" both make my list.
"She couldn't act scared on a New York City subway at three in the morning."- A review of Sarah Brightman for "The Phantom of the Opera"
"Look I made a hat... where there never was a hat."
"Think of how I adore you, think of how much you love me. If I were perfect for you, wouldn't you tire of me?"
"Somebody, crowd me with love. Somebody, force me to care. Somebody, make me come through, I'll always be there, as frightened as you, to help us survive. Being alive. Being alive. Being alive!"
"There are worse things than staring at the water as you're posing for a picture after sleeping on the ferry after getting up at seven to come over to an island in the middle of a river half an hour from the city on a Sunday!"
There's lots of terrific orchestrators beyond Tunick's great work for the Sondheim shows. Check out the work of Sid Ramin, Robert Ginzler, Eddie Sauter, Billy Byers, Tori Zito, Ralph Burns, Irwin Kostal, Mort Lindsay, Luther Henderson... Almost everything they touched still sounds extraordinary.
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.
Next to that, pretty much anything by Jonathan Tunick (Follies, Sweeney) or Robert Russell Bennet (South Pacific, The King & I) is amazing. Also love Ragtime and the Scarlet Pimpernel.
It's not that I don't adore great big full beautiful orchestras, and it's not that I don't adore the work of Jonathan Tunick (making musical theatre sound great since 1957!), but I have a LOT of love for Sarah Travis's orchestrations for Sweeney Todd. I love the way she cuts the instruments down to the bare minimum, but still maintains the spirit of the show and keeps some of the brilliant little moments you almost might not notice on any other day.
Jonathan Tunick and William David Brohn were the two that sprung instantly to mind - Company, Into the Woods and Ragtime are particularly brilliant.
Has anyone read 'The Sound of Broadway Music - A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations' by Steven Suskin? Excellent book, highly recommended for anyone interested in the subject...
Another Philip J. Lang: Fanny. Including the bass, 14 in the string section? That's kind of bananas and incredibly beautiful.
When I see the phrase "the ____ estate", I imagine a vast mansion in the country full of monocled men and high-collared women receiving letters about productions across the country and doing spit-takes at whatever they contain.
-Kad