#robert oriol

In about three weeks I’ll be performing classical guitar live at a staged reading of The Good Person of Szechwan. There are 6 songs called out in the script, but the actors will be treating them as spoken word rather than as melodic. So it’s up to me to keep things musical! I’ve written music for 3 of the 6 so far, and recorded temp versions for the actors so they know what’s coming. I’m also seeing lots of opportunities for underscoring during scenes. I think it’s going to be fun!

I was approached to do a different reading a few weeks ago. But that was during the chaos of trying to get Julius Caesar open, so my good friend Martin Blasick took the musical reins for that one.

I am not used to being conducted. It took me a while to figure out where I am supposed to actually start playing.

Our current show has a small orchestra, made up of “professional” pit musicians, plus one (me, evidently “unprofessional”). As the person who helped spec out the sound system for this show, I was part of the orchestra by default. To quote the director, I “came with the show”.

I am a capable enough player, and arrived at the first rehearsal thoroughly prepared on all instruments I would be playing for the show. But I am not a professional pit musician. I am a composer with a day job who plays a particular set of instruments as tools with which to compose music.

Gross generalizations notwithstanding, I’ve recently learned that pit musicians don’t make a ton of money, and are constantly either playing a gig, to scrambling to line up the next one. I suppose that’s why so many of them end up with church gigs. They can read ANYTHING cold, whereas I need to spend quite a bit of time with the music to sort out what makes it tick. I think that’s the composer in me, I want to hear how all the parts work together to make the whole.

While the other players can, and sometimes do have substitutes come in and play the show for them, I can sub for nobody, and nobody can sub for me because of the wide range of instruments I’m playing for each performance. Well, they could but it would take at least two people to cover my parts. This is not boasting on my part. If anything it’s regret. My setup time before each show is a minimum of 90 minutes.

I received a 6-string BT-14 “Banjitar“ from Gold Tone to use for the run of Threepenny Opera.

During this show I’m switching between banjo, classical guitar, lap slide and upright bass. I found the 6-string spacing to be problematic. Too many strings, too close together, and I’m never using the 6th string for the banjo parts. 

So, luthier Doub Pearce turned my 6 string into a 5-string. It now has exactly the same spacing as the first 5 strings on my nylon-string guitars, so switching between the two is much easier.

Three Penny Opera is the next big production for me, and it features a live band. Discussions with the director as distant as a year ago led to the mutual agreement that I would NOT be the Musical Director for this play. I am 100% fine with that, because it frees me up to be a pit musician, which is something I love to do from time to time.

Somehow however, offering to play double bass for this show has resulted in me faking banjo parts on a guitar. Lots and lots of banjo parts, played on a Godin SA nylon string guitar through a Roland GR-55 so that it sounds banjo-esque.

Listen to: But He Does Bother Me… by Robert Oriol

Music from Stupid Fucking Bird, which just opened at Theatre @ Boston Court.

This play was a tough one, for no other reason than that I started to hear what this play was supposed to sound like VERY LATE in the game. By then, of course, it was scramble scramble to get it done on time. I think what tripped me up were the 3 ukulele songs that came with the play, and the suggestion that there be Russian influences in the music. It took me a while to wrap my head around that one. As it turns out, ukuleles can pass for balalaikas. So that helped.