Last-minute lineups
Posted on Sunday, September 10, 2006
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The last week of August was a
rough one for Arkansas
Symphony Executive Director Bill
Vickery. First he found out that pianist Fabio Bidini had developed tendonitis in his right arm and wouldn’t be able to play. Vickery would have to scramble to find a replacement to perform Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the orchestra at Little Rock’s Robinson Center Music Hall on Saturday and Sept. 17, and the Piano Quintet by Robert Schumann with the orchestra’s Quapaw Quartet at the Clinton Presidential Center on Sept. 19. Then he found out that pop chanteuse Linda Ronstadt, who was to headline the orchestra’s Acxiom SuperPops concert Sept. 30, had undergone surgery and was canceling her early fall schedule. “Every concert we were doing in September either had to be moved or somebody had to be replaced,” Vickery says. The solution to the pianist problem came from Bidini’s concert manager, William J. Capone, who had another artist in his stable — prize-winning Russian pianist Ilya Yakushev, who just happened to have the Prokofiev Second and the Schumann Piano Quintet in his repertoire.
“We were just incredibly fortunate this time,” Vickery says.
“It’s like stepping into a [mud ] puddle and coming out smelling like a rose.
“ The difficulty with a cancellation on short notice — a month or less — is that most of the artists who might have that concerto in their fingers are booked.” Most orchestras and classical artists do their bookings at least a year and a half in advance, Vickery explains.
As was the case with Capone, salvation usually comes through “agents whom you trust, who know your orchestra, who know you, who know your music director, and know who’s a good fit in terms of repertory, budget and personality,” Vickery says.
Finding a pianist who could play both pieces was a particularly lucky break.
On the one hand, it saves money for the orchestra, which otherwise might have had to hire and provide air fare and hotel rooms for two pianists, one to handle the Prokofiev piece on the orchestra program and the Schumann work on the chamber program.
Changing the programs, Vickery says, would be possible but much less desirable.
“You try to move mountains to keep faith with your audience,” he explains. “You have a responsibility to your audience if you announce last February that you’re scheduling this concerto and this piano quintet.”
Rescheduling the Ronstadt concert, which Vickery did for April 19, was a little easier, but still required a lot of legwork.
“It involved a zillion little pieces,” he says. “It became sort of like one from Column A and one from Column B.
“ I spent hours on the phone with the folks from Robinson,” figuring out which dates were available and matching them to free dates in the orchestra’s schedule. “The third piece, of course, was Linda Ronstadt’s schedule, and that was based on who had booked her already.”
PAST PERFORMANCES It’s certainly not the first time Vickery has had to replace a pianist on fairly short notice. In January 2003, Navah Perlman went into the hospital for surgery two days before she was to play the Beethoven “Triple” Concerto with violinist Giora Schmidt, cellist Matt Haimovitz and the orchestra. Pianist Rohan De Silva, who had played the piece but not with the two other soloists, filled in. And in November 1997, Barry Snyder had a family emergency and had to cancel less than a week before his concerts with the orchestra. In that case, Vickery not only had to replace the artist but the piece — Snyder was to play the Little Rock premiere performance of Samuel Adler’s Piano Concerto and it was not a work with which many, if any, other pianist would be familiar. The solution was duo pianists Kathryn Lewis and Martin Perry, who played Mozart’s Two-Piano Concerto in E-flat major, K. 365. ) In that case, Vickery was the connection: He had worked with the duo as an artists’ representative in Florida. ) But it’s not usual. “When a classical artist puts pen to paper and says he’s going to do such and such a piece on such and such a date, almost always he does it,” Vickery says.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON Replacing a performer on short notice is not unique to classical music, of course. In the theater, even though performers get sick, or injured, or even die, the show must go on. On Broadway, there’s almost always an understudy to step in. If the play is running off-off-off-Broadway — say, in downtown Little Rock at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre that’s not always the case.
Take, for example, the Rep’s September 1996 production of the musical Little Shop of Horrors. New York actor Kaleo Griffith, who was playing Orin, the sadistic dentist, blew out his knee in a preview performance.
The show stopped and the actor went off to the hospital in an ambulance. And because there was no understudy, the Rep had to cancel the following night’s show while it sought and brought in an emergency replacement, Howard Pinhasik, also a New York actor, and put him through a grueling day and a half of rehearsals. The show opened as almost-scheduled, one day late.
At southwest Little Rock’s Murry’s Dinner Playhouse, a little further off-off-off-Broadway, they fly completely without a net — no understudies whatsoever. That can lead to some creative solutions when an actor has to miss a performance or drop out of a show altogether.
“I’ve had to do that so many times,” says director Glen J. Gilbert. But, “We’ve never canceled a show, not under my watch.”
Most of the time, if it’s a temporary replacement, an actor already in the show shifts roles or adopts an additional role, or Gilbert brings in a short-term fill-in, going on stage with script in hand and with notice to the audience beforehand.
“I’ve found that the audience is very supportive,” Gilbert says. “They’re almost rooting for the person with the book in his hand. Sometimes he gets the biggest applause at the curtain call.
“ They know the company is doing the best it can. The show will go on.”
In the dinner theater’s justclosed August-September production of the musical Fiddler on the Roof, Gilbert had to replace actress Candyce Hinkle in the role of Yente after Hinkle broke an ankle and then learned that, after the third performance, she’d have to have reconstructive surgery and wouldn’t be able to continue.
Gilbert tracked down Rhonda Atwood, who had been in at least two previous Murry’s productions of the musical, though not in that role. Atwood, a librarian by day, rearranged her schedule and stepped in for the rest of the run.
The hardest short-notice replacement to puzzle out, Gilbert says, was when one of the three leads in the musical Singin’ in the Rain pulled a muscle and informed him he would be unable to go on opening night. Gilbert’s solution involved not one actor but three.
“I was already in the show, so I did his lines,” he says. “In some cases, I was having a scene with myself. But I had a broken foot at the time and was on crutches, so I couldn’t dance. I had a second person dancing his routines, but he couldn’t sing the role, so I had a third person sing. We still got a standing ovation — all holding scripts or spare tap shoes.”
The actor came back the next day and the rest of the run was relatively uneventful.
“It’s amazing how we get by sometimes,” Gilbert says. “The show will go on no matter what. Nobody’s irreplaceable.”