Wicked – Orchestra Pit Photos

In October 2006 I saw WICKED at the Paramount Theater in Seattle. Of course it was an incredible show, amazing singing and a totally engaging score.

The core musicians in the pit that tour with the show are the conductor, drums, guitars and keyboards. The other musicians (like brass and woodwinds) are contracted locally at each venue.

Here are some pictures of the orchestra pit of the WICKED touring crew. GREAT SHOW GUYS!!!!

Wicked Orchestra Pit Pictures

Bass Player
The bass player, (seen here drinking coffee), plays 3 instruments; a stand up bass, a fretless electric bass, and a fretted electric bass.
Bass player Mark

wicked-bass.JPG

Guitar Player
This musician plays 6 instruments; a banjo, a mandolin, two acoustic guitars, and two different electric guitars to achieve different effects.
wicked-guitar.JPG

Percussionist
Chuck is the percussionist and he plays many, many different instruments. Besides the obvious timpani, bells, vibraphone, bass drum, tubular bells, and cymbals, he plays a number of very unusual instruments to achieve special effects including a peanut wind chime and a water pipe.
percussionist Chuck

wicked-percussion.JPG

more percussion equipment
Another view of the percussion area.
Percussion equipment

wicked-percussion2.JPG

More percussion
This view is more or less the way Chuck sees his area.
percussion equipment 2

wicked-percussion3.JPG

Keyboards
There are 4 keyboard synthesizers in the pit. One of them takes the place of the entire string section, and the other three take the place of other live musicians. Unfortunately, this isn’t good for live wind players, but it makes it cheaper for the producers of the show to stage a large production like this. The synthesizers blend in with the live musicians and make it sound like there is full orchestra in the pit. Here are two of the keyboards.
keyboard player

wicked-keyboards.JPG

Drummer Booth
The drummer has his own booth in the pit. This is for a couple of reasons, but mostly it’s so that the sound man can create a good balance between the drummers sound and the acoustic musicians, and also so that his sound doesn’t bleed into the other musicians microphones.
inside drummer booth

wicked-drums.JPG

Drummer booth
Inside the drummer booth. You can see that the drummer also has several percussion effects to play.
wicked-drums2.JPG

Brass Section
The brass section is made up of 1 trumpet, 1 french horn, and 1 trombone. If you look closely, you can see that they all use a variety of mutes to achieve different effects for different songs. The trumpet player plays a flueglehorn and a trumpet, and the trombone player plays a tenor trombone and a bass trombone.
brass players

wicked-brass.JPG

Woodwind section
The woodwind section is made up of 1 clarinet, 1 flute, (me!) and 1 oboe. The clarinet player plays clarinet, Eb clarinet, bass clarinet, and soprano saxophone. I play flute, alto flute, piccolo, recorder, and pennywhistle. The oboe player plays oboe and english horn.

You may be interested to know that each musician gets paid more $$ for every instrument they play!
woodwind players

wicked-woodwind.JPG

The Conductor
This is Bob the conductor. He, the drummer, two keyboard players, and the guitar player travel with the show; the rest of the musicians are local.

The conductor is really the one who runs the whole show. He is responsible for coordinating the singers with the musicians, and making sure that everything runs smoothly.

wicked-conductor1.JPG

Freddy Fender Tribute – TexMex Fest 2007

 texmex-fest.png

Las Vegas, NV – Saturday, June 16 2007

MUSIC LEGEND AND CROSSOVER PIONEER FREDDY FENDER TO BE REMEMBERED WITH ALL-STAR TRIBUTE

Ivan Entertainment and KTCOK Enterprises are pleased to present a show-stopping Las Vegas extravaganza in honor of the late Tex-Mex musical legend and country-rock trailblazer Freddy Fender. Among the slate of All-Star celebrity artists scheduled to appear are Grammy Award-winners such as Little Joe y La Familia, Ramon Ayala y Los Bravos del Norte, country crooner Johnny Rodriguez, Roberto Pulido, Johnny Hernandez, California Chicano sound originators Tierra, Charlie Rich Jr. and Augie Meyers, a founding member of the Texas Tornados. Actor Jesse Borrego, former star of the television series “Fame” and films such as Con-Air, Bound by Honor and Lone Star will join the all-star musical line-up as master of ceremonies.

A successful concert promoter and son of legendary Tejano artist Little Joe Hernández, Ivan Hernández is aiding by fueling a modern-day renaissance of the Tex-Mex sound while dedicating himself to the preservation of a powerful legacy and native musical tradition. For this historic tribute, Hernández has recruited an impressive line-up of musical giants who will appear together on stage for the first time ever at the Orleans Arena on Saturday, June 16th as part of a historic dance and concert being held to remember fellow Texan Freddy Fender, a rocker who achieved crossover star status with a string of No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Country and Pop charts, while recording widely popular Spanish-language versions of hits by Elvis Presley and Harry Belafonte.

Born Baldemar Huerta in San Benito, Texas, he showed musical promise at an early age and constructed a homemade guitar from screen door wire and a used sardine can while still a child. By age 10, he had already made his first local radio appearance. Playing bars and honky-tonks, he was often referred to as “El Bebop Kid.” Taking a cue from his favorite guitar, he changed his name to Freddy Fender in 1959 before recording “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” a song which did for a swelling tide of English language listeners what a Spanish take on Presley’s “Don’t be Cruel” and Belafonte’s “Jamaica Farewell” had done three years earlier for Mexican and Latin American audiences, turning Fender into a real-life star.

With a string of chart toppers that began in 1974 with the release of “Before the Next Teardrop Falls,” Fender quickly became a national sensation, earning Grammy nominations and Country Music Award for best new artist. A re-release of “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” followed a similar path to the top of the music charts. In more recent years, he co-founded the Texas Tornados with Flaco Jimenez, Augie Meyers and Doug Sahm, continued touring as a solo artist, and toured as part of Tejano super group, Los Super Seven. A multi-Grammy Award winner, he battled health problems before succumbing to lung cancer at the age of 69 on October 16, 2006

“He was one of my best friends, but he was also one of my heroes,” says Little Joe Hernández, a Texas born-and-bred musician who is often referred to as the “King of the Brown Sound.” Hernández is proud to have known Fender and laments the loss of a truly great talent. “We lost a national treasure in Freddy. I want to make sure his legacy lives on. He was a fighter to the end and proud of his Chicano heritage. We want to celebrate his life and his music,” adds Hernández.

Assembled as much for their personal relationships with Freddy Fender as for their honest admiration of his unprecedented legacy, all the artists slated to appear at the tribute were his true brothers in music, artists who were very close, life-long friends with a man they will gather to remember on June 16th. All of them superstars in their own right, these are musicians at their peek who were Freddy Fender’s collaborators and contemporaries. Together, they created in a bold new world which left room for and indeed, even encouraged Chicano redneck fusions, swamp rocker blues, big band, horn-laced Tejano, electrified rock & roll and straight-up Conjunto Norteño, and combinations of all on a single record.

“Growing up on the road with dad, I was fortunate to have grown up around all of these guys,” says Ivan Hernández. “I saw all of them with Freddy at one time or another. And I was especially impressed at how down to earth Freddy was… how well he treated everybody. If anything, this is what I hope we can convey with the Tex-Mex Fest.”

About Tex-Mex Fest: A Tribute to Freddy Fender
This Texas size showcase brings everything expected of an extraordinary Tex-Mex Fest: incredible Tex-Mex/Tejano/Chicano music and a place to dance the night away. Part of the proceeds from the spectacular showcase will benefit the Freddy Fender Scholarship Fund. The Orleans Hotel & Casino provides the perfect place to settle down early in anticipation of what promises to be the concert of the year. Kicking off with a meet and greet on Friday for press and fans, the concert will highlight the Father’s Day weekend with stories, music and nostalgic images and exclusive video, to compliment the memories of Freddy Fender. The experience is guaranteed to last a lifetime. The Orleans Arena is located at 4500 W. Tropicana Ave., Las Vegas, Nevada 89103. Visit www.texmexfest.com for more information.

Orchestra String Seating and Acoustic Transmission

To achieve good acoustic transmission, the strings are arranged at the front of the orchestra. Their core function and role as melodic interpreters justifies their being close to the conductor in order to have better contact. The most important reason for their placement, however, is their low projection capability. You will easily hear two trumpets (or any woodwind or brass instrument, for that matter) playing amid the whole violin section, because the winds have a much greater power of projection. The harp is usually placed between the violins and the brass, and is used to interpose harmonic chords. This format is a relatively recent development. Monterverdi, for example, divided his orchestra in two and conducted his instrumentalists separately, placing them on two sides of the hall to underline the contrast between certain parts of his works.

Berlioz and Wagner, who had a megalomania for orchestral effects, wrote titanic symphonies, although even these weren’t enough to satisfy the composers. The biggest orchestra to date got together in Boston in 1872 for the Gilmore Peace Jubilee, celebrating the end of the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. Over 4,000 instrumentalists were present, including over 300 violins, 100 cellos, 100 double basses, 24 clarinets, bassoons, and French horns. It’s hard to imagine such a spectacle!

Many consider Jean-Baptiste Lully’s violons du roy (his twenty-four “king’s violins” inaugurated in 1626) as the first orchestra resembling those we know today. Since the time of Louis XIII, however, there have been many changes in the orchestra’s makeup. Patrons continued to encourage music in the imperial courts of Europe up to the twentieth century. Orchestras were then governed by the financial resources available to them and their patrons, depending on how ambitious these courts were in matters of entertainment and cultural outreach. The demise of a number of orchestral societies along with nineteenth-century monarchies affected even opera companies, the best employers. The flame was passed on, however, thanks to the intervention of the state, musical societies, and individual music-lovers, all of whom wanted posterity to share this great tradition.