If you apply the following rhetoric to Singapore, most likely the answer would be, yes, we would like live music, but the timbres we can employ would be exceedingly limited. Because, in the first place, most productions don’t have big budgets; meaning the music department is just as affected as sets and costumes; even if they have, the size of the band is also limited.

Imagine doing a fantasy-based musical with just a single piano accompaniment…



Can you have a musical without live music?
Cellist Adrian Bradbury successfully sued the Lowry in Manchester
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/tomserviceblog/2009/jul/07/classical-music-opera-musicals













Charlotte Higgins reported last month that cellist Adrian Bradbury was suing the Lowry in Salford because having paid to take his family to see Pele Productions’ version of The Wizard of Oz, there were no live musicians, and the whole thing was performed to a backing track. As Charlotte said, Harrison Birtwistle was called as an expert witness in the case, saying in his testimony that ‘without the orchestra or MD, a performance of The Wizard of Oz is best described as karaoke’, rather than as the ‘most magical family musical of them all’, in Pele Productions’ words. In an astonishing victory for common sense, the judge agreed with Sir Harrison and Adrian, ordering the Lowry to refund the cost of Adrian’s tickets, and his legal costs. Total cost? £194.50. But it’s the principle that counts.

Here’s what Adrian says about his day in court: ‘I am over the moon that a court of law has recognised the importance of live interaction in a musical performance. A pre-recorded track cannot react musically to live singing or dancing, so has no place in a musical theatre. Karaoke must stay where it belongs – away from the professional stage.’ I’m not so sure about the last bit of Adrian’s statement: where would stadium pop gigs or Britain’s reality TV stars be without a bit of professionalised karaoke?

The Lowry, for their part, aren’t taking the judge’s decision lying down: ‘Whilst we respect the judge’s decision we are disappointed with the outcome. The judge based his decision on whether he thought that Mr Bradbury’s individual expectations were met … We are grateful for the judge’s acknowledgment that he was not offering opinion on the sector as a whole, but that he was calling the decision based on Mr Bradbury’s personal response following his visit to this show.’ Which means you can expect more pre-recorded instrumental parts in musicals that tour to the Lowry.

Alas, the judge’s decision probably won’t set a precedent for live musicians being a necessity for any show advertised as a ‘musical’. And the case of Oz in Salford is only an extreme example of what happens routinely in the big shows in London, in which the musical accompaniment is reduced to a handful of musicians, the rest playing on tape (if they ever play at all; often the orchestral accompaniments are made from pre-recorded sample libraries). That’s an interzone somewhere between ‘live’ and ‘karaoke’, but it’s still a situation in which there can be little meaningful interaction between the singers and the musicians, since nothing can really change from night to night, thanks to the straitjacket of the backing track. But that’s also the case for scores of pop gigs that happen every night, and no one kicks up much of a fuss when Take That play to a tape.

In fact, defining the lines between ‘live’ and ‘karaoke’ is becoming increasingly fraught. Obviously, it’s better to have a pared-down band than no band at all for Guys and Dolls or Oliver!, but if everybody sued the West End for not having enough live musicians, the whole edifice of musical theatre would crumble. But at least Bardbury’s victory might mean that production companies and theatres think twice before sacking all of their musicians, and, at the risk of being fined up to £194.50, that they’ll try to preserve some semblance of live music in their shows. Here’s hoping.