We're going to be doing Bye Bye Birdie in the summer of next year.  I thought that I had all the costs figured out, but then I find out from our Secretary that there is some type of strange fee system (strange to me) for the orchestration.

It has to do with renting instrumentation. You can rent individual scores for various instruments up to a point ... then you have to get the entire orchestration.  The thing is ... you can't get the keyboard part unless you rent the entire orchestration.

We're an extremely small group and cannot afford to give up anymore than we have to in terms of rental fees.

We can get an accompanist, keyboard, percussion and bass.  Adding any other musicians is out of our budget.

I guess this is pretty much just venting as I don't know what else we could do.

Thanks for listening. 

Coincidentally, I was just looking at the Tams Witmark page. It says the shows have to be accompanied by a piano or a live orchestra. You can't just get the keyboard part if you're only having a piano? Or is your problem that you have to pay for the whole orchestra even if you're only doing a few instruments? We've got some of our people wanting to do musicals but trying to figure out the budget for one, I don't see how to make it break it even given our average audience and ticket prices. I guess it must be possible. I wish there was some kind of chart available to see how the royalty structure works in regard to ticket price. What do you have to do? Just keep sending in requests for royalty quotes using different ticket prices until you find the one that you think works for your theater?

Piano/conductor usually comes with the librettos. No?

I think what people are missing is the difference between the KEYBOARD part and the PIANO part.

I personally wish there were a bigger distinction made in some music.  I thought I could get by with 3 musicians for Songs for a New World: Keyboard/Piano, Percussion/Drums, and Bass.  But it turns out that if I want the FULL sound, then i need to have a seperate Keyboard player.

Life goes on.... you live, and you learn!

How much are we talking in the difference between the parts you need (minus keyboard) and the whole shebang?

That does sound like a major rip-off. Musicians are getting more expensive to. Our group used to have a big orchestra (before I came along) of 20-30 pieces. Now we are down to 9-10. The other thing that has changed is the ability of the orchestra to play light enough to be able to hear the actors without blasting them through a big sound system.