In between performances of Hairspray and Holiday Follies (he's playing for both!) we were lucky to snag a few minutes with Gabe Mangiante, our resident Accompanist.
1) Tell us a little bit about your history with Signature Theatre. When did you start and how many shows have you done here?
The first time I remember playing for Signature was for auditions for The Witches of Eastwick, so I guess it's been almost 5 years now! After that, I mainly worked on cabarets, auditions, and as a fill-in pianist, until my first regular engagement, which was Giant. Since then, I've served as rehearsal pianist, performance keyboardist, and/or musical director (and occasional actor!) for over 10 major productions of plays and musicals, most recently including musical direction of the repertory shows, The Hollow and The Boy Detective Fails, as well as providing the music for Sweet Tea. I've held the official position of Staff Accompanist with the theatre for about a year and a half now.
2) You are not only in the band, but you also put together all of the orchestrations for Hairspray. Can you tell us a little bit about that process?
My role as "re-orchestrator" for Hairspray evolved naturally from the fact that I've recently become the resident keyboard programmer for the theatre. Keyboard programming is a slightly arcane, but entirely essential, aspect of producing many musicals, particularly as financial and space constraints have dictated smaller and smaller orchestra sizes. Basically, it means choosing the various sounds that the keyboard players for a show will be using, and creating a configuration that can be loaded into the keyboards and used during performances. For Hairspray, there are 3 keyboard parts. Jenny Cartney, the conductor, plays the part that is strictly piano (because she has more than enough to deal with without worrying about being 10 or 20 other instruments!). What I contributed was basically to take the real instrument parts that we weren't able to fit into the orchestra pit and combine them into the other 2 keyboard parts (one of which is played by yours truly) so that we could still achieve the fullness and brightness of Harold Wheeler's excellent original orchestrations.
3) What has been a favorite or most memorable moment from working on Hairspray so far?
You know, it really happened the day that we had our "First Glimpse" presentation of material from the show for donors. I wasn't as involved with the actual rehearsal process as I normally would be, since I had to sequester myself away to work on the orchestrations and keyboard programming. As a result, I wasn't able to witness the progress of the actors and the show in general firsthand. When I showed up that afternoon and watched everyone perform numbers from the show, I was blown away (and jealous of Jenny and Jon Kalbfleisch that they had been there for rehearsals!). I remember thinking, "Holy crap – this show is gonna overwhelm people!"
4) What’s next for you at Signature?
Besides Hairspray, I'm both the musical director and a performer in the Holiday Follies cabaret – which is such a fun show, full of great singers and some really eclectic holiday repertoire! I'll return to Hairspray after the holidays, but as soon as we close, I'll be music directing the world premiere of Brother Russia, the exciting new piece by John Dempsey and Dana Rowe, writers of The Fix and The Witches of Eastwick (golly, that's full circle for me after playing for those auditions long ago!), which already promises to be a fascinating project. After that, it's on to Xanadu, which I'll also be music directing. And maybe, somewhere in there, a vacation! :)
Our musical genius extraordinaire, Gabe Mangiante
No comments:
Post a Comment