<p>Our high school uses a combination of professionals and students. They have a nice camaraderie. I don’t think a student would be turned away but it tends to be the more proficient players who do pit. They don’t have a lot of time to practice so it can be high pressure. It’s been a positive experience for my daughter. I’m not sure how much it adds to the budget but people seem okay with it.</p>
<p>Our school system has excellent band and orchestra programs, which begin in elementary school. Our hs bands and orchestras are truly high quality, with many students each year selected for All-County and All-State. So there’s never been a need to hire professional musicians for the pit band - students audition for a place there, and only the best are selected. In fact, the pit band used to be the best element of the annual musical! Fortunately, there’s a new director whose staging abilities are now up to the band’s standard. </p>
<p>I think that student musicians could gain a lot from working side by side with pros. I don’t know how to balance that plus against selecting a pro instead of a capable student. When I went to hs, our band was kind of sad, and usually in over its head with the annual musical. There was no money to hire professionals. The year we did “West Side Story,” the band director had most of the score played by the one outstanding piano student at school, and just filled in around the edges with the other instrumentalists.</p>
<p>We use professional musicians and usually two or three students per year and EVERYONE gets paid. Our school is small, but our musicals are “big”.</p>
<p>I don’t think my kids’ school uses any professional musicians at all (although maybe they pay a rehearsal pianist). I’ve never heard of the other schools around here doing so either–but this county has a pretty strong instrumental program, with bands and orchestras in all the high schools, and usally jazz bands too.</p>
<p>Our school is rural and medium/small. It MT program was one of the delights of my kids’ high school experience. I’ll admit that enthusiasm sometimes replaces talent, but the director always rings the most out of the kids and picks the musicals for the kids he has. </p>
<p>What surprises me about this thread is most schools seem to choose between students and professionals in the pit band. Given our somewhat thin resources and numbers, most of the best orchestra musicians in high school are also the kids performing on stage. We rarely have students in the pit.</p>
<p>But paid musicians? Never heard of such a thing. There are numerous talented community members who make the rounds of the area’s high schools, volunteering their time. I thought this was the norm. They might be music teachers (private or public), church musicians, or just people who have non-music careers but want to stay involved in music and play their instrument. Unfortunately, we have no active community orchestra here, so they don’t have another outlet.</p>
<p>Our school uses student musicians. However, the keyboard player is the choir accompaniest - I’m sure she gets paid. In the past we’ve had student keyboard players who could handle it but lately no one has been willing to take it on.</p>
<p>We got a new theater director two years ago. She’s done large cast shows and that’s so smart. Lots of friends and family attend - but not only of the cast, but crew and orchestra. This year we had the first sell out in the history of the school. Cast a few drill team members, and the whole drill team attends. Cast a football player and the whole football team attends.</p>
<p>No, Teri, in my seven years involved with 2 kids in the HS musical, other than the occasional faculty member pitching on an instrument that the student body was deficient on, we had absolutely no paid professionals. It’s just not done at our high school.</p>
<p>We had one exception for show choir competition, which is like taking your musical, cutting it down to 30 minutes & carrying it on the road, where you’re judged on everything, including timing of crew setup & tear-down. Due to faculty cutbacks one year, we had to hire an outside keyboard player/quasi-arranger to help out at competitions, to the tune of $300 per show. Fortunately, our outside fundraising choral account could handle the cost. Bottom line? He played well, the combo/pit band won some awards that year, but overall it was a disaster. He was in his early twenties, still thought himself a high schooler, and there were rumors of inappropriateness with students. Needless to say, it wasn’t done again.</p>
<p>Part of the whole deal with HS musicals & show choir competition is teaching the students to perform under pressure. Certainly, if you have a bad band backing up a great singing/dancing group or a killer cast, it can hurt. I remember one particular year, when after a competition when our group did not win ostensibly because of timing issues with the band, watching the choir director scream at the sky in the school parking lot at 3AM out of sheer frustration.</p>
<p>It’s all about the process, and if there’s any way you can place student musicians in the role of learning, honing their craft, then performing to their highest level when it’s time to, the final output is almost secondary in my eyes. Professionals, to my way of thinking, impede that process.</p>
<p>Both the high school I attended and the one my kids went to used only students. The one my kids graduated from had a couple go on to become professionals. It’s a large public high school. I can’t imagine using paid musicians. What a waste of student talent.</p>
<p>My HS always only used students–H played four years in the pit band.</p>
<p>My kids’ HS started bringing in pros, despite the fact that we have a strong music program. The more they did so, the less the kids wanted to take part. It really soured the experience.</p>
<p>Large, all-girls Catholic school in our city, uses pre-recorded music. My son still had fun participating in all their musicals.</p>
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I’ll bet he did! ;)</p>
<p>At the high school I attended, the marching band was also the pit orchestra, and they did a fantastic job. I’m sure any suggestion of hiring outside performers would have been met with furrowed eyebrows and quizzical looks. At my son’s high school, very small, not enough musicians and almost all of those are onstage or teching. They use pre-recorded music. So do most of the youth theatres in the area.</p>
<p>Aside, call me old-fashioned, but I can’t imagine doing Rent in a high school. I’ve seen the “School Edition” done (passably) by a youth theatre. Grand words in the program about themes of love, acceptance, friendship, compassion… but the shock factor was all the kids really latched onto and ran with. IMHO if you want to watch a pole dancer and a lesbian lap dance, there are other venues for that!</p>
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<p>I just wanted to add…both of my kids did play in the pit bands alongside of the paid folks. They found this to be a wonderful experience…and actually felt that they benefited from having some really strong players alongside the students.</p>
<p>Our HS doesn’t even have a real auditorium, so the pit orch/band is always quite small: usually around 5-7 musicians, I think. They use a combination of professionals or semi-professionals and a few all-state caliber students who are invited to participate by the director. I think it’s important that singers and dancers, who are really putting themselves out there, have competent accompaniment.</p>
<p>The school has no orchestra–only a band–so being asked to play was a nice way for my son, a violinist, to participate in something musical at school. For one semi-musical production–Spoon River Anthology–the accompaniment consisted only of him on “fiddle” and the band director on guitar.</p>
<p>Our HS is the same as Consolation’s. A couple of talented students are invited to perform; the rest are semi-professionals, and all are paid. There is a paid musical director (who also plays keyboard) and paid choreographer. The director is the full-time HS theater teacher. We have a full three-year curriculum for acting and tech. Our musicals have an intense rehearsal schedule; you can’t really be in any other activities during that time, including Sat. work parties for the cast and crew.</p>
<p>Our HS choir teacher and band/orch. teacher don’t participate in the musicals. Most of the choir/band/orchestra kids are also in select groups that would interfere with participation in the musicals. Our HS is large and you pretty much have to choose any area of specialization.</p>
<p>Man things have changed. 35 or so years ago playing in the pit orchestra at my high school was one of the best things I did in high school, and it led to a life long love of musicials. No one would have even considered hiring a professional musician; the students simply did the best they could. In fact, we had a musical production my senior year that was totally student run; there was a student director, students picked the cast, and the musical director and conductor of the pit orchestra was a student. We did You’re a Good Man Charly Brown and we it was a big success. Glad I went to high school back then, frankly.</p>
<p>Mythreesons–that’s how my kids felt. I understand Thumper’s point about learning from professionals, but the message our band kids got was that they were not good enough (certainly no one talked about hiring professional actors).</p>
<p>The high schools that my Ds attended, including an arts h/s, never paid anyone involved in their productions. The school orchestras were used and, if necessary, were supplemented with other community musicians, on a volunteer basis. This is how it’s handled at most/all Canadian schools. Musicians, directors, stage managers, lighting operators, all participate on a voluntary basis. No teacher is ever paid to direct a play, lead the orchestra, or coach a team, for that matter. It always surprised me when living in the U.S. how so few teachers volunteered to run extra-curricular activities, clubs, sports teams, theatre productions. Too many of them did nothing extra unless they were paid to do so. Teachers here don’t do that, it would probably never occur to them that they should be paid. Not all teachers participate in extra-curriculars but those who do, do it because they enjoy doing so. Different culture I guess. The arts high school that a few of my Ds attended had the most incredible staff I’ve ever seen. There were more than 40 different productions at that school every year. Some of those teachers were involved with more than one at a time, in addition to teaching a full load of courses during the day.</p>
<p>That’s a great idea garland! Only for the difficult leading roles though. That way the students could learn from a real pro. I wonder if they could hire a center for the basketball team? I think it is absurd, wasteful and offensive to include paid professionals in a student production, but that is just my opinion, parent of 2 nontheatrical boys.</p>
<p>You know, NJres, Manny hasn’t been signed yet–wonder if our baseball team needs a left fielder? ;)</p>