Meeting Ron was a fascinating experience for me. Since much of what the pit does is not as visible to the audience as the action on stage, I had many questions about how they work and how the score of The Scarlet Pimpernel was constructed. He answered those questions and many more. He also told me about the latest project he has been involved with, and posed for pictures to show off his new haircut.

NR: Can you give me a little background like where you grew up?

RM: Sure. I grew up in academia. Both of my parents were college professors. Name a university town and I probably lived there for a couple of years, most of the time either in Iowa City or in Massachusetts.

NR: How did you decide upon this career?

RM: I trained early in my life for a classical piano competition career. In about 10th grade I knew that wasn't the life for me, but I didn't want to give up music completely. I was spending about 5 or 6 hours a day working on my trill. There was no life there. So, I went to school and said I've got to accompany the play and I've got to accompany the choir, and I quit classical piano as a career option. I realized the other day that I've never really done anything since except accompany the choir and accompany the play. I'm just doing it in better places now.

NR: What type of training did you get when you decided to do that?

RM: The one weird thing about growing up in Iowa City, which for me were the junior high years, is that the University of Iowa Music Department just at that time started a program called "Private Music Only." Each faculty member, on top of their normal teaching load, had to find a kid, a high school kid or a junior high kid in the area, and offer an hour a week to them as a sort of public outreach thing. Very few people took advantage of it. I took advantage of it a lot. So, after school, I would go down to the university music department, and for free, I had piano, bassoon, horn, composition, theory, organ, harpsichord, vocal repertoire, basically I got a conservatory education at a very young age, for free, and by the time I was ready for college, I didn't choose a conservatory. I felt like I had already been there.

NR: So, did you go to college?

RM: I did go to college. I went to Harvard in philosophy.

NR: This is something that I don't completely understand, and I'm sure many other people don't either. Can you explain the different responsibilities between what you do and the orchestrator, the musical supervisor and the music coordinator?

RM: Sure, and sometimes the terms mean slightly different things on different shows. In relationship to Pimpernel, Jason Howland was the musical supervisor. He essentially served as Frank Wildhorn's representative while Frank was not necessarily with us. Artistic decisions were made through me with Frank's approval and guidance. A musical coordinator is sort of the new "glamorous" title for the musical contractor. That's an administrator who is in charge of hiring and conditions of the union pit musicians. He will also be in charge of the nuts and bolts of weekly life. If the piano needs to be tuned, we'll call the musical coordinator's office, and we need to consult with him about what is legal or not legal for union musicians if we're going to appear on TV or if we're going to make a cast album.

Once we have been in rehearsal and we know what a piece wants to be - we've worked it up with the singer (it's going to be in this key), we've worked it up with the choreographer (there's going to be a 16 bar dance break at this point in the song), a sort of a glamorized lead sheet, which is the words and music in the proper key, with the kind of accompaniment we've been using in rehearsals written out on a piano staff underneath it, goes to the orchestrator who expands that into "What does the oboe do?," "What does the cello do?," "What does the percussion do?" So, I'll send out a "Please make it sound sort of like this. Here's the piano part." It will come back 50 times better because he's got all those colors and instruments and he's not limited in any way to what we've put down. It's not "Please do this and nothing more." So Kim (Scharnberg) brings his own genius to what goes onto that page. We find out at the orchestra reading what he's done. And then there's some back and forth. Certainly if the choreographer raises an eyebrow and says, "Gee, I really wanted this to be more full, more energized here" I can go back to the orchestrator and say, "Let's look at bars 221 to 228. We need a little more punch there. I noticed the horns aren't doing anything. Can we add a trumpet line there?"

NR: Do the singers get any input in this at all?

RM: No... I shouldn't say no entirely. As an example, we decided fairly late in the game to include "I'll Forget You" and I did speak to Rachel about "How do you hear this? What do you see at this point in your journey? What are you feeling?" And then we decided on a much lighter, sort of string-based beginning to the thing. Sort of high strings and bells and nothing had too much grounding in it to paint the kind of fluttery feeling she was in. And then later in the song, she gets her feet under her, and she really decides she's going to go out to die. That's when the rest of the band comes in. But if you listen to that song in the theater you'll hear there's almost no low end stuff under her when she begins to sing.

NR: Who was responsible for that wonderful Entr'acte, which I dearly love, and now it's been cut down to nothing?

RM: Oh, thank you. Thank you. I was.

NR: I have to say it's one of the most well written overture-type pieces that I've heard.

RM: Thanks. I'm a student of Broadway and this was the first time I've ever been allowed to be a musical director so it was fun. That is traditionally the musical director's job, to assemble overtures and entr'actes, and I looked at the great ones. I looked at the Gypsy Entr'acte and I looked at the Carousel and Carnival and all the great shows and sort of figured out, as a paradigm, what often happens. It often starts with some kind of a fanfare, it goes into an energetic number that you've heard in Act 1, then it goes into the prettiest ballad of Act 1, and then it goes into something else with clout that gets you to your curtain. It was easy for us because we had three main characters, Chauvelin, Marguerite, and Percy. So, I just assigned it to remind you of the three people that are in the story. So you heard a little bit of "Falcon in the Dive," you heard a little bit of "When I Look at You," and you heard a little bit of "Into the Fire," and then the curtain was up and we were rolling.

NR: Well, it's one of my favorites, and I've listened to musicals my entire life. It's very seamless.

RM: I'm glad. It's still there on the original cast album.

NR: I know, and it killed me when they cut it down. Originally, in October, it was there. And then one day I went and it was gone.

RM: Well, we were trying to buy minutes. It was very important to MSG that we aimed as much as possible on people looking at their watches at the end of the evening and going, "Wow, it's close to half past. We have time for a cup of coffee before the babysitter has to be home."

NR: I know, and people talked during it anyway, which always bothered me, so now I go home and listen to it on my CD.

RM: It was always funny conducting that Entr'acte and listening to people talk. It reminded me of old days playing in a piano bar. I wanted to say, "Hey, I'm doing good music here. Listen."

NR: Now, you also did the vocal arrangements. So, something like the choir at the end of the old "You Are My Home" - that was you?

RM: Yes. If there is more than one singer singing at a time, a vocal arranger gets involved. It can be as simple as how Percy and Marguerite harmonize together in "You Are My Home" wedding or as complicated as the music under the boat at the end, or when they go off to die.

NR: What type of training is necessary for pit musicians?

RM: You have to be a monster on your instrument, or instruments. I don't know how many people know this but... I remember in high school band if somebody played clarinet, that's what they played. You can't get hired for Broadway as a clarinetist, because normally a reed chair might have piccolo, flute, clarinet, soprano sax, alto sax, and contra bass clarinet on one chair. That means you have all those instruments, you play them well, you OWN them, because you have to bring them to the pit. It's just based on the fact that you try to get as many colors as you can into the score and you're limited on the number of people you can hire with the salaries. So, fairly early on in Broadway history, reed players started saying, "Yeah, I play the flute, but I also play the clarinet." So, it expanded and expanded and expanded. I remember when I did Woman of the Year, a Kander and Ebb show in the late 70's I think, the third trombone had to double on balalaika, and not only did we find a trombonist who played balalaika, but we had two subs! (laughing) So, it's a great town to do this in.

NR: There are a lot of people who are musicians and who are very interested in this, and they want to see how they can get into a pit.

RM: Absolutely the best way in is through subbing. Where you'll see the actors really have to be sick if they're going to miss a show, and there's a system of understudies and standbys to cover that, the deal that the League of Theater Owners and Producers has made with the union is called the "50% Rule." You can keep your job if you play half your shows. You don't get paid, obviously, for the ones you miss, your substitute does. But if you're a violin player who also has symphony commitments, or solo commitments, you can have a Broadway show as the basis of paying your rent and miss when you need to in order to keep the rest of your career going. It's kind of a good deal, it's kind of a bad deal. It's good because it attracts better quality musicians to pit jobs, because people know that they're not trapped in there eight shows a week. It's bad because sometimes I can walk in on a Sunday and be facing three regulars and 20 subs. Some subs are as good as the regular players, some are first-timers. Another issue that conductors often have with this deal that the League made with the rank and file is that there's no consideration of rehearsal. If I have a new drummer - a drum might be the backbone of the pit orchestra. Think of somebody kicking off the tempo in "Into the Fire," they've got to be pretty sure about where that's going. I don't get a chance to work with that drummer until the actors are on stage and the audience is in the house. And we all just sort of cross our fingers and hope that they've learned it well, and that I'm conducting it clearly, and that we all get to the end at the same time.

NR: In the CD booklet, Nan Knighton said that you did the vocal arrangements for "Believe" in one night. Is that normal, or was that unusual?

RM: Pimpernel is very unusual. What happened was the first incarnation of Pimpernel, other than just on the page and the concept album, when we first started thinking of it as a possible Broadway show, we put together a small cast of people and we gave ourselves a week or two to put it up. Rehearsals started 10:00 am on a Monday. Sunday night at 7:00 the cast gathered. I took people through their ranges so I understood who was in the cast, and I pulled an all-nighter. The fun part for Pimpernel is that about 80% of that work survived either intact or is the basis for a slightly more expanded arrangement. So, yeah, a lot of the bigger choral stuff and a lot of the idea of putting a little bit of the "Marseillaise" at the end of "Into the Fire," Marguerite's "Piaf-like" descant in "Storybook" came out of that one night's sweat.

NR: Has there been a time when something happened on stage that was so funny that it interfered with your conducting?

RM: Something happened on stage the other night that was very funny. No, I've got to say that I'm enough of a craftsman at what I do that I've never let it interfere, but I was in tears. The other night, during the library scene, Russell (Garrett) got an enormous response to "Well, I think it's rather nice for a change, quite summery." And Douglas had to wait for the laugh to die down. By the time he was done waiting, there was this twinkle in his eye that I know always means an ad lib from Douglas, and instead of saying, "Sometimes you frighten me" he said, "Does he frighten any of the rest of you?" and four hands went up. Just absolutely off the cuff and I thought it was one of the funniest things I had ever seen.

NR: On "Broadway Beat," Douglas talked about the fact that the new version is so structurally tight that he has to get something in by a certain measure, or he's in trouble. I was there recently and he had a problem with a prop during the "Rescue." Do you have any ability to help him out with that - to slow it down or add a little music?

RM: There are times I do and there are times I don't. Often a show is written with a certain number of what we call vamps or safeties. You play along and then you get to a bar, or a two bar phrase that you can repeat. An example of that is where Dewhurst is speaking about Marie and Armand in Paris and I'm holding until Percy says "nincompoops" and then we go. If you ever see me raise my arm and cue stage, I'm cuing out of a vamp. "Ah yes, bring on that moment of truth" - my arm goes up - "In the mist...." That's because we've been holding a bar until we're done with that speech. Bobby Longbottom's style, and I have to acknowledge, it's very much mine too, (I was thrilled to see this kind of work be done,) is that although the show wants to have spontaneity, and although it wants to have the life of real actors having real moments, it's also on a motor. You get on at the beginning of Act 1 and you are taken for this ride until intermission. So I love the fact that the scene between Percy and Dewhurst happens while Marguerite is dancing and they're locked into a certain number of counts and the music at certain points changes color. Right when he says, "The Marquis de St. Cyr is dead" you hear that tympani beat that you also heard when Marguerite handed Chauvelin the letter in the backstage scene. It's probably less fun for Douglas, it's probably way more fun for me because there is a motor so there's a feeling of a great big dance going on from 8 o'clock until 9:25.

NR: Do technological advancements change the way you interact with the cast? For example, and this is an ancient example, but how about monitors? In the old days, they looked at you, you looked at them. Now, they probably can't even see you at times.

RM: I like the fact that there are little pictures of me all over the place. So that if an actor is facing stage right they can just catch a glimpse of a TV set on the rail instead of having to somehow contort their head to watch me at the same time that they're supposed to be talking to somebody who's 180 degrees away from there. Off stage singing can happen. There are little TV sets around the place. It's a help.

NR: Do the regulars still need to watch you?

RM: I encourage watching. I also think in live theater it's not the goal to make it come out the exact number of milliseconds it was last night. I gauge how the show is going, what mood the actors are in, how the response of the audience is. I might choose to take a slightly faster or slower tempo because I think that's what's going to land tonight based on what I've heard so far. I don't want anybody to just sort of blindly walk through what they did last night. I may want to take them on a slightly different ride.

NR: During the ball scene, the Prince of Wales is conducting. Is he following you or are you following him, and is that tough?

RM: In version 1, because David Cromwell is a conductor, I actually said, "You lead it and I'll follow you." In version 2, that's just leftover like your appendix, it does nothing. He's up on the balcony. He's conducting his heart out. Nobody's looking at him. It's just local color. In the first version he was conducting.

NR: This is a pet peeve within the League. Everyone wants to know if you consider Douglas Sills to be a singer.

RM: Yes, I do. He sounds good enough, and he's neurotic enough. So, I think he does qualify as a singer. I think he's smart to say, "I don't think of myself as a singer." He sings well, like he fences well, and you would hire him for singing like you would hire him for stage combat. But his strength is his acting, and I think it's always better to say, "This is what I do" and have people be pleasantly surprised at how well you do the other things.

NR: Is there any chance of a new cast album, or have we lost that? (Note: This interview took place before Douglas announced he was staying past March 7th.)

RM: No, I don't think you've lost it. Pimpernel loves doing things that have never been done before, so I think we might be talking about some sort of a hybrid album where we would go in and record some key new tracks like "I'll Forget You" and the new "Storybook," and perhaps Rex's performances of the two Chauvelin songs. And we might put together an album with some cuts from the first cast album, these cuts and maybe a bonus track or two of Linda Eder and Peabo.

NR: How about the last note of "Prayer?"

RM: The economics...you know, if you brought Douglas Sills back in to sing one note, you would have to pay him enough to make the album not possible. What I was thinking of doing is trying to sell just a strip of cassette tape with the last note on it. Then people could paste that into their cassette players.

NR: (laughing) And we would probably buy it! (seriously) Do you feel the League has had an impact on the show?

RM: Yeah, I actually do. When I worked on Jekyll & Hyde, and I'm coming at this from a 25 year background on Broadway, I just thought it was goofy that there were these people that thought they really had an impact on what was going on. In Pimpernel, we spent the first year going week to week, thinking we were going to close any minute. And sometimes it was your confidence in us and your confidence in the show that would sort of keep us going. We were very demoralized from time to time, and just knowing that there were some people out there that really wanted the thing to work, and especially those nights when many of you showed up and we would just feel that warmth, I think it made a huge difference. I don't think the producers would have been as willing to keep going during some of the times when it was looking pretty bleak on the numbers if they didn't walk in there and hear what they heard. I remember hearing from one of the original four producers, "I don't understand this because we're losing money, but I go out there and they love it. We've got to figure out a way."

NR: What kind of music do you listen to?

RM: None. I think it's just an occupational hazard. After I've spent an entire work week working with music, silence on my stereo is a glorious sound. I have a synthesizer at home that makes random ocean wave sounds, and I wish there was Broadway on the beach because I would move there in a second. There's either silence in my house or ocean.

NR: What other musical projects are you involved in?

RM: I came to town to write, and I still think of myself as a composer with the best possible day job. I love being the musical director of Pimpernel. But what I'm here to do, and what I continue to hope to do is write. I've had a hard time getting anybody to care other than in church music. I've been able to get some stuff published and some stuff recorded in the church. But in terms of theatrical projects and things like that, not until this year. I'm happy now that I have an album out. The singer is Judy Malloy and the album is called The Missing Peace. That's available. It's for sale through Amazon on the web. It's a 24 song, one woman song-cycle journey, which had its genesis in church music.

NR: What do you wish you had more time for in your life?

RM: Reading... reading books.

NR: What would you like to do in the future?

RM: Go right back to the composing question. I'd love to do exactly what I do, which is tell stories that have music and theater and dance in them. But I would like to be the one to generate the stories rather than helping somebody else to tell his or her story. I really feel like I'm full of stories and I'd love to have the chance to tell them.

Ron is very soft spoken, but you can tell how excited he is about the stories he would like to tell. I hope he is given the chance to create his own original work for the Broadway stage.

Questions suggested by:

Nicole Albertson, Lois and Elizabeth Colpo, Joanna Morton-Gary, Thom and Colleen Rosati, Stephanie Henkin, Renee, Peter Williams