Theatre conductor Eeva Kontu is responsible for the music in its entirety
Theatre conductor Eeva Kontu (b. 1981) has made more than 40 professional theatre premieres during her career. To the audience, the work of a conductor appears as conducting an orchestra, even though at the beginning of the performances they have been working together with the rest of the working group for more than a year.
“With director Samuel Harjanne, we start careful planning work at least a year before the rehearsals,” Kontu says. They have collaborated before, such as Kinky Boots (2018) for the Helsinki City Theatre.
The conductor has a great responsibility in selecting the actors for the musical who are able to cope with the material. For each role, you need to find an actor with the right kind of musical technical skills.
When the casting is complete, the rehearsal of the music begins. Konttu’s tasks include planning rehearsals and teaching music to actors. He makes sure that the music sounds like it was composed.
Remote rehearsals accelerated music learning The rehearsals for the musical My Day as a Groundhog were supposed to start in March, but the schedules were changed due to the coronavirus. When it was announced that all training sessions would have to be cancelled, Kontu had already sent the training schedules for the first week to the working group.
“In a terrible hurry, I started to package the remote rehearsal materials so that the actors could rehearse at home,” Kontu says.
Kontu sent everyone a demo with the entire piano score of the musical. On top of that, he sang the soloists’ parts and a few principals sang the parts.
During the remote training week, Kontu held a telephone counselling service at home at the piano. For the first few days, the phone line was hot, but after that, the situation calmed down.
When the training started in July, Kontu noticed the benefits of remote training. He had estimated that it would take 12 rehearsals to learn music, but now, after practicing remotely, only four were enough.
The exceptional spring also disrupted Konttu’s personal plans. Last autumn, he had left for London to do a master’s degree at the Royal Academy of Music to gain more perspective on what he was doing. In the summer, a musical was supposed to be made in London, which was supposed to be a graduation project. My Day as a Groundhog was changed to a new thesis.
A powerful viewing experience requires careful practiceMy Day as a Groundhog draws musically from mainstream jazz from the 50s and funk from the 70s. The score has also been influenced by the wind band tradition in the United States. The orchestra of the musical has a five-person wind section, which includes two trumpets, a trombone and two woodwinds. In other respects, the orchestra is a typical musical band.
Orchestral rehearsals are only a small part of a theatre conductor’s work, especially since the Helsinki City Theatre has its own music arranger.
“In any smaller house, the work of a conductor includes, for example, copying sheet music and arranging music stands. There are so many staff here that thinking is freed up for other things when there are fewer practical things on your own shoulders,” Kontu says.
Kontu enjoys building scenes the most, when only actors, designers and a pianist are involved. The goal is to rehearse in such a way that the music would stay together throughout the performance and the actors would be able to express what has been rehearsed by singing.
“At best, musical theatre scenes can cause big movements inside the viewer. To create such an experience, you need that the content is clear and everything is technically in order. Everything has to be well planned and rehearsed.”