Last weekend, Portage Northern High School put on a contemporary cabaret. The audience sat at candlelit round tables on the lower stage as students sang songs from modern Broadway hits like Wicked and Motown: The Musical. Vocalists were backed by a four-piece band, but no one in the band was a student - at least not from Portage Northern.
For years, the school has hired professional musicians from local colleges and orchestras to play alongside students in their musicals.
Robert Jordan is the director of choirs for both Portage Northern High School and Portage North Middle School. He says long before he started working there 16 years ago, the high school decided it wanted to put together musicals more quickly. Jordan says with the increased demands of schoolwork and other after-school activities - making the rehearsal time shorter was just easier on everyone. But that’s easier said than done.
“In the time frame that we’re working with, we really need some leadership there from the professional musicians to make sure the productions are a success. If they weren’t a success, it wouldn’t be a good experience for anyone, but especially for those high school, young musicians who are just beginning and want to have as many positive experiences as we can to continue on a lifelong study of music.”
Jordan says professional musicians can save a show. If there’s a mistake, they know how to get things back on track.
“And then by seeing how the adult musicians handled crisis or handled a little uncertainty helps the student musician know how to do that next time.”
Jordan says Broadway tunes are difficult to play - it’s music written for professionals. He says having a few adults to mentor the students has been a big help.
“I notice you’re having trouble with the intonation on this particular pitch. Did you know there’s an alternate fingering on your instrument that will make those things much easier? High school student says ‘oh, I didn’t know that.’ So there’s those little pearls of wisdom in terms of that that go a long way, but then there’s a certain amount of it that you just need to listen to it modeled so you can start to emulate the style and the qualities of the professional musician brings to it."
So how many professional musicians does Portage Northern High School hire for a show? Jordan says it depends. Some shows require a full orchestra. For those, he says they try to have one musician for every three students. Smaller shows might not need more than a couple. Of course, Jordan says, it all depends on funding too. He says the school doesn’t pay for its musicals, they’re backed by sponsors and ticket sales from the year before.
Senior Kimberly Hawkey was in this year's cabaret show. She says when she was at Portage North middle school, the drama department put on Legally Blonde. It was such a hit that the next season, the school was able to perform The Lion King - complete with a professional dancer.
“There’s costumes. There’s makeup. There’s so many lighting effects, so much scene changes and just beautiful set design. It’s such a great musical and so when I found out we were putting that on, I was like this is going to be humongous - and it was. I think we sold out pretty much every night.”
Jordan says the district also hires adult vocalists to help students in their musicals, but they don’t perform in the show. Hawkey says it’s been great learning from actress Denene Mulay-Koch.
“She’s very much like ‘it’s hard.’ You’re not always going to make it. You know there aren’t going to be people knocking down your door asking you to audition for things. You know if you get denied one job you have to just keep, going you cannot stop and be sad about it.”
Hawkey says she would like to have a career in musical theatre someday, but it’s a big decision.
“Cause I want to be sure that that’s really what I want to dedicate myself to, because you have to be 100 percent full throttle or you’re not going to make it,”she says.
