Manchester Universities Gilbert and Sullivan Society
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The arrangement
In 1996 I (Justin) sat in the Welcome Inn in Rusholme with a few friends. We were discussing ideas behind putting on updated and modernised versions of G&S shows. The idea is by no means a new one, as there has been "'Broadway' Pirates", and "The Hot Mikado" to name the best known examples. The idea to do Trial by Jury struck me then as being a good one, as it is the shortest of the G&S operettas, and would be well within my technical abilities to do something interesting with. It would be perfect for MUGSS to perform as a second show, as it would be short and presumably easy to come up with a bunch of ideas. It would be a lot of fun to write, and hopefully a lot of fun to perform as well. I ran out and bought the Chappel score and pretty quickly came up with a "proof of concept" – turning "When first my old, old love I knew" into a straight Rock'n'Roll number based loosely around Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode". The idea for a fully fledged show was born, and given the extremely pretentious working title of "Trial By Jury – the Rock Opera" – the idea of doing a pompous Rock Opera based around a G&S show always struck me as being very amusing, even though this description doesn't go any way to adequately describing the finished product. As a kind of short hand it has also been referred to as "Rock Trial". (Rock and) Roll forwards almost a decade, and the idea was in danger of being treated as something of a joke: my grand project which I would never ever get around to completing. I had let the whole idea fall by the wayside a little, as other projects came and went. In the meantime I had gathered a fair bit of experience writing and arranging music, playing in the band in shows, and of course, MD'ing MUGSS. A combination of factors triggered off the process of dusting off my old work and completing it, and in the last year I finally finished off the arrangement which will in the most part constitute the actual show. The ShowWhat does it sound like then? Well, a complete and utter stylistic mish-mash of ideas thrown hastily together would probably describe it. I've no idea how it will come across live – we will have our opportunity to find this out when it gets its premiere in November 2005. What will it look like? This will be the decision of the appointed Director and their Production team. The show is still "Trial by Jury" despite my messing around with the music, and open to the same conceptual vision that the original would be. I'd like to see lots of big dance numbers though. That's not a definite requirement, just a personal preference. The MusicThe arrangement is for:
I wrote all the arrangements with a guitar in my hand, and as such, it sounds like the kind of arrangement a guitarist would write – lots of cool riffs and guitar solos. I have used the brass quite densely thoughout, and these parts are key to the harmonic underpinning of the show, not just for the kind of embellishment you normally see in modern shows. The words are completely unchanged, so Gilbert may rest in peace. Sullivan on the other hand will be shifting rather uncomfortably; I have left 80 percent of his melodies untouched, changing them occasionally to tortuosly fit them to a new regime e.g. to make a harmonic progression work in the relative minor (whatever that means). The rhythms have been blasted into tiny pieces using heavy artillery. 6/8 is not very Rock'n'Roll, and most of the show currently happens to bounce along in this time signature. The styles range from Country and Western through Disco/Funk, Reggae and Blues to a bizarre Tango. However I'm sure to the ears of fans of those respective genres, the songs will sound like 19th Century Opera played with a drumkit. I have also taken the liberty of adding a short Overture for a few reasons:
I have learned a great deal arranging this show:
But on the positive side:
Justin Morley |