RECENT ORCHESTRATIONS:

• Fred Barton contributed orchestrations for Nathan Lane's birthday party at the Rainbow Room, featuring a 16-piece big band. Fred also accompanied Patti LuPone and Matthew Broderick. Performers on the bill also included Elaine Stritch, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Bette Midler, Mario Cantone, Marc Shaiman, and Julie Halston, with Seth Rudetsky conducting.

• Fred contributed orchestrations for Faith Prince's concert appearances. Fellow orchestrators on the project included Don Sebesky (Kiss Me Kate, The Life, Sweet Charity) and Larry Moore.

• The CD of Fred's musical The Two Svengalis, starring Drama-Desk-winning Toni DiBuono, with Fred's orchestrations, is now available at Amazon.com, CD Baby, Footlight.com, iTunes, and 33 other online outlets. See The Two Svengalis for mp3 previews.

SYMPHONY: Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops performed Fred's compositions "Nocturne In Mancini" and "Cornball Concerto" at a concert of American music at Boston's Symphony Hall in June, 2005.

Fred continues as Staff Orchestrator for the Indianapolis Pops Orchestra, which creates original Pops theatrical programs which are played in cities across the U.S. and Canada, under the direction of Jack Everly.

SINGERS: It’s every singer’s dream to sing with a live orchestra, and as rare as that opportunity has become, it ain’t over yet. There are increasing opportunities for Broadway singers to perform with the nation’s Pops orchestras. Every singer should put out a signature CD; and major cruise ships look for singers with their own arrangements. Orchestrations are more affordable than you might think, and so are live musicians. For CDs, the musicians’ union offers discounts if the total budget is under $99,000.

Every singer should be prepared for the question: “Charts?” Just say “yes” – then give me a call or e-mail me and we’ll get to work.

I'm currently preparing a library of arrangements for big-band singer Elena Bennett. In addition to Faith Prince's concert and Karen Murphy's Indianapolis Pops commission, I did orchestrations for the formidable actress/singer Christine Pedi for her featured appearances on the Queen Mary II. Past projects include a full-orchestra mega-medley of songs from Cabaret for Joel Grey to sing at a benefit with Liza Minnelli, and no fewer than 40 orchestrations for Austin Musical Theatre's Anniversary celebration.

BIG BAND: I recently orchestrated a big-band episode of WONDER PETS!, entitled "Save The Rat Pack," with music composed by Matt Sklar. The show was recorded with terrific live big band.

Elena Bennett enlisted me to create the big-band arrangements for her album A Wrinkle In Swingtime – a monument to what can be accomplished under Local 802’s CD-friendly rates. The core group was a 14-piece big band, expanded to 27 with the addition of a full string section for the ballads (Listen To Examples). Ms. Bennett used the arrangements for her national tour with Forever Swing, and I’ve also created reductions for her appearances with smaller bands.

I wrote and conducted the orchestrations for Drama-Desk-Award-winner Toni DiBuono’s demo of two songs from our show, The Two Svengalis. The song “Party Girl” is classic Broadway big-band with strings; and “Break My Heart” is an unusual Broadway ballad featuring the harp, French horn, strings, with an unexpected blast of brass in the middle. (Listen To Samples).

MUSICAL THEATRE: I consider it my job as musical director to make reduced pit orchestras sound like the real thing, with judicious reorchestration (little did I know that Broadway orchestrators would be forced to do the same thing in my lifetime). In many instances, I'll completely re-orchestrate from scratch, for the ensemble available. This became my modus operandi for the late Austin Musical Theatre and its eighteen-piece orchestra, North Shore Music Theatre’s 14-piece pit, the Gateway Playhouse's 10-piece pit orchestra, and the Cape Playhouse’s five-man group. Reorchestration also enables new dance music as required, and transpositions for the actors’ best advantage. Time is the constraint, but I do everything I can to give the audience the most complete Broadway sound possible.

FILM & TV SCORING: I currently orchestrate and conduct for Nickelodeon's WONDER PETS, the #1 pre-school children's TV show in the country. Each episode is a mini-operetta composed by Broadway veterans including Jerry Bock, Larry Hochman, Bobby Lopez, Michael John LaChiusa, and Jason Robert Brown.

I was trained in the USC Film Scoring graduate program, and won the annual Harry Warren Scholarship for my work in the program. I scored a range of movie and TV scenes, conducting live ensembles of all types and sizes, from the full USC Symphony to “TV-size” orchestras and various odd groups designed to test our ingenuity. We were also escorted about town to see a number of highly regarded film composers at work on the soundstage (including Jerry Goldsmith, Henry Mancini, Bruce Broughton, and John Debney).

My first film assignment, a dance film with Dance Theatre of Harlem, was done with a live orchestra of New York’s best (contracted by John Monaco, Saga Productions, George S. George, producer). To score this nocturnal fantasy film, I interwove various ethereal and sensual motifs with a symphonic rhapsody based on Rodgers’ & Hart’s “Blue Moon.”

For more information on my own New-York-based film and TV orchestrations, click Orchestrations: Electronic Simulation or go to the Film & TV Scoring page.

Singers’ CDs, Demos, or Performances
Film & TV Scoring

SINGERS' CD'S, DEMOS AND TRACKS: Neva Small’s best-selling CD, My Place In World, earned me one of my favorite compliments: a customer reviewed it and marvelled at the presence of a live orchestra, and wondered why the players weren’t listed. Actually, they were: my billing on the inside pages reads “Orchestrations arranged and performed by Fred Barton.”

The capabilities of electronic software are improving month by month, enabling increasingly realistic orchestra simulation. While I remain devoted to orchestrating for live musicians (after all, I am one), I’ve built an ever-expanding electronic studio to fill the needs of singers (and film/TV productions) who need the highest quality simulations.

For Neva Small’s CD My Place In The World (2003), I created the orchestrations electronically at my home studio, after recording piano-vocal drafts (so that I could hear Neva’s scratch renditions while orchestrating). Then I provided Neva with CDs of the orchestrations for her to rehearse with before the final sessions. Finally the orchestrations were transferred to PPI Recording Studio (Chip Fabrizzi, engineer), where Neva recorded the vocals and the final mixing and mastering was done (Listen To Samples, or go to the My Place In The World page.)

For the Wright & Forrest CD anthology A Bag Of Popcorn And A Dream, the singers recorded their vocals first, with me at the piano, at PPI Recording. Then I “sweetened” the tracks with electronic orchestra simulation after the fact (an exception was Lucie Arnaz’s rendition of “Chapultapec,” which I orchestrated from scratch at home first, and she recorded to my orchestral track.) Finally we transferred my orchestra tracks back to PPI Recording, where they were mixed with the original piano/vocals, with some live sax and drums added for some songs. Note that this recording, made in 1998, preceded various new technical innovations that have significantly improved the art of orchestral simulation. To hear some of the results, go to the Bag Of Popcorn And A Dream page. Judy Kaye recorded to my orchestrations for the follow-up album Friends In Paradise (unreleased to date – but a sample is below).

Another key use of orchestral simulation: demos. I electronically orchestrate all of my song demos (Listen To Examples, or go to the Listen To MP3s page, and samples are littered throughout the website). If you are a singer or songwriter and need an orchestrated demo, feel free to contact me to talk over what this involves.

My orchestral simulation projects have included “Steam Heat,” “Dancin’ Man” (Fosse arrangements) and “Dancing In The Dark” (Ella Fitzgerald version), commissioned by a Florida-based cruiseship production company (Listen To Examples); performance tracks for singers at New York’s Imperial Court Annual Ball (“Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina,” and David Friedman’s “Listen To My Heart”); and orchestral simulation tracks for Austin Musical Theatre’s television and radio advertising.

FILM & TV SCORING: The Magic Schoolbus, (Scholastic Productions) was scored, orchestrated, and recorded completely by electronic simulation. The show, starring Lily Tomlin, ran for four seasons, and continues to air around the world. The show is a mix of quirky comedy and science-adventure, and the score required comic animation styles alternating with full-symphony-orchestra John-Williams-esque action-adventure blow-outs.

I also contributed orchestral-simulation scoring for Michael Moore’s series The Awful Truth, for some segments that required some specific period-and-genre-pastiche styles (a specialty of mine). The series is currently available in a boxed DVD set.

My contributions to Nickelodeon’s ACE-Award-winning TV series Eureeka’s Castle were created on the mighty Wurlitzer of orchestra-simulation, the Synclavier, an early forerunner of the current digital sampling technology.

Director Andy Erish commissioned me to create the orchestral-simulation score for his short film The Sons Of Fun And Dr. Death, a pastiche of the Abbott & Costello genre; the end title of this film became the piece I’ve retitled “Cornball Concerto” (Listen To Examples).

Director Allen Barton (of Milton Katselas’s Beverly Hills Playhouse) commissioned me to create the orchestral-simulation score for his short film Cannes In 1999, for which I provided a mix of film noir and pop styles. The film was screened in the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival.

If you have film or TV work that needs to be scored, contact me (see the Film & TV page for more information).