Photo by T. Charles Erickson

A piece of intriguing behind-the-scenes trivia about the soundscape of A Seagull in the Hamptons has recently been brought to my attention by Production Stage Manager Cheryl Mintz. Apparently, a never-used original composition, first written for the 1993 McCarter production of Miss Julie, has been rediscovered and is making its debut as an incidental sound cue in A Seagull in the Hamptons after fifteen years in the vaults. I thought this might be of interest to our blog readers, so based on Cheryl’s initial account of the story I conducted interviews with composer Baikida Carroll and sound designer Karin Graybash to find out more. Here is what I gleaned:

As mentioned in a previous blog post, Baikida and Emily have a long working relationship, which began while developing the musical Betsey Brown with Ntozake Shange and Joseph Papp at the Public Theater in the 1980’s. Since then, Baikida and Emily have worked together on numerous productions, and have developed a highly streamlined system for their collaborative process, which Baikida was kind enough to describe to me.

Based on conversations with Emily about a given play and the different themes that might be needed for the production, Baikida will compose three to five completely different pieces as possibilities for each theme. Emily listens to them all and decides which ones she wants, and Baikida then arranges the chosen themes, sometimes providing multiple possible orchestrations. For instance, for the opening number of Miss Julie, Baikida originally had the song recorded in an arrangement for solo cello. But over the course of rehearsals he and Emily decided to instead use a version of the same theme played by a string quartet, and so the solo cello version was set aside, and never used in production.

Never, that is, until now.

Photo by T. Charles Erickson

There is a moment in A Seagull in the Hamptons when Alex goes offstage and “plays his mother’s old records” in a bout of depression. Strains of the music waft onstage. Initially, a Bach concerto was used for this sound cue, but a few weeks ago Emily decided that it sounded too much like Alex was offstage practicing the piano, rather than playing a record. In her quest for a possible replacement, Emily remembered the string quartet version of the theme for Miss Julie, which Baikida had recorded onto a CD (along with various other of his compositions) for her personal listening pleasure just before rehearsals began. She loved the piece, which she felt was just right for the moment, although she had been hoping for the emotional quality conveyed by a solo cello. Baikida remembered that the piece had, in fact, initially been recorded with a cello, and proposed the option to Emily.

The trouble—as those of you who have been alive for the past fifteen years might have noticed—is that sound technology has changed a great deal over the intervening time period. McCarter still has version of the original piece in our sound library—on reel to reel! Luckily, Baikida had a version recorded onto a cassette tape, which we were able to transfer into a digital format. However, the resulting sound quality was less than ideal, which is where sound designer Karin Graybash came in.

Using the sound editing program ProTools, she was able to zoom in on various points of the file to edit out pops or cracks (imagine looking at a distorted version of the sine waves from your trigonometry class and trying to smooth them out by snipping away small sections that are particularly bumpy). She then converted the “cleaned-up” version into a WAV file, which is a better-quality audio format, added some reverb (a slight delay to the sound like an echoing voice in a bathroom) to help smooth it out and make it sound distant, and voila! Fifteen years later the solo cello version of the Miss Julie theme makes its unexpected first appearance on stage.

Baikida and Karin have graciously given us permission to post both the original and the cleaned-up version of the sound file on the blog, so you can hear the difference. You can also play a game of “listen for that tune” next time you go see A Seagull in the Hamptons! Here are the clips:

(It should be noted that the use of Baikida’s composition for Miss Julie is not the reason he is credited as the composer for A Seagull in the Hamptons. Indeed, it is more of a coincidence than anything else, as the use of that particular piece actually falls into the category of “background music sound cue” along with the snippets of other songs that can be heard at various moments during the play. All of this is in contrast to the music Baikida has newly composed specifically for this production of A Seagull in the Hamptons, which can be heard in the transitions into and out of the play’s four acts.)

You can read more about Baikida Carroll’s process in composing for the theater in this interview, which I found really fascinating.

Posted by Elizabeth Edwards, Literary Intern at McCarter Theatre.  Top Photo:  Brian Murray, Maria Tucci and David Andrew Macdonald.  Bottom photo: Maria Tucci and Stark Sands.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 8:30 am and is filed under A Seagull in the Hamptons, Multimedia, Out of the Box. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.