New York University Program, Led by Ted Sperling and John Miller, Trains Pit Musicians for the Job

Newly launching with the fall semester, New York University is training the next generation of pit musicians, under the direction of Ted Sperling, longtime Broadway music director, and John Miller, who has been the music coordinator on more than 130 Broadway shows, and who will serve as the program’s artistic advisor. 

The program evolved from a Broadway percussion summer seminar the school has been hosting for the past 12 years. Students in the program study five Broadway shows with pit musicians. Jonathan Haas, director of the percussion studies program at NYU and a co-director of the Broadway Orchestra, notes that the program has attracted students from around the world and proved that there was great interest in the field. In the past, aspiring pit musicians could pick up needed skills by playing in big bands and nightclubs, but those opportunities have faded away, leaving professional musicians in the position of having to learn on the job.

Pit musicians in Broadway shows require specific skills sets, including being able to play a wide variety of styles of music, excellent sight reading skills and the ability to implement changes quickly. “There’s also the challenges of doing the same show night after night and keeping it fresh,” Sperling says.  

The orchestra for the course will be made up of students within the NYU Steinhardt’s Music and Performing Arts Professions department. The members will learn the books to Hairspray, Ragtime and City of Angels; they will learn recording skills, theater history and theater technology, such as how to play along to click tracks — a metronome used when parts of the score need to be exactly timed with other elements of the show.  

The course may also serve as a gateway for playing in the pit, a position desired among musicians, mainly for its steady paycheck. Since musicians typically don’t have agents, the pathway to a pit job is to network with other musicians. “You have to be out there, playing all the time and have other musicians playing with you in every conceivable musical environment,” Miller said. The course could thus serve as a strong networking opportunity for young musicians aiming for a job in the pit.