Paul Gemignani is one of the titans of the modern musical theater
industry. Serving as musical director for more than forty Broadway
productions since 1971, his collaborations with Stephen Sondheim, Andrew
Lloyd Webber, John Kander, Fred Ebb, Hal Prince, Michael Bennett, and
Alan Menken have led to countless accolades for his collaborators, but
due to the near invisible position of the musical director in the
Broadway industry, Gemignani's story is often overlooked. GEMIGNANI
seeks to not only bring the reader into the orchestra pit to learn
Gemignani's story, but also to educate the reader about the crucial role
a music director plays in bringing some of the most iconic musicals in
Broadway history to life. Born into a second-generation Italian American
family during the aftershocks of the Great Depression, Gemignani worked
his way up from playing percussion in USO bands to conducting before
Leonard Bernstein, all before becoming a pivotal player in the team that
brought some of the most successful musicals of the late twentieth
century to the stage. Sweeney Todd, Evita, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday
in the Park with George, and Into the Woods would be quite different
without his key contributions, and many of the sonic markers we now
associate with the postmodern musical theater can be traced to
Gemignani's careful curiosity to expand the bounds of what was possible.
