Joining the HRG&SP Orchestra
The HRG&SP Orchestra is the largest organized regular pit orchestra on campus, comprised mainly of undergraduate musicians, but welcoming graduate students, staff, officers, and alumni of the University. Many of our members play for HRG&SP for several years in a row.
The Orchestra is an incredibly fun group of people: we go out on Orchestra Outings each semester, come up with our own musical hacks for Hack Night, and give the cast a hard time backstage during intermission.
What instruments are in our orchestra?
The standard complement for the typical HRG&SP pit consists of 8 violins, 3 violas, 3 celli, 1 contrabass, 2 flutes (picc. second), 1 oboe, 2 clarinets, 1 bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, and 1 percussionist. Extended complement (i.e. for The Yeomen of the Guard, The Gondoliers, Utopia Ltd., and The Grand Duke) adds another bassoon and a bass trombone. The HRG&SP pit orchestra is a group of 50-plus musicians, rotating through nine performances per production.
Orchestra History
The first HRG&SP pit orchestra was created for the Fall 1960 production of The Pirates of Penzance at the Loeb Drama Center. Prior to that piano accompaniment had been used.
Iolanthe '75 had a pit orchestra that had some fairly noteworthy members. It included Lynn Chang '75 (winner of the International Paganini Competition and now MIT faculty) as assistant concertmaster, Yo-Yo Ma '76 as principal cello, and Christopher Wilkins (former assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra) as principal oboe.