Musical Theatre Music

I only applied to one doctoral program for next Fall, and the one I applied to (The College-Conservatory of Music at The University of Cincinnati) happens to be one of the best musical theatre schools in the country. So, it's not all that surprising that one of their available graduate assistantships is in musical theatre accompanying, a type of piano playing that is MUCH different from classical accompanying. See, unlike classical accompanying, which is strictly traditional notation based, musical theatre accompanying involves a lot of quasi-improvisation using pop/jazz lead charts, something that I was trained to do WAY better than I can sight-read classical music.

So, I figured that in addition to interviewing as a theory TA, I would also give this one a shot. To prepare, I went out today and bought a book with about 75 Broadway hits for me to try to sight-read through, also picking one for prepared performance. I have NO CLUE how good I'll be at all this compared with whomever else is trying out, especially considering I don't know much about Broadway itself or its repertoire, but I figured it was worth a shot...

I'll let you know how it goes...