Although ABBA’s hit song “Mamma Mia” came out in 1975, it took another 24 years before its musical equivalent burst out onto the West End stage. And now, Mamma Mia! has come to Monte Vista, 50 years after its namesake song was first released.
MV’s version of the musical will play from February 26 through March 1. Chris Connor and the Drama department began first working on Mamma Mia! in December. Starting during winter break, the members of the musical’s pit orchestra (often nicknamed “Pit”) began to rewrite the 50-year-old music of the show for MV’s performance.
“It was announced we were going to do Mamma Mia! I believe the week after Thanksgiving break,” said Sam Ramos, one of Pit’s guitarists and a set designer/builder.
Pit began group rehearsals in January, practicing the 27 different songs played in the musical. Six horn players, three string players, three keyboardists, one drummer, and two conductors are all that make up the orchestra. In true ‘70s style, the majority of ABBA songs utilize a wide variety of synthesizers to create the necessary sounds. While Pit is using three keyboards for the show, they’ve transcribed many synth parts to instead be played with live horns.
“Compared to other music, there’s not a lot of tempo changes,” said Taisen Tullus, one of Pit’s conductors. “It’s generally straightforward. When you have strong players it [results in] a strong turnout.”
Besides rewriting some of ABBA’s greatest hits, members of Pit have also learned entirely new instruments or musical techniques. Ethan Karatov, one of Pit’s horn players, learned how to play flute in order to perform “Honey, Honey”, “Mamma Mia”, and “Money, Money, Money”.
“In ‘Money, Money, Money’ there’s one part in the middle where I switch to tenor [saxophone] and then hop back on flute,” Karatov said. Karatov originally planned to learn flute for Footloose last year, but didn’t end up needing to. Meanwhile, although Ramos has played guitar for almost a decade, he finally used Mamma Mia! and Intro to Music Theory as an excuse to learn how to read sheet music.
“It’s nice that ABBA isn’t really hard,” Ramos said, adding on to Tullus’s comment about ABBA’s melodic simplicity. Although easy to play, all three musicians agreed that they enjoy listening to ABBA and probably will continue to listen to their songs long after Mamma Mia!.
In their final preparation for the musical, Pit’s been working to improve their sound quality. Instead of using the same often-muffled baby grand piano featured in Footloose, they’ve passed on all piano parts to keyboards, a much more space-efficient instrument that can also be hooked up to an amp and controlled by the musical’s sound booth.
With a little less than three months, Pit has sought to not only learn more than two dozen ABBA songs but reconfigure them into a uniquely MV soundtrack. Mamma Mia! will be playing from February 26 to March 1.
