David Chase is practically synonymous with the title “music arranger.” In addition to having served as a Broadway musician, conductor, music director and supervisor, Chase is credited with providing the vocal and/or dance arrangements for 35 Main Stem productions.
He began with the dance arrangements for the 1996 revival of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and most recently arranged the music for Tony Award-winning Best Musical “Schmigadoon!” In between, Chase has created the dance arrangements for such shows as “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” “Billy Elliot” and 2017’s “Hello, Dolly!”; vocal and dance arrangements for 2006’s “The Pajama Game,” 2009’s “Bye Bye Birdie” and 2022’s “The Music Man,” among others; and music arrangements for the likes of “Side Show” and 2013’s “Cinderella.”
With such an imprint on the sound of musical theater for the past 30 years, it’s amazing that Chase originally had no plans for a career in showbiz. He acted in, and sometimes accompanied, musicals in high school and college, but graduated with, as he said, “a degree in biology (with the original intent of going to medical school), an ongoing love of theater and the ability to play piano.”
“I spent the summer after graduation as a bass player for a summer stock company,” Chase told Broadway News. “I took the job because the music director and pianist just received his Masters in piano performance from Oberlin, and I convinced myself that by seeing a ‘real’ pianist play, I’d get the theater bug out of my system. The opposite happened.” Chase realized he knew more about music than the pianist!
“[I] devoured every book I could about how music functioned in theater and ended up playing (and arranging) ‘Forbidden Broadway’ for the next three years,” Chase said. Even so, Chase thought he’d play some piano and eventually get on with medical school. After all, his father was an Army man and a doctor, with a specialty in aerospace medicine, and Chase liked biology and math. But Chase kept getting asked to play piano — first for auditions and rehearsals (including for the Rockettes), then for more Off-Broadway (moving up to music director on shows like “Forever Plaid”) and later subbing in Broadway orchestras (“Guys and Dolls” and “Crazy for You”).
In 1994, Chase was named associate music director for the “Damn Yankees” revival, under music director and conductor James Raitt, the musician and arranger who first encouraged Chase to conduct. Sadly, Raitt was often ill, due to AIDS. Chase would fill in for him. “Damn Yankees” opened in March 1994, and Raitt passed away in April. Chase shared, “I still use his baton every time I conduct.”
Here, Chase gives an unparalleled lesson on the discipline of arranging, describes a typical day in the life and shares incredible stories from his days on shows from “Kiss Me, Kate” to “Schmigadoon!”
What does a vocal arranger do, and what does a dance arranger do?
