Licensing Company: TRW
The Color Purple
PROGRAMMED INSTRUMENTS
Keyboard 1
Keyboard 2
$300.00
This musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (and the popular 1985 Steven Spielberg film) spotlights Celie, a downtrodden young woman whose personal awakening over the course of 40 years forms the arc of this epic story.
PROGRAMMING NOTES
This licensed orchestration is based on the 2015 Broadway Revival Production.
This show is orchestrated to be player conducted from the Keyboard 1 book. There are 2 keyboard books in this orchestration both with programming. KeyboardTEK is proud to offer the original keyboard programming for Key 2 as heard in the Broadway Revival and the Revival Cast Album designed by Randy Cohen and his team at Cohen Keyboards, LLC.
Keyboard 1 is the Conductor book and is primarily piano. This book is very stylized and will require an advanced player who is comfortable riffing and playing R&B and blues pattern licks. There is programming in this book but most people opt for just playing this book piano only. There are just a couple of patches found sparingly throughout such as vibes, “dark” piano, honky-tonk piano, kalimba, and shaker. Because the programming is so light in this book, we recommend that you just use the onboard sounds on your keyboard. However, if you prefer a MainStage file, click the Keyboard 1 book on the form below and we will send you a discount code to use when checking out to bring the price of the book to just $50.
Keyboard 2 contains lots of B3 Hammond so this player will need to be comfortable improvising and playing gospel organ licks. We recommend using 2 keyboards for this book if possible. In the Revival production, the Key 2 player had a separate Hammond Organ Controller (Hammond XK-5) as well as a weighted keyboard for all the other patches. The other patches include shaker, violins, ensemble strings, steel guitar, acoustic guitar, marimba, vibes, celeste, electric piano, and timpani to name a few.
ORIGINAL MUSIC TEAM
Book by: Marsha Norman
Music & Lyrics by: Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray
Based upon the novel written by: Alice Walker
Based on the motion picture by: Warner Brothers and Amblin Entertainment Inc.
Musical Director: Jason Michael Webb
Music orchestrated by: Joseph Joubert
Additional Orchestrations: Catherine Jayes
Musical Supervisor: Catherine Jayes
2017 Broadway Revival Orchestra
Conducted by: Jason Michael Webb
Associate Conductor: Alvin Hough, Jr.
Keyboard 1: Jason Michael Webb
Keyboard 2: Alvin Hough, Jr.
Reed 1: Jack Bashkow
Reed 2: Jay Brandford
Guitar: Sean Driscoll
Bass: Michael Olatuja
Trumpet: Brian Pareschi
Drums: Jared Schonig
Music Copying: Emily Grishman Music Preparation/Emily Grishman, Katharine Edmonds
Musical Coordinator: Michael Keller and Michael Aarons
SHOW DESCRIPTION
With a joyous score featuring jazz, ragtime, gospel, African music and blues, THE COLOR PURPLE is a story of hope, a testament to the healing power of love, and a celebration of life. It premiered at the Alliance Theatre Company in Atlanta, Georgia and opened on Broadway on November 1, 2005, where it was nominated for eleven 2006 Tony Awards®, including Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Original Score. The London off-West End production moved to Broadway in 2015, winning the Tony Award® for Best Revival of a Musical.