James-Michael Sellers

As a music director, I'm constantly running into the issue of what to do with the Reed Books. We're about to do Little Mermaid, and the issue is that my pool of pit performers would not include the right mix to have someone who plays everything for each Reed book. I also don't have enough performers (at least at this time) to cover all required keyboard books (1-3). Is not having the correct instrumentation for the whole show going to be an issue? Can a reed part be transposed so that all of Reed 1, for example, is playable by flute (whether written out transposed or the player doing it as they play the book)? Or can they skip the non-flute sections and only play the instrument they know? Does not doing everything exactly as orchestrated considered a breach of contract since the performance would no longer be "as is"? What are the correct steps to take when this happens?