Alex Lacamoire (‘Sweeney Todd’) describes how to ‘capture the magic’ of Broadway on a cast album [Exclusive Video Interview]
“Just getting my hands on the music was a big eye-opening experience for me,” recalls Alex Lacamoire of the first time he heard the score to “Sweeney Todd” as a teenager. After serving as the musical director for the Josh Groban-led Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece, Lacamoire earned a Grammy nomination as producer of the cast album. The recognition from the Recording Academy is a full circle moment after decades of deep love for this iconic piece of musical theater. Watch the exclusive video interview above.
“One of the hardest things for me to get over was the fact that I didn’t have a composer around that I could just call up on the phone and ask questions,” says Lacamoire, in reference to Sondheim’s recent passing. Though he has a long list of Broadway credits to his name, Lacamoire is usually providing orchestrations or arrangements to brand new scores, such as in his famed collaborations with Lin-Manuel Miranda on “In the Heights” and “Hamilton.” “I really had to kind of just go on instinct a lot of the time,” describes the musician, “and hope that I was making not only myself proud, but making the Sweeney fans proud, and hopefully Mr. Sondheim proud, wherever he may be.”
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Of course, Lacamoire was able to pick the brain of one original “Sweeney Todd” creator who is still with us, legendary orchestrator Jonathan Tunick. Lacamoire poured over Tunick’s original orchestration in deep study, “very much like one would study a symphony in preparation for an orchestral concert,” he explains. “What I loved about that is that it helped me really get into how Sweeney was put together.”
That intense study came in handy when it was time to translate the visceral experience of the live performance to the cast album. “I am trying to make sure that the story is being told first and foremost,” admits Lacamoire. Actors and musicians create these recordings in the midst of their Broadway performance schedule, so he finds it useful to provide them with story ideas that provoke something new in the recording booth. “And all of a sudden it turns on and then the piece just takes on a life of its own. I love that,” he exclaims. “You give them something that just lifts them up and they’re just like in this other spiritual plane. And just forgetting the world for a moment and just delivering a story and being these characters,” he says of the creative process. “That’s always what I’m searching for when I’m listening to performances and just trying to capture the magic that you feel when you’re in a theater.”
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Lacamoire is a three-time Tony Award winner thanks to his orchestrations for “In the Heights,” “Hamilton” and “Dear Evan Hansen.” His work as a producer on the cast albums for those three productions netted him three Grammy Awards for Best Musical Theater Album. He earned a fourth Grammy Award, in the Best Compilation Soundtrack category, for “The Greatest Showman.” He earned additional Grammy nominations for “9 to 5” and the film versions of “In the Heights” and “Dear Evan Hansen.” He won an Emmy Award for his music direction of “Fosse/Verdon.”
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