Nigel Lilley - The importance of a wide repertoire

When I do repetoire coaching at some of the colleges, which I do fairly often, I' m constantly trying to get people to sing a broad spectrum. It' s very common for students, obviously we all want to do what' s new and what' s funky, so it' s very common for people to focus on material from the last three or four years. So obviously people focus a lot on Jason Robert Brown and Adam Guettel and people like that, who are fantastic writers, but it' s important to balance that and I' m sure Jason and Adam Guettel would say the same thing: to actually look backwards.

When we audition people as well, I' m always surprised we don' t see more Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jerome Kern songs, because they can serve people so well. You often hear people trying to force material into a different style that it doesn' t quite belong in. So no I' d always encourage to look across, and listen. We' re so lucky with YouTube and all these other facilities that we can absolutely resource any style we want. I mean I did Sinatra at the Palladium, I was Assistant Musical Director on that, so I just listened to loads of Sinatra and the Big Band stuff, just to try to get yourself zoned into that place. Obviously working on Spring Awakening you can listen to some of Duncan Sheik' s pop records and just to try to plug into that style each time.