Credit: Photo by E.M. Char via emarshallmusic/Instagram

In the many orchestras of Broadway—be it a touring affair, or a show with a Manhattan-exclusive residency—Emily Marshall has worked just about every position.

The Ithaca College graduate has previously been associate conductor for “Jagged Little Pill,” a keyboard programmer for “Annie,” and a vocal arranger for “Be More Chill.” When she’s not putting those skills to full use, Marshall can be found behind a keyboard or piano. Last year, she took a break from show tunes and headed to conduct the orchestra behind the William Shatner-hosted “Our Planet: Live in Concert” series, and later, she would back up the likes of The Who and Josh Groban.

UPDATE: Ruth Eckerd Hall announces that due to the impending hurricane, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse scheduled for Tuesday, August 29 at 7 pm has been postponed. Tickets will be honored on the new date to be announced soon.

But this fall, Marshall will be taking the Broadway Sinfonietta—a 13-piece, all-female, mostly POC orchestra—across the U.S. to perform the score to an Academy Award-winning film for the first time in her career, and it’s not going to be a simple one to pull off.

“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” broke all sorts of barriers upon its release in 2018, both in animation and music. “The score wasn’t written to be played live,” Marshall told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay during a recent phone call. In preparation for this tour—where the orchestra and a DJ perform the score live, as the film rolls above—she got plenty of input from original composer Daniel Pemberton on how to bring the film to life with his hip-hop-meets-orchestral score. “We’ve just been talking about how to make it seem as full, big and theatrical as it can with less musicians, but still making the sound as exciting as we can,” she added. While conducting and musical direction will be her main duties during this show, Marshall does plan to put her own spin on a few musical segments. “If there’s a piano on stage and I’m not playing it, it’s going to be very weird for me,” she told CL. “But in this show—fun surprise for Spider-Man—there are two little piano solos, so I get to do that, too.”

Get our full interview with Emily Marshall below. Tickets to see the Broadway Sinfonietta play through “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” at Ruth Eckerd Hall on Tuesday, August 29 are still available and start at $35.
Thanks for doing this with me, Emily. I’m really excited to see you conduct this show, and I love the idea of seeing films in this live format. When was the first time you saw “Into The Spider-Verse?”

I actually just saw it a couple months ago before getting ready for this show. That was my first experience with it, because I wasn’t super into the Marvel universe and everything like that before. But I have been since prepping, and it’s very cool stuff.

Gotcha. Ahead of getting ready for this tour, did you ever get together with Daniel Pemberton? Like, did he give you any input or anything?

Yeah, I just spoke with him a few days ago, actually. We’ve been in communication back and forth, just chatting about how to bring the score to life, and the differences because the last time they did it, it was with a 34-piece orchestra, and we’re paring it down to 13, plus a DJ because we’re touring with all the musicians throughout three months. So we’ve just been talking about how to make it seem as full, big and theatrical as it can with less musicians, but still making the sound as exciting as we can.

Are these arrangements entirely Pemberton’s, or did you get a chance to tweak any of them?

They’re entirely his. I’ll be adding my own spin on it once we get into rehearsal, which we’re going to do next week, and then we’ll be able to hone in on the actual musicians that we have, and kind of cater it and specify it to that. But it’s all on click to match up with the movie, just as a movie score would be, so there isn’t that much room to play around, but there’s still some to add everyone’s own personality and everything like that, which we’re gonna get into next week, which I’m very excited about.

Cool. Yeah, I ask that because with the music major ear you have, I’m sure you heard things in the original score that made you go “what if this sounded like that instead,” you know?

Totally, totally. There are a lot of cool effects because as Daniel said, the score wasn’t written to be played live. So we’re going to have fun with like, there are some times where there’s live whistling, there are times when we have to place different paper on the drums to create a different effect. There’s computer keyboard tapping, there are all these effects and things that you can record in the studio, but it isn’t necessarily a live element of the usual orchestra concert, you know?

I think that’s like what you were saying too, just about the film plus orchestra element of this is something so new and exciting that we get to do and bring it to life. It just haven’t been done that much: It’s a new thing, and that’s kind of what I want to get across to people coming to the show. I want to just make sure everybody knows what they’re coming to see: It’s not a concert, it’s not a film, it’s both.

Right. Now, other than the demographic, what would you say is the most unique part about working with a Broadway Sinfonietta?

I think what’s really exciting for this one especially is that it’s a brand new group of musicians who’ve never had the chance to collaborate and play together. They’re coming from all over the country, and everybody’s gonna be meeting for the first time, and then be on the road for three months together. And so, I think that collaboration and the excitement of a brand-new group of people able to play together is one of the cool elements about this show in particular.

I worked with the Sinfonietta since their conception in 2020. I was a co-producer, and have played keyboard and conducted for them. But I actually came into the “Spider-Verse” show before the Sinfonietta was even involved in the show, so it’s been really cool for me to have two different avenues of my life kind of coincide with the show, and getting to work with Macy Schmidt, the founder of the Sinfonietta, who I’ve known for years and years. I think it’s a perfect collaboration between these two.

Nice. So, with the rise to popularity of these “Live in Concert” films, are there any other films that you’d like to see in this format? Like, are there film scores outside of “Spider-Verse” that absolutely stir you?

Interesting, I haven’t really given that a lot of thought. I think that this idea can happen with so many scores. I mean, like the John Williams scores. I know they’ve been doing some of the “Harry Potter” films, because they have such cool scores, too. I think there are so many opportunities for it, really. The Disney stuff, because the music is such a crucial element in Disney, and then this [Spider-Man] one I think is cool too. If you just heard elements of the score without seeing the movie, you can kind of picture the type of movie it is. You’re listening to it and you’re like, “I hear the superhero flying.”

I just did “Our Planet Live in Concert” with this company, which is a Netflix special narrated by William Shatner, and it was all these beautiful, beautiful photos and videos of wildlife and nature. What we were able to do with that was when the flute would be playing, it would be like a bird chirping on screen, and just mirroring of the music to the things on the screen. I think that so many films have the capability to bring it to life in that way that we just haven’t thought of yet.

Let’s step outside the Spidey tour a bit, and more into you here. You went to Ithaca College, you majored in music and audio production, and you have a good number of instruments mastered. So, what would you say your first big break in any aspect of the music industry was?

Sure. I moved to New York right after school, and then I started working in musical theater. I was on tour with “A Chorus Line” and “We Will Rock You,” the Queen musical. I did that for a couple years after school, and then I came back to New York and started subbing on Broadway, working music directing, conducting, playing new shows. I music directed and vocal arranged for “Be More Chill,” which was on Broadway in 2019. And yeah. I had been focusing in the Broadway world here in New York, and then in the past year or two, I’ve been doing more of the touring on the pop-rock end of things. I was out playing—and as the associate conductor—of The Who for the past year and a half, and with Josh Groban, “Our Planet,” and now Spidey. So it’s been an evolution, and this is another cool thing, because this tour is like bringing the theatrical, plus the orchestral, plus the rock elements, and having a DJ. Just bringing everything together.

Well, I definitely want to ask about your time playing with The Who, because I saw that tour in Tampa last year. It was the night Pete Townshend went ballistic over someone screaming for “Naked Eye.”

Yep! I was playing. I was playing keyboard. *laughs*

You helped to compose some of the orchestral arrangements for that tour, right?

Yeah. My keyboard book for that is like string reductions, and so I was working with the conductor. What we did was, they had the 50-piece orchestra that they were touring with pre-COVID, and then they cut that down a bit. Then, my keyboard book was added to kind of fill out the sound. And so that was kind of a collaboration. My book was created for me, which was pretty cool. That was kind of a collaboration between me and Keith Levenson—the conductor—and our keyboard programmer as well.

Was it challenging to transcribe Pete’s music—especially the Quadrophenia pieces—into orchestral arrangements?

I mean, I think that that kind of music works so well with an orchestra. Like Pete and Roger even talk about it at the shows. Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, they were like “we’re a rock and roll band. We don’t want to play with an orchestra.” And then now, as they’ve evolved, they’re like “wait, but instead of taking away from our songs, it just adds to the rock, and to the fullness,” I mean, you saw the show, too, and it has the first half of the show with an orchestra, middle with the band, and then lastly, Quadrophenia, with the orchestra as well. And they talk about how when Pete was composing Quadrophenia, he heard it with an orchestra. So I think, as opposed to being difficult, I think it just really seems to work.

Right on. I know we’re almost out of time, so I have one more question for you. Do you prefer to be holding the baton or behind the piano?

That is a question that I always thought I knew the answer to. I thought the answer always was the piano, because it’s one of those things where if I walk into a room and there’s a piano or keyboard there, I just go sit at it. It’s like my home, like a magnet that I’m drawn to. But it’s been in the past couple of years that I’ve been beginning to get into stick conducting more, and there’s something about the communication that you have with the whole orchestra. Just what you’re able to lead and get out of the orchestra, and the eye contact in between the moments, and I’ve grown to love that even more than I knew I would. I think there’s still a thing that if there’s a piano on stage and I’m not playing it, it’s going to be very weird for me, but in this show—fun surprise for Spider-Man—there are two little piano solos, so I get to do that too.

Cool. So you’re getting the best of both worlds there.

Exactly.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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