Jim Henson’s Musical World
Objective: To produce a concert reuniting Jim Henson’s intellectual property for the first time since 1990
Venue: Carnegie Hall
Total Performers Onstage: 136
Total Audience Members Reached: 5,608
Notable Achievement: Facilitated Miss Piggy’s performance debut at Carnegie Hall
In 2010, Tony Award nominee John Tartaglia approached The New York Pops with an idea. To celebrate his hero Jim Henson, what if we reunited all his classic characters for an evening of music? It would be no simple undertaking, especially since the legendary puppeteer’s creations were now managed by several different corporations. Most significantly: Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, and their fellow Muppets all fell under the Disney umbrella.
But in partnership with the Jim Henson Legacy and the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, the passion project was soon underway. While the concert script (written by Jim Henson Legacy president Craig Shemin) successfully reunited characters from The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, and Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, special care was taken to segment off each fictional world, so that occupants would not cross intellectual property borders.
Due to ever changing demands on the script, the cast continued to grow mere days prior to the premiere. I ultimately facilitated talent contracts, travel itineraries, production schedules, and ticket requests for 136 performers hailing from across the country, including Saturday Night Live alumnus Rachel Dratch, Academy Award- and Grammy Award-winning songwriter Paul Williams, and the human residents of Sesame Street. There was no margin for error during my preparations, as the production only had four rehearsals to coordinate music, staging, puppetry, and video projections.
John Tartaglia and the cast of Fraggle Rock
The project played two back-to-back performances on a single afternoon in 2012 at Carnegie Hall. In the spirit of Jim Henson, the program was specially designed for family audiences: the running time was scaled down to one hour, and no concert ticket was priced above $20 USD.
The program inspired future cross-institutional and multi-disciplinary collaborations between The New York Pops and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, including holiday family concerts based on A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and A Visit from St. Nicholas (the poem which begins “'Twas the night before Christmas…”).
Photo Credit for all concert images: Richard Termine
