Latest / Arts Unscripted with Monica Holt / Macy Schmidt on Creative Risks, Audience-Centered Experiences, and Barbie

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Macy Schmidt on Creative Risks, Audience-Centered Experiences, and Barbie · Arts Unscripted with Monica Holt

0:08
Welcome back to CI to Eye. I'm Monica Holt.
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One of the reasons I was so excited to host CI to Eye this season was the
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opportunity not just to speak to some of today's most influential executives in
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the arts,
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but also to introduce some of the inspiring innovators and disruptors on the
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rise in our field. Macy Schmidt is exactly that.
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She's an orchestrator and live entertainment producer and is the CEO of Overture
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Global Entertainment at just 28.
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Macy is a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree, a Tony Award-winning producer,
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and the first woman of color orchestrator in Broadway history.
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She's transforming how we think about live orchestral experiences through her
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all woman majority women of color orchestra, the Sinfonietta.
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The result is what I like to call the Macy Method:
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an approach to live entertainment that breaks every convention about how
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orchestral music should be presented. She's not just succeeding as an individual
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artist,
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she's demonstrating a replicable methodology that any arts organization can
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apply to create more inclusive, more engaging, and yes,
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more commercially successful programming.
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This conversation is particularly timely as our field grapples with questions of
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relevance, accessibility, and sustainability.
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Macy represents a new generation of leaders who refuse to accept the false
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choice between artistic excellence and broad appeal.
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She's showing us that the future of classical music could look very different
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from its past, and that's something to celebrate, not fear.
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Every time I talk to Macy,
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I leave with a hundred new ideas and the energy and inspiration to go try
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something new. Let's dive in.
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Macy Schmidt, welcome to CI to Eye.
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Monica Holt, thank you for having me.
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Thank you so much for being here.
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I first wanted to just talk a little bit about how the two of us really
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met. I know that we had circled in orbit via socials and
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Instagram, friends of friends,
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but I think when we met for the first time was at the Kennedy Center backstage
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at the concert hall.
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It was.
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During the, can we say notorious?
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I was going to say infamous. Yeah.
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Infamous.
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The one night only Barlow and Bear Bridgerton and Concert Moment.
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And there was Macy Schmidt having worked with these two phenomenal
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women,
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and I think I have a photo of you backstage conducting the backstage
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vocals for one of the songs and the two of us chatted
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and the rest is history. And that was a crazy night,
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but how fun.
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It was, and I feel really lucky to have been there and gotten to see it,
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not knowing at the time that it was going to be a one night only moment.
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Totally.
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Frozen in history.
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It was such a moment in time and it's fun that I think about that night and how
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special it was on stage,
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but also it's a special night for me because we finally met in person and I have
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just been a diehard fan and supporter of yours.
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I think the way you approach the work is incredible.
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So let's start at the beginning. True or false,
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watching the Disney Wishes fireworks sparked your interest in orchestration?
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Holistically true.
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I don't think little child me at five or seven years old or whatever,
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watching the Disney Fireworks show at that age,
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I don't think that child at that time was saying,
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this is the beginning of a music career as an adult. In retrospect,
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I have pinned that as the moment looking backwards,
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but really it's because I've never wanted to compose.
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I've never had an appetite for it and I've never really wanted to perform.
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I've wanted to manipulate music and have it be played by an orchestra,
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like exploiting it to present it in a different way and make someone feel
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something different than they felt the first time.
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The Disney origin story really came from,
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I think I was asked about explaining arranging and orchestrating and the
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difference between that and composing and hearing myself describe it.
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I was like, oh,
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I do remember a formative memory. I was something between five and seven years
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old and I was at the Magic Kingdom. It was the Wishes era.
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And I distinctly remember hearing clips of songs in that Once
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Upon a Dream from Sleeping Beauty and Go the Distance in different songs and
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poking my mom being like, that's not the movie version.
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It doesn't sound like the movie version.
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And I had no vocabulary to articulate why it didn't sound like the movie
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version. So then someone says, what's your favorite song? And I'm like,
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the Wishes fireworks version of Part of Your World. And they're like, what?
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Discerning taste from a young age. And we love it.
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But the thing is, I really love when the orchestra is leading with the story.
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I don't think I could have explained that for 10 more years.
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And the sound of the orchestra -- I've never really been particularly classical.
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I've never really been particularly jazz.
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I've never really been particularly pop-produced-on-a-laptop.
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It's like this contemporary Disney orchestra sound that Disney made what it is.
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That the Danny Troob orchestration era made what it is.
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I am curious just for listeners who might not have as much experience or
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knowledge about the orchestrating world,
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if you can just talk a little bit about what happens in your mind when you're
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taking a melody or what's given to you from a
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composer and translating it into an orchestral experience.
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I'll use the most straightforward version of the role,
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which I guess is the Broadway orchestration process,
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which is an orchestrator will be delivered a file.
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That file may have started in audio form,
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a team of music assistants or music prep people would've taken it down into
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written transcription form, that would pass through a music supervisor,
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arranger, who's probably in the room with the composer.
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By the time they're like, this is locked, it gets sent to the orchestrator.
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And if I'm looking at a template in scroll view,
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it'll have vertically all these different staves and in the middle there will be
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the piano one.
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And my job is to basically take that and expand it out to all of the different
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staves. So I think of it very much as a vertical expansion,
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but that's basically the process. It's looking at each staff and being like,
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okay, well,
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to communicate what it feels like the composer intended in the piano sketch,
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what do the drums need to be playing? What do the woodwinds need to be doing?
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What kinds of sounds does the synth and the keyboard need to be doing?
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And it's just assigning parts to all of those instruments to bring the piano bit
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of it.
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And having an ear for how all of it comes together.
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And I think this is a critical thing when I think about you to understand,
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because oftentimes you're given a resource.
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This is the instrumentation that this Broadway show has.
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You're given an overall kind of vision, roadmap,
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and then you are both responsible for the individual experiences of every
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musician on that piece as well as the overall reception.
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Obviously that is a team effort,
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but just in terms of the way your brain works,
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I think about that a lot when I think about you,
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because as we talk about some of the experiences you've created and building the
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Sinfonietta, that same kind of tool set, it's,
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I understand the singular through line, the singular idea,
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now I'm going to expand it in every way.
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I'm going to be very specific about what each part of that is,
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and also I know what the whole picture adds up to. And that's very much --
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when I think about this Macy Method of live experience that we are going to dive
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into -- your brain makes sense to me how these two things work so beautifully in
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parallel.
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Yeah, something I really love to do is if a song is written on piano,
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I really like to present it without the piano at all.
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If a song is written on guitar,
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I really like to present it without the guitar at all.
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One of the programs that I'm working on that you know about,
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which is The Music of Taylor Swift: A Symphonic Tribute,
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will have no guitar in the instrumentation anywhere because it feels like that's
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what they originally leaned on. And so if you take that crutch away,
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you have to put so much more orchestral color in the thing to carry it to make
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up for that.
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So usually what's going through my mind is if I take away whatever rhythmic
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crutch this was written on,
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how do you use a wall of sound to move the song forward using every other
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instrument but that? Sometimes you have a composer who's like, no,
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I actually would really -- the piano is the point. Orchestrate around that.
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And that is common and totally a thing.
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But when I'm set free to do whatever I want,
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usually I'm seeing what happens if I get rid of the rhythm section but still
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want to have a rhythmic piece of work.
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It's so fascinating to hear how your mind works and the way that you approach
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different problem sets, if you will, with the orchestrating work.
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So as you kind of learn and develop the orchestrating skills,
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talk to me a little bit about what doing that on Broadway was like,
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but then how COVID ultimately evolved you into the space of creating the
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Sinfonietta.
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So the early days,
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all I ever wanted in the whole universe was to work on Broadway.
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I just loved the big sound because also in terms of actively working,
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sure you can go try to maybe get a job in the Disney Music Department and be one
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of those music preparation people.
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That was not the I'm-20-years-old entry point.
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Broadway was the industry where that sound, that not classical, not hyper pop,
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like big grand orchestral sound was being heard.
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And I thought I had my dream job and I was just going show to
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show, workshops, pre-Broadway labs,
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being in the music department for all these different shows in different roles.
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And when the pandemic hit,
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I felt like I was at the peak of my career and it had all been taken away,
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which looking back is so silly, but for the first bit of the pandemic,
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I was clinging to everything the Broadway League said being like, okay,
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they're saying it's going to be Memorial Day. They're saying it's going to be
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Labor Day -- in the summer, early summer, when it was Labor Day.
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But then they said, it'll be January. That was when it hit me. That was like,
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oh, that's so far away.
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And so I think that was the first mindset shift of, okay, what do I do?
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Other influences:
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George Floyd's murder had just happened and everybody with time on their hands
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in the Broadway community decided to call a racial equity town hall via Zoom
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with everyone that they knew because that was everyone's full-time job for a
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three or four week stretch in the summer of 2020.
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Oh yeah.
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And a lot of the conversations in those led to what the Sinfonietta
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became.
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It was a lot of really well-resourced white male music supervisors being like --
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either the age-old, oh,
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we would love for the music side of Broadway to be more diverse,
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but there aren't people, we just don't have them. Or there's the,
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how could we possibly bring more people in? And I'm like, I don't know,
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create jobs, pay them, any list of things.
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And it felt like the community as a collective was scratching their heads about
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it to have something to do.
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When it's pretty straightforward that --
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Pretty straightforward.
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-- you could pay people living wage and create opportunity across the board.
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And then you have people who are getting residuals and royalties off of shows
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who are so financially set,
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bringing every black and brown person that they can in the community onto these
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panels to talk about their experience. And it was the intersection of that.
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It was the intersection of,
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I found myself being staffed as an orchestrator almost exclusively up to that
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point on shows that one would type as ethnic shows that were not the genre that
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I was skilled in.
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I would be pulled into shows that were Motown music centric,
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or I was on Tina or I was on Aida or The Color Purple,
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and I was brought into all these shows being like, I guess I fill a quota here.
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And I was thrilled to be there, don't get me wrong, loved everything.
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But when I said to my agents at the time something like,
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Hello Dolly's coming to Broadway,
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I want to work on the revival orchestrations. Any reasonable producer would be
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like, you've never done that before.
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You don't have a body of work in big white Broadway music. So in my spare time,
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I like to do a lot of charts and arrangements of what I called big white
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Broadway music.
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And so the intersection of all of these things came to a head in June of 2020,
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and I was so just frustrated and fed up thinking about how I wanted to be
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perceived in genres of work versus how I actually was perceived in genres of
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work.
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And thinking about the fact that artists who financed loans of a quarter million
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dollars to go to school and study their instrument or sitting at home not being
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paid to do their work, and I'm a very ADHD person, I had to be doing something.
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So that was how the Sinfonietta was born.
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And I decided to just reach out to female producers and
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say, hi, I want to do this project. I need this much money.
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It's not a not-for-profit, so you won't get a tax cut.
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It's not a for-profit where you're ever going to see a return on your
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investment, but would you contribute to this?
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And I was absolutely stunned when the first two women that I reached out to,
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Daryl Roth and Jana Shea, were like, absolutely. What's your wire info?
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In your pitch emails, how did you describe the Sinfonietta?
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How did you describe the project?
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So the Broadway Sinfonietta,
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I described it as an all women and majority women of color orchestra.
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And the official definition has evolved since then.
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But I've gotten a lot of questions over the years about why majority women of
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color, and that was just so important to me.
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And we've maintained that for five years. Anytime the Sinfonietta has played --
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which now that we're international, that phrase means something different.
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But within the white world,
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I felt at the time that within the Broadway music community,
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when women were brought into a space, it was usually white women.
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And when diverse bodies were brought into the space, it was usually men.
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And women of color were in this subsect that was left out.
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And if you were a woman of color on a first-class project,
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zero percent chance you were the majority in the room.
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Yeah.
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You were constantly aware that you were not.
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And one of my favorite things about the Sinfonietta is I wanted the women of
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color in the room who are used to always being the one or two others,
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to just feel the comfort of what it feels like to be the majority in a room
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because we probably had never felt that.
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So it was an all-women and majority women of color orchestra.
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And I had a piece of music,
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You're Going to Hear From Me made famous by Barbara Streisand,
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that I had in my big white Broadway music fun arrangements vault.
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And the thing that was most important to me at the time that was crucial to the
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Sinfonietta actually being successful was, this was June of 2020.
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I wanted it to be filmed in person, high res quality, gorgeous.
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And everyone's like,
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you should do a Zoom video for this piece you want to record. And I was like --
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Enough.
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Enough. Enough.
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And that required financing enough money to pay people for
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quarantine time.
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That required all kinds of other COVID safety things and bringing people into
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small instrument sections and then cutting it together later.
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But having an onsite camera crew of quality, I was like,
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if I'm going to put this thing out there and say this is the kind of sound and
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the kind of quality of work that women of color who are already in this industry
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can do, it has to be impeccably excellent in quality with absolutely no room for
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criticism.
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And that went a little viral. It certainly caught industry attention.
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And I think for you,
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it probably caught some of the corporate partnerships that got the Sinfonietta
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off the ground in those early days.
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It did. And what's interesting is the reporting on it was, yes,
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it was about the orchestra itself,
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but the reporting on it really was not only is this orchestra,
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these all women and yay the song, yay the project, but oh,
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they did this in person and it's really high quality. We're not seeing that.
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So the decision to not make it a Zoom video, I think has led to everything.
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And yeah,
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one of the next calls that we got was about being part of a project that was
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being sponsored by Mac Cosmetics for Black History Month.
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It was a recording and it was a brand partnership.
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It was called the Broadway Sinfonietta at the time.
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And then I started one in LA called the Hollywood Sinfonietta years later.
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And then when I started getting asked to put symphonies together for tours
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throughout middle America, I was like, what do I call this one?
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And so now everything is just the Sinfonietta.
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Simplicity at its finest.
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And so you evolved and now you go from an idea into a real
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business. And as you were just starting to talk about,
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you're building international orchestras across the globe.
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How did the way that you originally built the Sinfonietta
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inform the way that you're scaling now?
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When it first started,
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I didn't even understand that I should have had a separate bank account for all
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of this. My now COO of the Sinfonietta's parent company,
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Overture, Colleen McCormack.
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Colleen had been at Disney for almost 15 years and I got to know her there.
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And when Colleen came on board,
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that was when it really started to feel like a business.
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I would say for the first two or three years,
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people were constantly asking me if it was a nonprofit,
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if they would get a tax cut and it felt like it should, it would qualify as one.
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But also then why is it that you put women of color on a thing and it has to be
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raised GoFundMe dollars? Nonprofit instead of,
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we participate in the profit economy?
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Speak on that.
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And that's something that I really cared about,
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but I very much did not want the Sinfonietta to be like my profit machine.
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Not that it would -- not that it could have been,
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but something we started doing really early that we've really evolved into doing
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at a larger scale now is if there was any leftover money from a project,
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we had a contingency line. And if we didn't use it or something like that,
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we funneled it all into a childcare fund for working mothers. And since 2021,
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we've had a no questions asked policy that if you are a mom and you get asked to
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do a gig and you would have to hire childcare in order to do that gig,
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you don't have a partner staying at home watching,
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you tell us you need it and no questions are asked.
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That's incredible, Macy.
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It's something I'm really, really proud of.
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What does a global network of women-led orchestras
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accomplish that traditional orchestras can't?
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I think it accomplishes two things.
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One is that it's adding a layer of representation for young girls.
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That's very important to me. That's always been very important to me.
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But also a lot of the general live music going
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population that doesn't identify as an orchestra person maybe isn't going to the
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symphony orchestra on their Friday night and an all women orchestra doing
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commercial music in orchestral form has the ability to bring people into that
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in a way that even if there's tons of programming at that symphony orchestra
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that person A might enjoy,
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they might not even get there to find out because they've typed themselves out
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of the word symphony orchestra so hard.
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Very well said in my opinion.
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And actually a great transition because you've developed what I'd call the Macy
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Method for live experiences. So I think in its simplest terms from an outsider,
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I describe it as just an audience-first approach that breaks traditional
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conventions of what a symphony experience can be.
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So before we dive into specific projects, of which there are many,
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can you maybe try and distill that Macy Method into what
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your core philosophy for designing a live experience is?
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I can. So we're going to go back to Disney.
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The thing about Disney that I realized as an adult that I didn't realize as a
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kid is, it is immersive adult musical theater.
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Wait, that's so well said.
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You're walking through musical and there's hidden magical orchestral sounds
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coming out of bushes and hidden speakers that you can't see that just are the
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underscoring to your musical.
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And then there are like characters singing songs up on little stages.
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You're walking through a musical that's designed to hide all of the technical
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things that make it a musical.
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The reason Disney World is up here and all other theme parks are here, sorry,
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all other theme parks, for now,
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is that Disney is giving you an experience that is leaving reality at
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the door and entering another place.
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And truly you're in another world and we've crafted that world so that you can
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really get into it and it's like awe and wonder.
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And that is my favorite feeling.
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And so my personal creative mission in all work that I have done and
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will do is when my orchestra is on stage,
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make it such that audiences are looking at that with the awe and wonder of me
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watching the fireworks show. That is what I want.
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And so cut to one of the first film concerts that we
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were brought in to do.
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Kids who have never been into a symphony hall coming in to see this live
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orchestra.
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The Sinfonietta is playing and people come dressed up and everyone's very into
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it and on stage there is an orchestra of women
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dressed in black. That is it. And the movie playing above it,
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which I realize is enough, that is enough.
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You seeing the movie with the score played live totally is enough.
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But I'm watching people come dressed up in costume and I'm like, oh,
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what about this missed opportunity? What about a photo?
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What about an audience activation? What about design?
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The world is limited to the proscenium of the stage,
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but they're coming in character,
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they're coming like they're going to a theme park. Or when we did Cowboy Bebop,
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the anime on its 25th anniversary,
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people are showing up in costume. I think merch for that show sold out before
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the show even started. And I was seeing these fans and I'm like, wow,
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when fans come see the IP, yes, the movie's there, the screen is there.
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The hard part of licensing these concerts is there,
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but that's almost not completely what they're there for.
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They're there for the world of the fandom. I love a fandom.
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One of my favorite things is the quote Taylor Swift has that I'm going to
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butcher, you probably know it,
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that's about how the most uncool thing in the world is to make fun of somebody
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for being excited.
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Yes, I believe so strongly in this.
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It's the worst kind of person is someone who makes someone feel bad,
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dumb or stupid for being excited about something.
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I love that.
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When I see people coming dressed up as these really specific characters,
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I love it. I love that they're so into it.
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It's funny though because even as you're describing,
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not to go too hard on my analogy here, but you're essentially,
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you're building the score for the experience when you talk about all of these
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other things.
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I love it.
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So you take that philosophy -- last summer,
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Barbie the Movie in Concert at the Hollywood Bowl with Barbieland Sinfonietta.
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Trademark Barbieland. My favorite part of this title.
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Will you do me the honor of walking me through how we got there.
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Indulge me by telling me my favorite Macy story,
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your pitch to Mattel.
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Okay, so the Sinfonietta was performing, we were performing as a vendor.
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We were being brought in by producers to put something on stage to perform,
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which was a huge thing for the Sinfonietta, but also for me,
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because I'd never worked in this medium,
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I'd never come into the medium of the score live orchestra.
21:15
It was so formative because I was like this medium of storytelling,
21:19
you get to use the films that already have these fans that love being in this
21:21
world and build a world around it for them using my favorite thing,
21:25
which is an all women orchestra, which is niche. So I'm like,
21:27
I can take my niche thing and put it in this commercial existing fandom thing.
21:31
And the Barbie movie was in theaters at the time, and I sent many a cold email.
21:36
This was probably cold email number 2,999 of 3000.
21:40
But I wrote an email describing our experience playing that film
21:45
concert and inquiring as to whether the licensing rights to Barbie the Movie
21:48
were available for live experiential worldwide.
21:52
And I sent it directly to Mattel's C-Suite.
21:55
Come on. That's like audacity in the best sense of the word.
21:59
It doesn't feel that way to me because the worst case scenario here is I just
22:02
had a little creative deep work session writing this email and no one responds
22:04
to me.
22:05
And I truly believe that the 2,998 cold emails that I wrote that didn't get
22:08
responded to all contribute to the one that gets responded to.
22:12
Yes, but say that again,
22:13
because I feel like more people need to take this approach of,
22:17
for situations like this, the worst case scenario is no response.
22:22
The worst case scenario is you're right where you are.
22:24
Right? The worst case scenario is you're exactly where you are.
22:27
Getting a response, even if that response is no,
22:30
is still a door open that wasn't before.
22:33
So for anyone who has a draft sitting in their Gmail right
22:38
now that they're worried to hit send on or they're fearful,
22:42
listen to what you just said.
22:44
Worst thing you've wasted is just the time that you put in to create a thought,
22:48
which is going to only buoy you forward somewhere else.
22:51
Totally.
22:51
And that thought might evolve into a different project for a different place.
22:54
There are two movie studios that I went in pitching a film to get the film
22:57
license for, both of which said no. And then I said, oh,
23:01
I'm going to be in town.
23:01
Why don't we sit down and I would love to hear about where the department's at
23:03
and if there are other films you might like to do this with.
23:05
And both of those studios we're going to work on a completely different film
23:07
with. So yeah, being told no instead of being told nothing is great. It's --
23:12
conversation's open.
23:13
Exactly. Okay, but so sorry. You send your email to C-Suite and the pitch is...
23:18
The pitch is if you lived in Barbieland and it was Friday night and you were
23:21
going out for a night at the symphony,
23:22
you wouldn't be going to the whatever city philharmonic to see Mahler.
23:27
You would be going to the Barbieland Sinfonietta and hearing Lizzo songs and Dua
23:31
Lipa songs. And so the idea was diagetically,
23:34
we're at the Barbieland Sinfonietta.
23:36
And the next day I got a response from Mattel's location-based entertainment
23:41
team saying, let's have a conversation about this.
23:42
And I think two days after that,
23:43
we got on a Zoom call and all of the people in this department were these
23:48
amazing creative imaginative women.
23:51
And I will say truly,
23:53
I've never worked with a company that embodies its mission and message
23:58
so meta internally as this company.
24:02
I adore this company. Every conversation I've had from the moment of licensing
24:05
to now, I'm constantly just stunned.
24:08
And one of the reasons I think everything was very kismet for me with Barbie the
24:12
Movie is,
24:13
they're an IP company with brands and fans and building up
24:18
universes that put out its first movie.
24:20
And so something that we've dealt with over the entire lifespan of Barbie the
24:24
Movie in Concert,
24:25
especially when selling it to symphonies and explaining how it works to
24:27
symphonies, is they're used to: I license a title,
24:30
throw the title on the screen, throw my orchestra on the stage in black,
24:32
the end.
24:33
And we have to explain to them Barbie is a brand that is treated differently at
24:37
a higher level. For Mattel, when I pitched this,
24:39
they weren't hearing 'film concerts.' They'd never done that before.
24:42
They have one film.
24:42
They were hearing 'brand event built out to be a super high quality
24:47
experience for fans.'.
24:49
The audience experience, all the touches...
24:51
Will you just talk about a couple of your favorite touches?
24:54
Something that I'm very proud of is that when I've looked back at my original
24:59
drafts of pitch decks,
25:00
the overwhelming majority of the weird little tiny things that I put in have
25:04
made it into the show and remain in the show. I mean,
25:06
we had the low hanging fruit. The orchestra's all in pink.
25:08
We had matching hot pink heels for them all at the Hollywood Bowl.
25:12
We decorated the stage top to bottom pink.
25:16
So basically the goal was, you don't see any black on this stage anywhere.
25:19
Giant 30-foot turquoise custom made palm trees.
25:23
I'll get to the Bowl experience in a second, but in terms of the actual show,
25:26
it was things like during the beach scene, only the rhythm section's playing.
25:30
It's not a big orchestral scene.
25:31
I want all those players who aren't playing bouncing around giant pink beach
25:35
balls to each other and having a party and just pretending they're not musicians
25:37
in that moment. So I want it to be fun.
25:40
One of the things that I put in the original pitch deck to try to help them
25:43
envision it was,
25:45
there's a deprogramming sequence where all the Barbies have been brainwashed.
25:50
When Barbieland becomes Ken, all the girls on stage gradually become Ken,
25:53
like the little black headbands, the sunglasses,
25:55
and they unzipped the jumpsuits and they're wearing black t-shirts like the I'm
25:58
Just Ken sequence underneath it. And some of the Barbies who were brainwashed,
26:01
they're in the pink jumpsuits and America Ferrera's in the back of the ambulance
26:04
and she's saying all these things that are wrong with the patriarchy.
26:07
And then there's like a ding, a little bell tree sparkle,
26:09
and the Barbie comes back. She's like, oh, I am a doctor.
26:13
And so when every time a little ding like that and a Barbie's deprogrammed,
26:16
I would pick a player to be spotlighted to hop up and zip up her jumpsuit and
26:19
become Barbie again. And you see that kind of pinging around the orchestra and
26:22
it's just like we're not crossing into stage theater, acting territory.
26:26
We're just being diegetic about the fact that in the world of this IP,
26:31
there could be an orchestra and you could be at the orchestra and we're just
26:33
bringing them into the world. So that's the onstage part. The offstage part --
26:39
I want from the moment you park your car in lot D of the Bowl parking
26:43
lot, I want you to feel like you are entering Disney World level universe.
26:49
So I sent Helen Mirren these selections of narration being like,
26:53
I know you're filming a movie in London.
26:54
Could you please record yourself in your iconic Helen Mirren voice saying all
26:59
these sentences to an imaginary audience so that when someone pulls up their car
27:03
and parks the Hollywood Bowl and they get out,
27:04
the first things they're hearing are Helen Mirren orienting them into
27:07
Barbieland?
27:08
And they pass through a giant billboard that we had fabricated to replicate it
27:11
that says, Barbieland:
27:12
This Way on one side when you're going into the Hollywood Bowl and Real World:
27:15
This Way when you come out. So all the little things like that, it's like,
27:19
by the time you're inside the Hollywood Bowl,
27:21
I don't want you to be thinking you're in the Hollywood Bowl.
27:24
I want you to be thinking you're in what the Hollywood Bowl would look like if
27:27
it was in Barbieland.
27:29
And that -- it takes so much labor.
27:31
I know for you as you're thinking about this,
27:33
but also the physical labor of doing this.
27:36
And yet as you were first telling me all this as it was coming together,
27:40
just how many performing arts cultural centers, theaters,
27:46
can even as you said,
27:47
take the low hanging fruit of this and just apply it for
27:52
any event that they're doing.
27:54
I've been thinking about this a lot because it takes resources to do that.
27:57
But something special happened that we now do with every single show that costs
28:02
zero or negligible dollars.
28:04
I did something at the Hollywood Bowl that I didn't intend to continue,
28:06
which is our principal violist has a daughter named Amelia.
28:11
She was seven at the time, she's Indian, beautiful, looks just like me,
28:16
and I wanted to do this thing during what was I made for that in the girlhood
28:20
flashback scene.
28:20
I walked off the podium when kind of Barbie walks away and then she comes out
28:25
and takes the baton from me and conducts as my mini self.
28:27
And I worked with her on conducting the four pattern and she conducts the
28:30
orchestra into what was I made for.
28:31
And that was not the thing I was thinking most about.
28:34
I was thinking about how many dollars went into the pink firework show,
28:36
and that was one of the most special moments of my entire life. And then it just
28:40
so happened that at Royal Albert Hall, her mom was like,
28:42
we have so much family there, maybe we can come to London and do it again.
28:45
And I was like, yes. So we did it there.
28:48
So then we get to China for a tour in China,
28:50
and I think because all the footage and materials of the first two shows had her
28:53
in it, they actually just assumed they had to source little girls.
28:55
So I roll up to conduct in China,
28:56
and there's two little six year olds that they've sourced for this who don't
28:59
speak any English, who are in pink holding a baton.
29:01
And everyone in China was like the little girl conductor is the thing.
29:05
And then we start moving into the symphonies in America and I'm trying to push
29:09
them on, can you decorate the stage? Can you do this,
29:11
can you do that? And resources, orchestras being defunded, we know the drill.
29:15
And I was like, okay,
29:15
but can we at least do this one thing because it's been hitting and it's easy to
29:18
execute. Ask the women in your orchestra if anyone has a daughter.
29:22
And that has now been done at every show. A few days ago at San Diego Symphony,
29:26
a 9-year-old girl named Evelyn whose parents both work for the San Diego
29:30
Symphony Orchestra,
29:31
her mom is the music librarian and her dad is the principal percussionist,
29:34
conducted her parents for Barbie during What Was I Made For at San Diego
29:37
Symphony. And now there are press, there's articles about this.
29:41
It's become the heart and soul of the show.
29:43
And what I have learned is I was assigning the source of the
29:48
awe to expensive spectacle when actually the heart and the
29:52
narrative and the storytelling is people cry when this girl takes the podium and
29:57
you're in this emotional moment of the girlhood flashback scene and you see the
29:59
little girlhood self take over leading.
30:02
I get goosebumps when I think or talk about it. That's it.
30:04
And that's the moment,
30:05
and that is not a hundred thousand dollars pink firework show.
30:08
No,
30:09
it's storytelling at its core in a way that --
30:13
we could wax poetic on the layers of why it is so moving and emotional
30:19
at any time, particularly now,
30:21
but a few that I'll name are not just that it is enhancing
30:26
what essentially was let's say on the page, but really on the screen, right?
30:30
It is enhancing a moment that was created.
30:34
It is something tangible that you're watching, which is to say a young person,
30:38
particularly a young woman,
30:41
have a platform literally in every sense of the word.
30:45
And also on top of that, on top of the nostalgia, the wistfulness, the care,
30:50
it's also having a platform and having power.
30:54
I think it is an understated thing.
30:56
You're not going to think that in the moment as you're watching this scene.
30:59
You're thinking about your own experience, your own girlhood,
31:03
but you're giving a young woman power in front of an orchestra,
31:06
in front of an audience, and that is powerful,
31:09
even if it wasn't tied to a movie and theme. It is so beautiful. Folks,
31:14
if you haven't seen Barbie in Concert,
31:16
all you need to do is type it into TikTok and you will see a clip of this
31:21
exact scene from one of the outdoor venues that Barbie's been at.
31:26
It's gorgeous.
31:27
All the viral TikTok videos --
31:28
I noticed this after the Bowl and after Royal Albert Hall.
31:30
It wasn't the big pyro show. It was always the zoom in of the girl conducting.
31:35
And they all do think that she's your daughter, which I love.
31:38
I'm like, no, I can't take credit. It's Rhea's daughter.
31:41
But it's also the way that the scene is set up.
31:44
What Was I Made For is it's all piano for a while and then a few lines
31:49
into the Billie Eilish vocals, the whole orchestra comes in at once,
31:52
and so we switched during this piano part,
31:54
and so it's not just her standing with power in front of the orchestra,
31:56
it's that she brings them all in and she is leading
32:01
85 of the most accomplished musicians in the country.
32:04
Gives me goosebumps all over.
32:05
Yeah, and I will tell you, every young girl who has done this,
32:08
which we've had a lot now, has nailed it,
32:10
and no one has ever had anything less than a perfect performance.
32:15
It's so special. Okay, Barbie concerts now happening all over the world.
32:20
Live to film concerts we've talked about, we know they're not new,
32:23
but this approach is different.
32:27
How do you go about identifying what IP you want to commit that brain real
32:31
estate to?
32:33
I have found in the film concert industry,
32:35
the movies that just sell out in live concerts and make money hand over fist
32:40
with very little marketing are the Boys R Us movies, the superhero,
32:44
John Williams scores. The big --
32:46
that just sells out immediately and there hasn't really been a producer in the
32:51
market that's been like, I want to do all the Girls R Us movies. Not that --
32:55
A lot of boys and men come to Barbie. We have a lot of Kens,
32:59
but I reach for the type of work that I imagine Greta Gerwig would want to
33:02
direct.
33:03
And I'll use two examples that are actually not live score shows we're doing,
33:07
but were inspired by the concept.
33:11
We're doing a tribute show by the Sinfonietta that's The Music of Taylor Swift:
33:14
A Symphonic Tribute.
33:16
I'm very excited about this.
33:17
I'm like, okay, first of all,
33:18
the instruments need to be glittered like the glitter guitar.
33:21
There may be friendship bracelet making stations absolutely everywhere.
33:24
There's going to be bead cleanup, it's in the rider,
33:25
there's going to be bead cleanup.
33:27
The concept for me for that one is you probably got an outfit for the Eras tour
33:31
that you wore once and you have amazing pictures and it sits in your closet.
33:33
Wear it again. Make some friendship bracelets,
33:36
come meet other fans because that is part of what made the Eras tour so special.
33:40
And create a world or experience that's just a new --
33:43
there are a million ways you can experience Taylor Swift's music,
33:45
but come experience a tribute to that music with other fans in that kind of way.
33:50
Another one is on December 16th of this year.
33:54
It is what would've been Jane Austen's 250th birthday.
33:58
She's older than America. I've learned.
34:00
We love that.
34:01
And I was looking at, okay, what film should we put here?
34:05
Do we license one of the big Jane Austen films and do film score with the
34:07
orchestra?
34:08
What it's actually evolved into is a new program that we're premiering and then
34:12
taking out called The Music of Jane Austen in film,
34:15
and it has selected readings from a notable reader in between all these
34:19
different selections of music following the scenes that the music has scored to.
34:23
The through line is you're bringing people into a world.
34:25
You're bringing people into purple glitter and friendship bracelets,
34:27
or you're bringing people into Jane Austen books and the feather pens and that
34:31
era,
34:32
and I'm going to do absolutely everything I can to make sure that the indoor
34:37
theater feels like that world.
34:38
So I think that I'm reaching for work and IP that is empowering and elevating
34:43
women and girls, and then secondarily,
34:47
that is creating a world of awe and wonder for whoever's seeing
34:52
it.
34:52
As we've been talking and just thinking about how you take concert experience
34:57
and merge it with fan experience and just create, as you said, an evening,
35:01
a moment in time of awe and wonder and being together,
35:05
which feels like just the theme for the moment is how do we bring people
35:08
together in joyful ways, right?
35:11
In a moment where there needs to be resistance and other things happening,
35:14
there also needs to be dancing in the streets together.
35:17
We've talked a lot about this merging of concert experience and fan experience.
35:22
I just think your story and what you've been doing is so important, and frankly,
35:25
I think a lot of venues are going to see this increasingly so hopefully working
35:30
with you,
35:30
but I'm also hoping that some of them take these lessons upon themselves.
35:34
Yes.
35:34
You are still very early in your career, I should say.
35:37
Macy is not even near the peak of her career,
35:40
but she's done a lot already.
35:42
So you're the first woman of color orchestrator on Broadway.
35:46
Yes. Which is a depressing statistic, but yes.
35:49
Which is a depressing statistic and yet still an accomplishment.
35:54
You are a Tony winner. You're a Forbes 30 under 30.
35:58
This is a lot to have done early,
36:00
and you are transforming what live concert experiences mean to a lot of people.
36:05
As you think about not what you want to do in your next 10 years,
36:09
because I want that to be just a freedom of space that you are going to have so
36:13
many adventures in, and I will be there cheering you on every step of the way.
36:18
But as you think just about your legacy and the themes that have brought you
36:22
through to this moment,
36:24
what do you hope the through line of your career represents?
36:29
I love that question, and I think there are two things.
36:33
One is inspiring and elevating,
36:35
empowering women and girls and making sure that in doing that,
36:40
women of color are not the minority in the space and
36:45
creating magical experiences that
36:49
inspire wonder and awe and creativity for people.
36:53
Yeah,
36:54
inspiring creativity is a noble cause and one of great
36:59
import, so I'm really glad that you said that and I see it already. Okay.
37:04
We have our last few questions, which are our quickfire culture questions.
37:09
What is one piece of culture that you're currently obsessing over?
37:14
My current show is Madame Secretary. I'm finally watching it. I'm loving it.
37:18
My current book is everything by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
37:22
Ooh, okay. Good one.
37:23
But with the real answer is the upcoming Life of a Showgirl.
37:26
I should have known better than to even ask.
37:28
I felt like I needed to put two other things first to couch it a little bit,
37:31
but it's the only answer.
37:32
October 3rd can't come soon enough. We love this. We love --
37:35
Swifty is another fan subculture that we love and support here.
37:38
We do.
37:39
If you could go back in time,
37:41
what is one performance or concert that you would want to be present at?
37:46
The 2015 Actors Fund Benefit Performance of Bombshell.
37:50
Wait, I just need a moment to yes-and you, and just say,
37:55
would that this time machine would be built sooner so that we can both go
37:58
together. The way I lived for those YouTube videos.
38:02
Lived. I rewatched that during COVID so many times.
38:06
It was a pure moment in time.
38:07
It was a pure moment in time. Okay,
38:11
so last question. Your CI to Eye moment.
38:15
If you could broadcast one message to executive directors,
38:19
leadership teams,
38:21
staff and boards of thousands of arts organizations,
38:25
what would it be?
38:28
Enhancing the magic does not have to be expensive,
38:32
and that is something that I learned from trying to put fireworks everywhere.
38:36
The ability to find small ways to elevate and enhance the creative so that what
38:41
you're creating for your audience is not just the music they're hearing,
38:44
but they're walking away with something memorable.
38:46
Thousands and thousands of people at our shows who have never seen an orchestra
38:49
play live before ever want to see it again,
38:52
and something that's crucial about that is that they were brought into the door
38:56
in a show where the audience knows there are no etiquette rules and I want them
39:00
to cheer and be unhinged. I'm telling the audience, I'm like, if you're here,
39:04
it's your first time seeing an orchestra. This is how it works.
39:07
We're not going to be sitting here, not clapping between movements.
39:09
We're supposed to have fun. Someone's going to pass you a beach ball.
39:11
Get into it.
39:12
Inviting new audiences in and making sure they actively know
39:17
that they aren't going to be held to some mysterious etiquette rules that they
39:20
don't really understand, that no one will explain to them,
39:22
'cause that's what's keeping them out.
39:23
Their enthusiasm is welcomed and appreciated and treasured,
39:29
and as you said, it's the experience. It's also the feeling of belonging.
39:32
It's the feeling of come as you are, enjoy as you want.
39:36
We are all here to be together. Macy, thank you for your time.
39:40
Thank you for all you are doing to continue to push creativity and access
39:45
forward for the field, and I can't wait to see what's next.
39:49
Likewise to you. You pushed that forward a lot,
39:51
and something that I'm going to say on this podcast that I hope you leave in is
39:54
that Monica Holt was definitely the first
39:59
leader executive at an elite symphony organization who
40:04
engaged thoughtfully with programs that I had and made me feel like my programs
40:08
might have a home in an elite hall. I used to think, okay,
40:12
I'll go into the PACs and performing arts centers and finance something on the
40:14
side. I don't even think I'd be selling Barbie into symphonies if we hadn't been
40:17
talking about maybe doing Taylor Swift with the NSO or whatever it is and being
40:20
like, oh,
40:22
these organizations are open to doing that kind of programming because it's part
40:25
of new audience development. You did that for me,
40:28
and I think people should know that.
40:29
Thanks, Macy. Adore you. Thank you.
40:41
Thank you for listening to CI to Eye with Monica Holt.
40:45
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40:46
please take a moment to rate us or leave a review.
40:49
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41:00
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41:02
and I wouldn't want you to miss them.
41:04
This episode was edited and produced by Karen McConarty and co-written by Karen
41:09
McConarty and myself, Monica Holt.
41:12
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41:17
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