While audiences at Broadway‘s “West Side Story” thrill to the on-stage drama, musicians in the orchestra pit are fighting a battle every bit as vicious as the Sharks-Jets rivalry.

This is gang warfare of a high-minded sort, pitting some of New York’s best live musicians against a synthesizer they fear will usurp the job of playing Leonard Bernstein‘s pulsating score.

Sophisticated synthesizers and computer-manipulated recordings are increasingly taking over orchestras. Sounding almost like real players, while costing much less, they’re especially popular with provincial or touring companies.

But until mid-July — when “West Side Story’s” producers announced that a synthesizer was replacing three live violinists and two cellists, or half the orchestra’s string section — staff violinist Paul Woodiel thought that at least the classics would be immune to the trend.

“It was the last straw for me,” Woodiel told AFP.

“I was a student and a friend of Leonard Bernstein and it’s almost certain he wouldn’t have allowed this. This isn’t dinner theater, it’s not Las Vegas. It’s Broadway and Leonard Bernstein was the greatest American musician.”

Woodiel’s own job was spared, but he caused a stir through the tight-knit Broadway world with a New York Times piece denouncing the “inert, artificial” synthesizer invasion.

The producers did not respond to AFP requests to be interviewed.

Synthesizers have in fact been around for decades, notably in pop music. What’s changing is the ability of the machines to enter the far more sophisticated domain of classical orchestras.

“The computer gives you so much more power now. There’s ridiculous stuff,” says Mike Levine, editor of Electronic Musician Magazine.

There are computer programs able to read and play back music scores — a boon to composers who can now hear their work as they write — and software allowing conductors to control the tempo of the machine, in the same way that they direct live players.

“It has gotten very, very good with something like drums and bass and strings,” Levine said. “With piano they can model almost anything.”

Levine said the growing use of synthesizers is positive for basement bands and other music industry start-ups, but a menace to jobs in large, labor-intensive ensembles like orchestras.

“It’s all about money and the producers want to make as much money as possible,” Levine said. “They always did.”

Critics see synthesizers as little better than some barbarian force trampling the classical music landscape.

But one virtual music pioneer, Paul Henry Smith of the Fauxharmonic Orchestra, says the technology will only improve and in any case cannot be stopped.

Smith’s system uses so-called digital sampling, feeding from a store of more than two million individual notes recorded in an almost endless variety of tones and styles. “It’s kind of insane,” he says.

“We don’t quite know what’s going to happen with this, but computer technology is just so malleable that the likelihood of it going away is probably nil.”

Like many new technologies, virtual music poses growing ethical questions.

New York Post arts writer Barbara Hoffman says using a synthesizer in “West Side Story” amounts to cheating theater-goers.

“When you pay over 100 dollars a ticket you should hear real music the way Leonard Bernstein intended it,” she said. “Something as sacred as that score, one of the most beautiful scores ever written — it’s blasphemous.”

But it remains unclear whether audiences around the country realize what’s going on, or necessarily care.

Sarah Franklin, a talented 24-year-old violinist, joined a five-month North America tour for a revival of the musical “Camelot” with an orchestra of just four people.

“There was me on the violin, one cello, one French horn and a conductor with a computer,” she said. The computer, using a software called Notion, played the rest of the semi-virtual orchestra.

Frequently the program crashed, abruptly leaving the three live musicians to play by themselves. But despite the glitches, most audience members were none the wiser, Franklin said.

“When people saw us down in the pit afterwards, they’d say, ‘It sounded like there were so many more of you!’”

The musicians would wriggle out of the embarrassing situation by pretending that the rest of their colleagues had quickly left the theater.

“We got fed up with explaining and we didn’t want to ruin it for them. They didn’t need to know,” Franklin said.

True aficionados can immediately tell the difference between real and manufactured music.

Woodiel compares playing alongside a synthesizer to “making love with a corpse.”

Even Smith readily concedes that today’s virtual instruments cannot match live string players “by a long shot.”

But advocates argue that axing salaried musicians in favor of a machine during today’s economic uncertainty can extend the life of a flagging production, thereby saving many other jobs.

Smith, who studied with Bernstein and researched digital sound at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says the most important benefits are subtle.

He sees virtual orchestra programs as a new instrument in their own right, as well as a tool for composers to “get their ideas into sound” and bring new material to human orchestras — thereby creating work.

“It’s not always a bad boy,” Smith said. “It’s a branching out and expanding of possibilities.”

Peter Reit, who plays French horn in Broadway’s “Phantom of the Opera” — where two strings players have been replaced by a synthesizer — has a more gloomy prognosis in what he calls the “corporate” music landscape.

“You get the feeling that if they had their way, ideally, they would have an entire virtual orchestra,” he said.

“They would have all of us replaced with one electronic instrument, then feed that to the public and make more money.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – What’s the value of a pint of beer? Let the market decide, says a new restaurant in Manhattan where prices for food and beverages will fluctuate like stock prices in increments according to demand.

The Exchange Bar & Grill, set amid the bustling shops and pubs of the Grammercy Park neighborhood, is replete with a ticker tape flashing menu prices in red lettering as demand forces them to fluctuate.

Customers can move prices for all beverages and bar snacks such as hot wings ($7 for 6 pieces) or fried calamari ($9). The prices will fluctuate in $.25 cent increments, but will most likely plateau at a $2 change in either direction.

A glass of Guinness starts at $6 but could be pushed to a high of $8 or a low of $4, depending on popularity.

So if one drink is in heavy demand, its price will rise, causing the cost of other equivalent drinks to drop. A rush on a particular beer would increase its price, and cause other beers to drop.

The Exchange Bar & Grill has a long bar facing the ticker tape — and flat screen televisions — as well as a few tables in the back where patrons can eat in greater comfort.

Restaurants in New York and across America have had a tough year because consumers have slashed discretionary spending in a tough economic climate. New York has about 23,000 restaurants, with about 4,400 opening each year according to the city’s Department of Health, which tracks establishment licenses.

NEW YORK — State-of-the-art new rides including a roller coaster and a pendulum will open this summer at Coney Island to jump-start the resurgence of the famed Brooklyn amusement park, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday.

"Coney Island is coming back, big time," Bloomberg said at a news conference near the boardwalk where the decades-old Astroland rides were dismantled in 2008.

The new rides are being created by Zamperla, the world’s leading manufacturer of mechanical rides, based in Altavilla Vicentina, Italy.

Luna Park at Coney Island will open on Memorial Day weekend with 19 rides. Among them will be the Air Race, which sends riders swinging and soaring around a control tower. It will be the ride’s global debut.

Also promised are games, live entertainment, and concessions including Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand, which opened in 1916, pioneering America’s concept of fast food.

By the summer of 2011, Scream Zone at Coney Island will offer two roller coasters, go-carts and a human slingshot launching people more than 200 feet into the air.

Central Amusement International of Parsippany, N.J., is investing about $30 million to build and operate the park. The company signed a 10-year lease for about 6 acres of land including the former Astroland site, paying the city $1 million plus part of gross receipts.

"We will have rides that will flip you, turn you, launch you, drop you, splash you and make the mayor want to lose his lunch," said David Galst, a CAI spokesman.

Not all of Coney Island’s old amusements were scrapped.

The 1920s Cyclone roller coaster is landmarked, as is Deno’s Wonder Wheel. Both will continue to be operated by their current management.

Deno Vourderis, whose family owns the Wonder Wheel, said the Ferris wheel that opened in 1920 will be updated with solar panels on its cars and retrofitted with a lighting configuration resembling the original one.

The city bought 6.9 acres of Coney Island property in November from developer Joe Sitt for $95.6 million.

That followed years of wrangling between the city and Sitt, whose vision for Coney Island was not in line with Bloomberg’s.

Sitt, who still owns about as many Coney Island acres as the city, released a statement Tuesday saying his firm is "beyond pleased" by plans for this summer and is "looking forward to … working shoulder to shoulder with the city."

The mayor, who won a third term in November, has touted the renewal of Brooklyn beachfront as part of his political and economic agenda.

"Coney Island remains one of the most known and beloved neighborhoods around the world, but for decades its famed amusement park has dwindled to just a tiny fraction of what it once was," the mayor said.

Once dubbed the People’s Playground, the peninsula on the Atlantic Ocean drew working-class Americans for more than a century with its tacky splendor and low-cost fun.

But in recent decades, while visitors crowded the boardwalk, scarfing down fast food and letting out screams on thrill rides, life for many of Coney Island’s 65,000 residents had become a drug-fueled hell amid a double-digit unemployment rate, crumbling housing and a skyrocketing crime rate.

Seth W. Pinsky, president of the city’s Economic Development Corp. that spearheaded the Coney Island project, said he expects this summer’s activities to reverse "years of decline and disinvestment."

Plans are in place to turn the run-down beachfront into a 27-acre, year-round amusement and entertainment district with restaurants, movie theaters, retail stores and hotels aimed at tourists.

Officials said the park will create 330 jobs by 2011, with emphasis on local hiring. In coming years, the rest of the revival is expected to generate more than 25,000 construction jobs and 6,000 permanent ones, along with billions of dollars in economic activity.

The city has promised to invest about $6.5 million toward improving the neighborhood’s rotting infrastructure in preparation for building more than 5,000 housing units, including 900 affordable ones.

The May opening of Luna Park is to be toasted with a new beer called the Coney Island Luna Lager, made by the San Francisco-based Shmaltz Brewing Co.

City Councilman Domenic Recchia, who represents Coney Island, called the renewal "a dream come true."

Native New Yorkers were a tad confused today when they learned that Broadway was shut down between 42nd Street and 47th Street over the long weekend. A new traffic pattern was put in place and a huge number of lawn chairs were placed to give Times Square tourists a place to sit.

Here are some neat HDR shots (mostly) that I took at Chelsea Market in NYC:

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If you ride the L train between Brooklyn and Manhattan at odd hours of the day, get ready for a little more automation in your lifestyle. As of today, the L will become the first NY subway line to be fully controlled by Communications Based Train Control, or CBTC, initially used overnights and during non-peak hours. It allows the trains to effectively run themselves, closer and faster than their meatbag conductors could otherwise, which should mean more trains more often.

Read the full article at Engadget and The NY Post.