Rickey Minor (Oscars music director) on loving being the go-to music guy for live TV events: ‘I don’t turn down nothin’ but my collar’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
“I love music,” declares Rickey Minor, and it’s clear that the music director for the past two Academy Awards telecasts means it. The enthusiasm and joy he projects is infectious. He proclaims that he would “play at the opening of an envelope” and that when it comes to work, “I don’t turn down nothin’ but my collar.” He recalls once telling Quincy Jones that he loves working in music so much he would do it for free and Jones telling him, “Don’t say that.” But while he listened to Jones and insists on getting paid for his work these days, plenty of it comes his way. He’s the go-to music director for live awards shows including the Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys and The Kennedy Center Honors. Why? Minor believes it’s his meticulous preparation. “Notes, notes, notes,” he says. “I’ve always got my legal pad ready to go. I make sure to get my team working together and covering every base.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.
Minor – already a two-time Emmy winner – has now worked as music director for four Oscar shows, including the one in March. It requires an extraordinary amount of prep, including a pair of six-hour rehearsals as well as some pre-recording and a third day of working on the Best Original Song live performances. “I think we had 183 music cues this year,” he recalls, including cues for presenter play-ons and nominees. Everything has to be done, recorded and mixed for the stuff that’s not live. But I also see a lot of my job as being bendable, not breakable, because things change. So don’t get myself all crazy if there’s a curveball thrown.” And as Minors knows only too well, curveballs will always be thrown – and that doesn’t even include rolling with the punches tossed during the show itself.
The rule of thumb in terms of how the music gets planned out for the Oscar nominees is one cue for every three nominations. And if, say, a film wins all three of those bids? “Then we just have to play the same cue play-on music three times,” Minor explains. “And that’s OK.”
While he doesn’t produce and choreograph the production numbers for the top song category nominees, Minor works with those who do to make sure it all goes smoothly to get the timing and the cues just right. One that was particularly rewarding was the “I’m Just Ken” performance from “Barbie” that featured star Ryan Gosling and Slash. “It was incredible,” he recalls. “All of a sudden, we’ve got to add a beat here or four bars there, or we need more time for the dancers to get out, and that (song) was a huge undertaking. I’ve never done anything that extravagant with so much power-packed eye and ear stimulation all over the place. I had a great time doing that one.”
There are also different cues for the music that’s known collectively as Time’s Up. That’s the music that starts off soft on the piano and rises in volume and tenor as a winner exceeds the 45 seconds allotted for an acceptance speech. People tend to blame Minor for “playing people off,” but he isn’t responsible for it. “It all goes to the (production) truck,” he emphasizes. “So when the director says, ‘Cue music,’ that’s not me. When people come up to me and ask, ‘Why did you play me off?’, I assure them, ‘I did the music to play you off, but I didn’t play it.’ They (also) have to understand this is a show. It’s not someone being disrespected. We only have the time we have, and they need to be respectful of the other honorees. I know it’s a big emotional moment, but they just need to think about everyone else, too.”
That aside, one thing that particularly thrilled Minor about this year’s Oscars was that the stage was redesigned so the orchestra was right up there onstage rather than down in a pit. “Down in that pit, it’s dark, and you feel like you’re playing in a closet, and it’s hard to communicate,” he points out. “You can’t feel the audience. So hat’s off to the producers of the show this year. We even had artists like Billie Eilish turning around after her performance and thanking the orchestra. That can’t happen when you’re in a pit.” He hopes it becomes an annual thing rather than just a one-time thing.
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