Custom Arrangements
Medleys, openers, and solo moments arranged for your students’ voices and keys.
Every chart is shaped to make the performer sound their best, the same way material gets tailored for a Broadway company.
Music preparation for Jimmy Awards and High School Musical Theatre Awards programs
The Road to the Jimmy Awards
This road goes somewhere real.
The Jimmy Awards keeps a running list of alumni working on Broadway and national tours →
Somewhere in your state, a kid in a choir room is dreaming about stepping onto a Broadway stage. That stage could be the Minskoff, and that dream could come true this year: every June, the Jimmy Awards puts nominees from programs like yours on that stage. We started in choir rooms too, and the dream came true for us — we work on Broadway, and our co-founder Ryan Blihovde has spent nearly a decade as a freelance copyist on the Jimmys. We know that stage from the inside: how songs get chosen, how medleys are built, how keys get set, and what it takes for a student to walk out there feeling unstoppable. Your program is where that road begins. Hire the people who work where it ends, and give your students music at the level that will be waiting for them in New York.
The Full Package
Everything your ceremony needs, from one team.
One engagement covers the entire musical life of your awards season. It is built around the way this material actually comes together, so your program staff can spend their time on students instead of score logistics.
Why It Matters
Strong materials are the edge your students deserve.
Nominees who perform on clean, well-built material walk into every room with confidence. When they reach New York, the standard will not be new to them. They will have been performing at it all season.
Program staff and volunteer music teams get their time back. Instead of building charts at midnight, they rehearse from materials that were finished, checked, and organized weeks earlier.
And your ceremony sounds like the professional event it is. The people preparing it work the Jimmy Awards in New York every June, and have spent more than a decade preparing music for Broadway.
The Season, Mapped
Checkpoints, not crunch time.
Scope & style guide
We meet your team early, define what the ceremony needs musically, and lock a season style guide covering instrumentation, keys, cut philosophy, and delivery dates.
Build & deliver
Arrangements, orchestrations, and books are built to the guide and delivered at agreed checkpoints. When nominations land, we already know your ensemble, your keys, and your calendar, so the only new work is the nominees themselves.
Rehearse & perform
Final materials are in hand before rehearsals begin, so the week of the show belongs to the performance and not to paperwork.
Aug
Intro call: scope, ensemble, calendar
Sep–Oct
Contract signed, then the style guide locked
Nov–Jan
Openers, finale, and medley frameworks built
Mar
Draft books delivered, one scheduled review
May
Nominations land: keys confirmed, final books out
Show week
Nothing left but the performance
Recent Work
Last season, this exact job.
This past season, the people behind Broadway Music Services prepared the ceremony music for the KPA Bradley Awards, the official Jimmy Awards regional program for Kentucky and Southern Indiana, presented by Kentucky Performing Arts.
Opening and closing numbers, nominee medleys, features in the keys the students actually sing, and books their musicians could play on sight — the same work described on this page, delivered on a real regional calendar.
Two of those students went on to represent their region at the national ceremony in New York — and one came home with a national award. You don’t have to take our word for it: see the Jimmy Awards’ winners page and the local coverage of their send-off. The road is real, and we have walked it with a program like yours.
How Pricing Works
One flat fee for the season, plus union rates for the music.
One flat fee, due when the contract is signed, holds your music team for the whole season: our consulting, the orchestrators, arrangers, and copyists we hire and manage, and delivery you can set your calendar by. It is the one number that does not move — so you can budget around it and fundraise against it.
The music itself is billed at the AFM Local 802 General Price List — the published union rate sheet Broadway productions use to pay for arranging, orchestration, and music copying. Your medley is priced off the same sheet as a Broadway show, so nobody has to wonder whether a number is fair.
The GPL prices the work by what actually gets written: pages of score, number of parts, the instruments in your pit. More music costs more, less costs less, and none of it is negotiated in a back room — the rates are printed, and anyone can look them up.
Every arranger and orchestrator on our team started out exactly where your students are now, in a band or choir room somewhere, before turning that training into a career. Paying union rate is how we make sure the people doing this work are paid what that training is actually worth, and it is a standard we are glad to hold ourselves to on your behalf.
Because the music is priced by what gets written, the exact figure comes from the finished scores. We give you an estimate range at the start of the season so you can budget and fundraise, and the music is invoiced after it is delivered. You are never billed for a page that does not exist.
Every ceremony needs a different amount of music, which is why you will not find a flat figure printed here. Tell us what your ceremony looks like and we will walk you through real numbers, by email or over Zoom.
The Team
Built by people who do this for Broadway.
Broadway Music Services was co-founded by Ryan Blihovde and Jacob Yates. Both are working Broadway orchestrators and arrangers; Jacob is a Broadway music director, and Ryan is one of the copyists on the Jimmy Awards in New York, where he has been part of the music team for nearly a decade.
For your program, we contract the same orchestrators and arrangers who do that work at the Jimmys. They prepare materials for Broadway productions, workshops, and concerts year-round.
The result is a plug-and-play music team for your program: you bring the students and the vision, we bring everything the music needs to be ready.
Ryan Blihovde
Co-Founder · Music Preparation
Broadway musician, orchestrator, and copyist for productions, workshops, and concerts. Broadway: Aladdin; Gutenberg! The Musical!; A Strange Loop; Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club (prologue copyist). Off-Broadway: Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors; Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground; Emergence; Hip Hop Cinderella; Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean; A Guide for the Homesick. At Carnegie Hall, orchestrations for Seth Rudetsky and copy work for Sleeping At Last; orchestrations for Sapphira Cristál with the San Francisco Symphony and The Philadelphia Orchestra.
Jacob Yates
Co-Founder · Music Direction
Broadway music director, pianist, orchestrator, and arranger; a multi-instrumentalist who also plays cello. Broadway: Wicked, Les Misérables, Spring Awakening, Hadestown, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. Off-Broadway: The Baker’s Wife (Classic Stage Company), Alice By Heart and Only Gold (MCC Theater), Rock of Ages. Tours: Hadestown, Disney Princess The Concert. Music director of Brokeback Mountain at Chicago Shakespeare Theater; conductor of the Palm Springs Pops Orchestra.
Common Questions
The things every program asks first.
Who prints the books?
Your team does. We deliver print-ready files with exact printing and assembly instructions — paper, ordering, binders, and page turns — so what comes off your printer plays like a Broadway book.
When should we start?
Fall, while your school applications are open. Signing early is what lets the season run on checkpoints instead of crunch, and it gives your fundraising a full cycle to work with.
What does it cost?
One flat season fee, plus the music billed at the AFM Local 802 General Price List — the published union rate sheet, priced by the page. The total depends on how much music your ceremony needs, so we walk you through real numbers by email or over Zoom.
Do you travel to us?
No — we are New York based and remote by design. Fifty-two of the fifty-eight regional ceremonies happen in May, and we would rather hold the same standard for every program than promise a week we cannot give.
Planning next season?
The programs that start early get the best results.
Broadway Music Services is an independent music preparation company. Its co-founder Ryan Blihovde is engaged individually, as a freelancer, in music support for the Jimmy Awards® in New York City. Broadway Music Services itself is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by The Broadway League, the Jimmy Awards®, or the National High School Musical Theatre Awards. References are for identification purposes only.