Hi. Done the show already, so now I'm somewhat intimate with the books. Brass are very necessary, although things sounded fine with just two trumpets and two trombones. Strings are generally unnecessary, except for a few tiny places in Comedy Tonight. I used an extra keyboard to fill in the string parts, but it was really just overkill. Reed 5 would have been nice, but we did without that, as well. So I ended up with: Reed 1-4 Harp (on synthesizer, using MainStage to tune the glissandos correctly) Bass Percussion (I used two players, one on trap set, one on synth for all the tuned percussion) Trumpets 1-2 Trombones 1-2 Strings (on synthesizer, but generally unnecessary) I actually used a live cello, too, which was nice, but not necessary. If you use MainStage for your synth, I'll be happy to supply the MainStage concerts I used for harp and for percussion (two separate concerts). I used two Macs in the pit, each running a copy of MainStage: One for the harp, the other for the tuned percussion. Sounded pretty good, I think. -_ Ken