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I am always looking for the next show.
Brian Stokes Mitchell
It's nearly impossible to make a living in the arts.
Oddly enough, I almost never listen to show tunes. But there are some shows I love, like Adam Guettel's 'Floyd Collins.'
I'd been playing the piano since I was 6 and wanted to be a composer, but I also wanted to be an actor. I decided to just pursue both and see which won out.
My favorite music is jazz, actually. It's what I listen to, it's what I was raised on, and it's what I prefer to sing.
Music, for me, is the most sacred of the arts. I say that because music communicates in a way that no other art form can. All great art has a spirit that we recognize and appreciate, but music goes directly to your heart.
I gravitate to rhythmic music, so I listen to jazz, world music, Indian music, Hawaiian music, all kinds.
I was practically raised with Christmas music.
Everybody comes to the planet with certain gifts. It may be writing, it may be acting, it may be singing, it may be being a lawyer, it may be making a beautiful cabinet, it may be being a spectacular dry cleaner. It could be anything. We all have gifts in different areas.
I studied film scoring and orchestration and conducting and arranging in my twenties, and I scored a lot of television shows and other things.
I kind of feel the career chose me. My motto has always been, 'Go where I'm wanted.'
I'm having a ball on 'Glee.' It's a joy to be working there - the whole cast is so talented.
I didn't really think I liked jazz all that much until I was about 18. That's when the freedom and possibilities of it began to seem appealing to me.
Years ago, I couldn't get arrested in commercials because of my look: 'Is he Jewish, Hispanic, or African-American?' I ended up doing voiceover work, which has been great. Honestly, I can't complain.
I like to capture the spirit of what the writers intended but find my own nuances. That comes from jazz - the invention and freeness within a structure.
I love rearranging and reimagining tunes, so I want my audience to enjoy hearing songs in a new way and make their own discoveries.
People who are artists professionally are not artists because they want to be artists; they have to be artists. They're compelled to get that creativity out and to share that with others.
People comment on the way that I phrase. And in my 20s, I realized, my phrasing is jazz phrasing. I don't comply strictly with musical theater phrasing. Musical theater tends to be very one and three, and jazz is definitely two and four.
I'm fortunate that I've been able to work on Broadway, but it doesn't give me an outside life. So I decided to go into the concert world. I do 40 to 50 shows. That takes one to three days a week, and I'm home the rest of the time.
If you can make an audience laugh, you can make them love any character.
To me, a theater is a kind of a sacred space. It needs a kind of ceremony, like what happens when you consecrate a church.
When I was preparing 'Kiss Me, Kate', I did go to the Museum of Broadcasting and watched an old kinescope of Alfred Drake doing the role on a television special. It was interesting, but I didn't feel any need to try to copy him.
Honestly, I hate watching myself on TV - I have always hated watching myself and listening to myself.
That's the magic of art and the magic of theatre: it has the power to transform an audience, an individual, or en masse, to transform them and give them an epiphanal experience that changes their life, opens their hearts and their minds and the way they think.
I studied arranging and orchestration a number of years ago, so I have a home studio and arrange about three-fourths of my songs on the computer. Since writing orchestration is tedious, I often put an arrangement on the keyboard and let someone better-qualified finish it.
I think I just had it by osmosis: an appreciation of Duke Ellington before I really even knew who he was.
I've sung a whole lot of jazz. It's my favorite style of music to sing. People don't realize it, because they're so accustomed to hearing me sing musical theater.
I love rethinking and reimagining songs.
There's a lot of risk involved in acting, and you can't take the same kind of risks when you have a kid to feed.
I'm a fan of odd meters. For example, I've decided to sing 'No Business Like Show Business', but I'll be doing it in constantly changing 5/4, 7/4 and 11/4 time signatures. I've found a way to make that work.
The first role that I played as a musical - I was 14 years old, and I played Birdie in 'Bye Bye Birdie.' That was an awakening of, 'Wow, I'm good at that. People are responding.' And I hardly knew what I was doing back then, but there was something that people were seeing.
I like being different people.
I can count on one hand the number of conductors-composers-arrangers that I enjoy working with, and at the top of that list is Mack Wilberg. I feel like I've known Mack forever. I'm just nuts for him.
At our house, we'd always open presents with our Christmas records playing. 'Little Drummer Boy' was one of my favorites when I was a kid because it was about a kid.
There are some projects where you have to just start doing it, and, after a while, the show starts telling you what it wants to be. You put your spirit in and, after a while, something bigger takes over, and it turns out to be much more fun and creative than what it was at the beginning.
I love being outside, and I love the fresh air.
The first audition I did was for 'Trapper John, M.D.' I was surprised to get the part, and then to have it last for seven years was a bonus.
I don't recommend skipping college, but things have worked out for me.
I like to sing the songs people love, like 'Impossible Dream.'
What I love about piano and vocal is it's incredibly pure, and it gets down to the essence of the song because you're not distracted by an orchestra. When it's just a piano and a voice, it's about the purity of singing the song.
I always like to talk about how important space is. Art is in the spaces. Anybody can sing a note; it takes an artist to sing the spaces. Anybody can paint a brushstroke; it takes an artist to know when not to put the brushstroke.
I was raised on jazz. My father, from the time I was born, used to get up early on Saturdays and Sundays and put on Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Kenny Burrell, Sarah Vaughn, John Coltrane - all these great, classic albums.
When you have a community that's strong in the arts, it brings all sorts of attention and different businesses into the community.
Usually, I don't feel comfortable with a character until I've played him before an audience for several performances. It is not until after three months of performing that I learn to discover what I call 'all the nooks and crannies' of the person.
I think the Oscar is the big money award; that means you've made it in a money sense. The Tony has always represented - to me, and most actors that I've talked to - an artistic award. It means you're an artist and not just a popular performer.
I hate those vacuous musicals, the happy-happy, 'Let's have a good time' shows.
Performing in the theater is a very ethereal profession because you do it once and it goes out into the ether and it goes into people's minds and that's the only place that it ever exists. And it never exists truly; it only exists in the way that people think they remember it. But it's a really powerful way to tell a story and to pass something on.
When I moved to Los Angeles, I thought, 'Whatever hits, I'll go that direction. If it's music, fine; if it's acting, fine.'
Variety is the key to not being bored.
'Ragtime' was the most magical show that I've done. I had an incredible experience with that, with the show itself, with the cast, with the audience. The response to that show - my God, it really blew me away, the reactions to that show, the way it changed their lives and altered their thinking, their own self-discovery.
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