First-year Conservatory students have taken the initiative by bringing Broadway music to the stage with Broadway Band, a new student-run ensemble at Baldwin Wallace University.
The ensemble was founded by Nick Stanick, a music education and music composition double major, and Reese Clements, a music composition and percussion performance double major. They are performing a variety of Broadway tunes across the many years of Broadway’s rich history.
“It’s an idea that I had when we both found ourselves wanting to do more musical theater style, pit stuff, but due to schedules and everything it was just hard for us to do that,” Stanick said. “So, we asked ourselves ‘Why don’t we make our own opportunity for it?’ and the next day, we started putting it together.”
Clemens said the inspiration for the Broadway Band stemmed from his friends at Berklee College of Music.
“It is based on something my friend at Berklee College of Music is doing there,” Clements said. “ Their endeavor is a little more in depth. They have full staging, micing and everything.”
On top of putting on the production, finding students to perform and conduct, Stanick and Clements are also composing all the music themselves.
“We do it, so we don’t have to buy the music,” Clements said. “It also helps us understand a little bit about the music. Every single note on the page is something that we made the choice of.”
With how vast the catalog of Broadway show tunes is, it presents a unique challenge for the duo to pick music.
“Once we had a list of songs, which started with 25, we narrowed it down to around eight. We have a mix of up-tempo ballads, super slow ballads and one piece that’s just voice and piano ballad,” Clements said.
Members of Broadway Band include music education majors, composition majors and performance majors.
“I know Nick as one of my really good friends, and he asked me to be in this project, singing a song I actually really enjoy,” Sophie Reese, a freshman music theatre major, said. “I decided that there was no reason I wouldn’t join because I did it for him and for more experiences and opportunities for my major and my advancement as an music theatre major.”
While Broadway Band gives opportunities for more expansion into the Broadway scene, it has also laid the path for other theatrical collaborations, especially with local artists wanting to perform their shows. One such artist group, the Temple Brothers, has been in conversation with Stanick and Clements, Stanick said.
“I’ve met up with Gideon and Reece, and we’re all kind of working together on this upcoming production,” Stanick said. “Gideon has kind of taken me under his wing a lot. He’s helping me guide the production and figure everything out to find the sound that we want.”
With this opportunity for cross-Conservatory collaboration, Stanick and Clements said they see the potential for expansion of the event moving forward.
“We definitely want to continue to put this on either every semester or every spring. We’re not sure yet,” Clements said.
“We’re going at this one step at a time,” Stanick said. “We’re finishing the first concert, because we’re still working out rehearsal days and trying to get everyone in. We want to consider adding some nonBroadway songs to the roster, but we still plan on keeping it predominantly Broadway.”
