The Awakening Whirl Magazine
August 2007
By Victoria Bradley
Multi-Platinum recording artist Josh Groban returns to Pittsburgh this month for a sold-out performance at Mellon Arena. His professors remember his beginning.
The stage is vast and taunting with its echo. The wood gives away, soft, under each step. The walls wait a second and then cough their reminder back. This is it. The Philip Chosky Theatre in the Purnell Center at Carnegie Mellon University. The stage that cradled Ted Danson, Rob Marshall, Patrick Wilson, Cherry Jones, Sutton Foster, Holly Hunter. The stage that challenged them, too. Possibly punished. The walk, alone, each echoing foot in front of the other, tells this story of truth, of courage, of pride, while the stage signals its gravity, its purpose, its strength. The talent that has crossed this stage has gone on to win Academy Awards, Tony Awards, the eyes of the nation on a city, a school in Southwestern Pennsylvania. This is Carnegie Mellon. This stage is reserved for the very best.
In the fall of 1999, it is Josh Groban taking the walk, his last ever on the Carnegie Mellon stage. The boy with the baritone voice and floppy, curly hair has to perform for a voice jury at the end of his first and last semester at the top-ranking musical theater school in the country. A score of his professors watch, wait. In the center, his steps silence. A second later, the walls do, too. He parts his lips and sings. "Maria ... Maria ... They call the wind Maria ..."
And the stage is swelling with him, with song. With a voice, full and whole. His eyebrows rise with the cool release of one long, high, perfect note. His jury holds a breath inside of them, the involuntary reaction to savoring a single, perfect second. And then the music stops, cuts out and cuts him off like a guillotine. He chokes on the next verse, coming up his throat. There is silence again. The stage grows more vast.
His performing eyes send a soft panic to the accompanist. His song gurgles inside of him. The jury stirs. The seconds start to pile up, enough for a few dozen echoed answers. Then, someone speaks.
"Josh, did you bring your music?" It is Claudia Benack, his voice instructor, the woman who coached the notes out of him for the last four months. His voice is accustomed to hers, obeys it. The singer blushes. Hot under the lights, alone on the merciless stage, he looks to his accompanist again. The sheet music isn't there, the pages that would have carried him through the most beautiful aria and off of the stage again. It is Groban's responsibility to have brought it. He hasn't.
"We're done here, Josh," Benack says, unforgiving. Groban starts his walk again. His steps speak defeat. The stage speaks back.
"We were so stunned," Benack says about the jury. She knew his voice. She had trained it. But she couldn't show favoritism, ignore an oversight. The stage wouldn't allow it. She had to dismiss him. In his walking off, she remembers their first meeting.
"We start the week before Labor Day, but I didn't see him that week," she says. "I set up to work with him on the holiday. I said I was going to meet him at a certain time outside of the Purnell Center. I arrived, and the door was locked. And I didn't know where he was. I turned, and he was sitting on a bench, waiting for me. Security came and let us in. It's a silly story; I remember it because it was Josh."
She started Groban the way she started all of her freshmen: with breathing exercises and a classical repertoire of 24 Italian art songs and arias. "He had a beautiful, natural sound," Benack says. "He was a baritone, but his range was much larger. I remember thinking, 'My gosh, what a beautiful, round, full sound."
Her awe is similar to that of Gary Kline. The Studio Singing Voice teacher is one of a team of instructors who audition incoming freshman. They traveled the country in February and listened to 750 hopeful voices, all vying to get a shot at the school churning out unmatched talent, honing the perfect performers. Groban was one of 12 to be accepted.
"I remember Josh having this beautiful voice," Kline says. "But there was a maturity to his. Here was this boy that God had gifted with this instrument. It was really unique. I pushed for him to come in."
It was around the same time that the singer was being tutored by award-winning composer, producer David Foster. Josh had been attending the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts in his hometown, taking voice lessons from the very respected Seth Riggs, an honor he won after Riggs heard the young voice sing at a school event, where he had come to see his own son perform. Riggs, a friend of Foster's, was a first call when the producer needed a baritone to rehearse "The Prayer" with Celine Dion before the 1999 Grammy Awards. Her partner, Andrew Bocelli, was sick. Josh was recommended for the part.
It was, by all standards, a golden opportunity. The stand-in was hugely impressive and not only won the ears and attention of Dion and Foster, but also Rosie O'Donnell, who had attended the rehearsal and was hosting that year's award show. The talk show queen invited him to New York to perform on her show. The producer booked him to sing at the inauguration of Gray Davis, the governor of California. A few months later, he got the call he was really looking forward to: an acceptance to Carnegie Mellon. "The whole experience was unreal," Josh says. "I was thrilled to be singing for David, but also knew that Carnegie Mellon was a great opportunity."
The musical theatre major at the school is one that Barbara Mackenzie Wood, Head of Acting/Musical Theatre, calls "in essence, a double major. The curriculum includes voice and dance, of course, but it centers on intense actor training," she says. "Our students are, when they graduate, as equipped to play a Shakespearian lead as they are to play a major role in a musical. This is what makes the program a stand-out. They're mastering classical text as well as studying ballet and jazz. That is the reason why, right now, we have 10-12 students working on Broadway in significant roles. They are very flexible. They are very well-trained."
The theatrics of singing was something Don Wadsworth, voice and speech teacher, saw in Groban. "His voice was incredible, of course," Wadsworth says. "But we audition a lot of incredible voices. What set Josh apart was that emotion behind the song, the way he made you feel it."
His voice teacher felt it, too. "He was such an eager student," Benack says. "There was no ego to him."
Kline shares a similar sentiment, though he points out that Groban was "quite frankly, a little nerdy. You know — that curly hair," he says. "But he just was fabulous — couldn't be sweeter, kinder, more generous."
The singer's sweetness is what made his last meeting with the professor a sad one. "I'll never forget him coming to me, saying he was thinking about leaving school and making a CD with David Foster. I thought, 'Aw, he's going to be so disappointed...'" Kline says. "I actually told him, 'I don't think the way you sing is really commercial.' I mean, this is not Justin Timberlake. And I was enough of an idiot to think that was the only thing that would sell. I stupidly told him, 'It's great if you want to try this; Any time you want to come back, you're welcome.'"
As stanch a departure from Justin Timberlake as he is, Groban signs the deal with Warner Brothers and 143 Records, David Foster's label. In 2000, he tours with Sarah Brightman on her "La Luna" tour. In 2001, he ingrains himself into pop culture history by appearing on the infamous and quirky Ally McBeal. He performed "You're Still You," as the character Malcolm Wyatt. A cult following and e-mail revolution — more than 8,000 overflowed the inbox of creator David E. Kelley — leads to a role reprise. Groban has a fan base before he has an album.
But the album follows, self-titled, in November 2001. It goes double platinum. A second album, Closer, the following year, also goes double platinum. He's No. 1 on the Billboard 220 Charts, he sells out Radio City Music Hall three nights in a row, he's nominated for the American Music Award, World Music Award, Academy Award, and Grammy. In November 2006, he releases his third album, Awake. It's a title he drew from his evolution as an artist, the feeling of having a piece of music come to consciousness.
"I learned from touring that my fans are really open-minded, musical, intelligent people, and I feel like they want to come on this new journey with me," Groban says. "The music still sounds like it's coming from my heart and my soul and my voice. That is always the most important thing to me. My goal on Awake was to create the music and find the best people to help me create it."
The artist collaborates with Dave Matthews on the record, with Imogen Heap, Glen Ballard, John Ondrasik Vandrasak, Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The Ladysmith collaboration, on the song "Weeping," is the birth child of a trip to South Africa and a moving meeting with Nelson Mandela. "The musical tapestry of the country and their heated history, the honor of meeting Nelson Mandela and visiting schools in Soweto was totally inspiring," Groban says. "And it was a dream of a lifetime for me to sing with Ladysmith in the studio. I've loved them from the moment I heard Paul Simon's 'Graceland.'"
It is a musical process void of classrooms and echoing stages, but Groban reveals the stirring that lead him to pen the already-hit "February Song." He hadn't slept that night. "I wanted to write a song that melodically and lyrically represented the craziness I felt in that moment in the dark, dark space," he says. "I walked over to the piano, and it just came to me in a half hour in the most magical way."
Wandering the classrooms at Carnegie Mellon, meeting a piano or two, it's hard not to wonder what songs, what 30-minute magic music sessions came to the artist during his days here. Each room is raw and organic — with a funky armchair here or random ropes there. The dance studios have a rhythm, even in their silence, making music out of the softest shuffle, a dance out of an extended stare in wall-sized mirrors. He studied here, sang here, danced here, performed here. If you listen closely, the platinum-selling artist sings the song of Pittsburgh today. He has to, in the way that we all reveal our DNA in who we are, how we look, what we do.
Behind the slow climb of "Believe" are the columns of the Purnell Center. In "You Are Loved (Don't Give Up)" are the lawns of Oakland. In "Broken Vow," a bench for waiting. "You Raise Me Up" is an echoing stage, vast and consuming. Josh Groban, the man who commands arenas of people all over the world, selling out his most recent tour in 20 short minutes, shuffles off of the stage at Carnegie Mellon eight years ago in silence. Beaten? Hardly. He is standing on the cusp of an awakening, a musical journey, spiritual and strong.
He walks tall, with conviction. "He did fine," Claudia Benack says. "He's going to be just fine."
AUDITION NOTES
Josh's audition to attend Carnegie Mellon University was in Los Angeles on February 8th, 1999. He sang songs from Closer Than Ever and Oklahoma! Here are the notes his future professors took:
"Really unique instrument: Excellent rich tones with ,ping ,, but has a VERY natural timbre - sounds mature and trained. Very sincere and honest delivery. Has no veneer. A real surprise vocally, if a bit average in physical appearance - unexpected talent here! An 8+ on a scale of 0 to 9." — Gary Kline, studio singing voice teacher
"Clear grasp of language. A nice ease, with vocal richness. He thinks and finds involvement. Skilled and genuine." — Tony McKay, professor of acting
"Very smart delivery. Plays with variety, addressing imagery in specific ways. Clear focus - natural talent. A 'taker," I'd say." — Don Wadsworth, professor of voice and speech
