From Academic Medicine to Broadway

Excerpt

In July 2010, my wife and I attended a performance of Evita at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. A young man walked onto the stage, sat down, and started singing Oh What a Circus. After one verse, we looked at each other and said “Who is this guy?” Josh Young is an American musical theater actor who had been cast as Che after an extensive North American search. He has a booming voice and was perfect for the role. At the end of the performance, Josh was signing copies of his CD in the lobby of the theater, so we bought one and had a very brief chat. I gave him my card and we started to correspond by email. A few months later, he asked me to produce his second album. I had no idea what that meant but said “yes” right away. Over the course of the next 10 months, I learned all the steps involved in producing an album: song selection, hiring an orchestrator, laying down the instrumental tracks, then the vocal tracks, editing, mixing, mastering, getting the licenses, manufacturing the CDs, and electronic dissemination. It was a lot like doing a research project, lots of strategy, vision, creativity, and logistical problems that needed to be solved. As well, it required passion; we had to really want to do it. We were very proud of the result, and I played the tracks in various stages of production on my car stereo and office systems over and over again. …