Interview: THE BAND WAGON's Todd Ellison Loves the Intense Pressure of Encores! Shows

Conductor Todd Ellison is quite possibly one of the busiest men in the industry right now. His involvement in the fast-approaching production of THE BAND WAGON with Encores!, a Christmas concert with the Pittsburgh Symphony, and his own staged musical in March, only begin to scratch the surface of his hectic schedule for the next six months. Fortunately for us, he recently took the time to sit down and discuss these as well as prior engagements.

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So, what can you tell me about the upcoming Encores! production of THE BAND WAGON, starring one of my favorites, Brian Stokes Mitchell?

Oh yeah, he's great. Well it's a whole reworking of the show. It took all this time until now to figure out a venue for it, and they decided to have it at City Center as part of an Encores! production, so we're doing basically, an Encores! production of this show, then everyone will decide whether they want to move forward with it or not. It's with an orchestra and 16 ensemble kids, and Tracey Ullman, Michael McKean- a fabulous cast and a really fun story.

Yeah! And also Tony Sheldon and Laura Osnes...

Yeah, and Laura plays the Cyd Charisse part that's no longer like, a dancer-dancer- well she is a dancer, she's a modern dancer. Then, Stokes is playing Tony Hunter, kind of a washed-up movie star. Tony [Sheldon] plays the Jack Buchannan role from the movie. And with these Encores! shows, we only have two weeks of rehearsal, and then we open. So it's like doing a full Broadway show, but you don't have any time. You don't have any time to think or change your mind or anything, because you just have to go and trust that it will be alright. It's an intense schedule, but we actually have an extra week than most Encores! shows do. Most of them are just one week, but we get a full two weeks, which is a "luxury." But it's insane. It's insane and hilarious, and it just challenges you to be on your feet at all times. It's fun.

And what else have you done with Encores! in the past?

Yeah, I conducted ON THE TOWN for them, and I had the good luck of having done the show before- I worked on the Broadway revival as well as the one with Shakespeare in the Park- so I knew the show well, and I knew that Bernstein music very well. So that was a real treat to do it with a full 30-piece orchestra. It was incredible.

Also, there's a two-piano part in the show NO, NO, NANETTE, and I grew up on that album, so when my friend Joe said, "Hey, I'm going to go play the first keyboard part for the NO, NO, NANETTE Encores! show; I need someone to play the second part," I was like, "I'll do it!" And because I was conducting SPAMALOT on Broadway at the time, he was like, "No, no, you're not going to leave a Broadway show to go to Encores! and do five performances of this." I was like, "Yes I am! I've waited my whole life to do this show!" And so we had a hilarious time. We were on two grand pianos in front of the orchestra, playing this great, great arrangement of songs.

It was incredible. I love Encores! but I haven't done one since ON THE TOWN, which I think was 2007 or 2008? So it's been fun to return here, because it's intense pressure, but it reminds you that you're alive, you know? There's no escaping that fact. You just get up there and do it, and it's kind of fun. And then it happens, and Monday morning, after it's over, you press delete and move on, you know? It's crazy. It's been so intense that your brain goes, "Ok, I can't take it anymore, let it go."

That sounds like it's going to be such a blast and a cool production!

Yeah, Kathleen Marshall's directing and choreographing, and I haven't worked with her since we worked on ONCE UPON A MATTRESS, with Sarah Jessica Parker, but I've known her forever. We were in CATS on the road together, back in the late '80s, and so it's really a treat to be working with her again. And she's got, you know, she's the most organized person, first of all, but she's also got some great ideas on the script, she's got these great dances going. We're going to have a big tap dance finale. It's really a lot for an Encores! show, and it's a huge undertaking, but there's nobody better than her to pull it all together, because she used to run Encores!, for, I don't know how many years. She was the artistic director, so she knows what they're about and how to do it. We'll see what happens. If we do our work well, maybe it could have a life beyond Encores! We'll see. It's incredible.

Sounds perfect! You're not only conducting THE BAND WAGON this year, but your musical, THE BLACK AND WHITE BALL is going to be fully-staged.

Yeah, we're going to be presented by the FWD Theatre Project in Chicago, and they're giving us a fully-staged reading. So, they're providing the actors, a space to do it, promoting it, and opening it up to all the theatres in Chicago to see if they want to further develop it, which is incredible. So here we had our little show, and we didn't quite know what to do with it, and my writing partner submitted it to them- they had a notice that said, "Submit your musicals to us." Out of 220 submissions, they chose five shows, and we are the first one up. We got to do a concert in September of four songs from our show, and each show did four songs. Then the venue sold out immediately. It was crazy!

So I think that Chicago is such a good town for theatre, and they really love new works. They really love new musicals, and they love to help create and work on those things, and we found some people who understand our piece about Truman Capote and his Black and White Ball that he threw at the Plaza Hotel in 1966. It's an incredible privilege to have that happen to us. It came sort of out of the blue, I didn't really know that Stephen [Cole]- the lyricist, book-writer- had submitted it without telling me, and I was like "Wait, what?" when we found out. It was great.

And how cool to do it in a place where they're all about doing new works, and they really understand your piece. It sounds like this is a good opportunity for your piece to be done very well.

Absolutely. Then we found this incredible fifteen-year-old girl to play the main role, a little girl who wants to go to the ball, and she blew the place apart in our opening number. I mean, it was almost like we'd just created a little star there in Chicago, and she was phenomenal that night. She was absolutely phenomenal! So I'm really looking forward to working with her, and we have a great guy who's playing Truman. These people have been so nice to us, just incredible. So I think that we're going to spend a week in Chicago in January, then put on our presentation and see what happens.

And you know, there's an Italian guy named Nino Prattico, he's the editor of BroadwayWorld Italy, and he and I have been corresponding about writing a musical as well. He's come up with an idea, a story. He's really sweet, and we've been talking.

I'm having the craziest year. Last year, I did the Pittsburgh Symphony at the holidays, and I'm returning. They invited me back this Christmas, so I go back for eight holiday concerts for the Pittsburgh symphony in December, and they have not only 77 musicians, but they have 100 members behind them of the Mendelsshon Choir of Pittsburgh, so there's a singing Santa, there's the Pittsburgh Ballet- so it's a huge event that goes on that I get to conduct. I picked out all the songs for it, and I've been listening to Christmas music since March. It's great. But it's an incredible experience to say, "I've always wanted to do this one song."

This year, I'm bringing a couple of New York singers with me: Kate Shindle, who was Miss America. She's going to come and she's going to sing, and a boy named Ryan Vasquez. He just graduated from Michigan University. He's been doing a lot of readings, and he's very hot in New York right now, so we've booked him. So yeah, it's going to be like a big party.

I'm doing that, and I also do these piano concerts where I take a bunch of singers with me, and we go to different places. It's crazy! I have these things, and they get booked up like, two years in advance. It's a whole other world, that symphony world. I have never been busier in my life, and it's incredible. I love it!

That sounds like a dream to be so busy and have all this stuff happening. Do you ever look at your life and say, "Is this really me right now?"

I know! Exactly! Like, I just had the month of August where nothing was going on, and I was like, "Ok, I guess this is kind of like my vacation month..." Then September hit, and it was like, full steam ahead! It was unbelievable. And it doesn't stop until, like, well March I'm with the San Diego Symphony with The Midtown Men, who are the original stars of JERSEY BOYS. Then in April, I've got another concert in the Bronx, and in May I'll be with the New Jersey Symphony, and Christopher Sieber and Beth Leavel. So yeah, it's absolutely incredible. It blows my mind that I'm this busy, you know? I didn't think it was possible to have that kind of variety.

So, you're conductor, music director, and composer. How many musicals have you worked on thus far?

I've conducted 12 Broadway musicals and worked on 16 productions all together. My first one was SHE LOVES ME, and I've also done 42ND STREET, which is one of my favorite shows; I conducted exactly 1000 performances of that. Then I did two, sort of, "bombs." One was called AMOUR, by Michel Legrand, and LESTAT with Elton John, a musical which, he won't even let the cast album be released, because I don't think he liked the show that much. I did one called, A CLASS ACT, and that didn't last long either.

I noticed that you conducted and music directed THE WILD PARTY, and that was such a strange time for Broadway and Off-Broadway, because THE WILD PARTY was playing on Broadway, and a totally different production of THE WILD PARTY was playing Off-Broadway... At the same time.

Yeah, I had friends who would attend a Saturday matinee of Off-Broadway, and Saturday evening of the Broadway one and just get immersed in the whole thing. It was crazy. And they were so completely different. The musical styles were so completely opposite ends of the spectrum. One is very, very, very dark, the one we did was dark musically and tonally, and it had an edge to it. But a lot of people didn't respond to it. It was too hard.

I'm glad that even though they did not run for very long, they both have a cast recording, so that's very important that we can listen to and revisit those.

Yes, thank goodness. You know, that's one that I put on one or two tracks occasionally and go, "What did we do?" And it's like I've never heard it before in my life. That show was just so out there. It was really cool stuff. George Wolfe just allowed me to go off the script and sort of go from scratch. It was really great. It was one of my favorite experiences! It was really a defining experience for me.

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Check out this clip of Ellison rehearsing with THE BAND WAGON cast!

The Band Wagon will run for 12 performances, November 6 - 16 (see full schedule below). Tickets are available at the New York City Center Box Office (West 55th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues), through CityTix at 212-581-1212, and online at www.NYCityCenter.org. Further information is available at www.NYCityCenter.org.