Broadway by Kreis without the flash
As Roger in the national touring production of “Rent,” Levi Kreis took the stage night after night during a threemonth stint in 2000 to sing “One Song Glory,” a first-act centerpiece that sets up a character seeking that one strike of inspiration that will keep his memory alive even after he’s gone.
“Now I relate to ‘One Song Glory’ through my past addictions,” Kreis says, who is going on eight years sober. “When I went back into the studio this time, I couldn’t have planned what would come out of me with that song.”
The Tony Award-winning actor and singer-songwriter put that track, along with a collection of other show tunes, on his latest release, “Broadway at the Keys,” and plans to perform it live during his tour that brings him to San Francisco on Monday, Aug. 21 — the night after he appears with other performers in “Help Is on the Way XXIII: Putting on the Glitz,” a benefit for Meals on Wheels and Positive Resource Center at the Herbst Theatre. Each track on the album is stripped of the context of narrative arcs and characters and, instead, imbued with personal connection forged over a lifetime of listening and almost 20 years of stage experience.
“Everything on the album has a personal appeal to me, much like a singer-songwriter would be writing from an autobiographical approach,” he says. “I wanted to use those sensibilities to reimagine these songs in a way that was a little
“I’m never going to ... perform something that doesn’t have a very tangible thread of my own life.” Levi Kreis
more reminiscent of my own life rather than re-creating the characters that made those songs famous.”
The songs that comprise “Broadway at the Keys” date back as far as 1970’s “The Rothschilds,” though the collection has a decidedly modern feel; only three tracks are from shows written before 1990, and recent hit musicals like “Finding Neverland” and “Beautiful” (Broadway debuts in 2015 and 2014, respectively) are represented.
But era seems less important to Kreis than his connection to the material. It’s why a song from “Elegies,” a song cycle dealing with death, makes sense existing on the same collection as Carole King’s “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” from the jukebox musical “Beautiful” — Kreis had three people close to him die in a five-month period, and King is a personal inspiration.
“Reimagining old classics or someone else’s material is a close cousin to my original material, because I’m never going to choose to perform something that doesn’t have a very tangible thread of my own life,” he says.
Taking the songs out of their original context also allows Kreis to buck the Broadway performance style; gone are the “big notes,” the over-the-top instrumentation, the drama of it all. In their place is a stripped-down presentation, with just Kreis and the keys. It lends itself to a more intimate feel, one that more resembles the songs in their original versions, when they lived only in a composer’s rehearsal space.
“What does it sound like the day before (the composer) takes the paper and fumbles into the rehearsal space with the singers sitting there in their chairs, waiting to bring it to life? What does it sound like when he’s by himself, second-guessing his work?” Kreis asks. “That’s the moment I wanted.”
That moment is one to which the 35-year-old Kreis can relate. Along with his performances in “Rent” and “Million Dollar Quartet” (the latter earning him that Tony for his portrayal of Jerry Lee Lewis), he has a catalog of albums of original work going back to 2005’s “One of the Ones.” His next album of originals, “Liberated,” is due out in November, and it’s the freedom of expressing his own ideas to which he seems ready to return.
“There are things I can say as a songwriter, on my own, that would never make it onto the platform of corporate entertainment,” Kreis says. “I want to be able to look back on my material and say that I was able to articulate experiences that you’ve had that you couldn’t articulate yourself — or maybe were afraid to.” Robert Spuhler is a freelance writer.