‘Pageant’s’ Kevin Gunter went from SMU music professor to gay go-to guy for musical directors
GENUINE GRRLS | Kevin Gunter, center, is used to being behind the scenes, but the veteran music director is having a blast conducting one of his favorite shows, the campy ‘Pageant.’ (Photo by Mike Morgan)
ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Life+Style Editor
Kevin Gunter’s introduction to Dallas musical theater was a trial by fire. Literally.
In 2006, Gunter happened to meet Jeff Rane, one of the co-founders of Uptown Players, at Amy Stevenson’s Mama’s Party cabaret. After seeing Uptown’s production of Pageant, he was asked to help out on UP’s upcoming musical Thrill Me. But the day he arrived at the theater for a rehearsal, something was off.
“There was smoke coming out of the theater,” he recalls. “I knew something was wrong.”
The fire at the KD Studio Theater postponed the show, but only accelerated the need for Gunter’s services: Within a week, he was sight-reading music at an improvised benefit concert to get the company’s season on track again.
And since then, Gunter has been one of Uptown’s go-to guys — not just to play the piano, but as musical director of their shows, including co-directing their annual Broadway Our Way fundraiser.
“His musicianship and piano skills allow the cast to easily learn their music, and the orchestra to sound terrific under his leadership,” says Rane. Still, it’s likely you wouldn’t recognize his face. Don’t feel badly, though. Musical directors are, ironically, unsung in the theater, frequently masked behind a scrim, hidden away with the rest of the orchestra. And unlike operatic or symphony conductors, they rarely garner applause just by stepping up the podium.
Gunter hardly minds, though. Musical directing is not his full-time job — he ‘s on staff in the musical department of SMU, where he teaches piano — but it is one he’s passionate about.
Since his debut with Thrill Me, he has worked for other troupes like WaterTower Theatre and Lyric Stage. Uptown is a kind of home. In fact he returns there this week, leading the band in their latest production, a revival of their hit musical comedy Pageant — a spoof of beauty pageants featuring an all-drag cast.
“I saw [the original production] so many times, I probably saw every contestant win at least once,” he says. It may also be what got him the bug to work in theater. As a music nerd, Gunter grew up begging his parents for piano lessons. He got his undergraduate degree in piano performance before moving to Dallas to pursue his graduate degree in performance and pedagogy. He was such a standout, he was offered a teaching position on staff before he actually graduated.
From his training, Gunter is well-versed in the mechanics of composition and arranging — issues like meter and tempo. But as a teacher, he’s also a people-person, someone who loves working the grueling hours it takes to get a show off the ground.
“I’m one of the people who’s there beginning to end — when they pick the show, then at auditions, where I might be playing the piano — though if I’m lucky, someone else is playing and I can take it all in, then even working with the cast,” he says. That’s a commitment of anywhere from six months to a year before a show opens.
As musical director, he has to come up with a sensible way to approach the sound of a show, from the band to the singers. For Pageant, that’s a needle that needs precise threading.
“In terms of how to sing and the sound we wanted, hopefully you have a vision for what the show is,” he explains. “Chris Robinson, the director, told me from day one that we are spoofing the pageant system from within, so while they are onstage we want them to be cheesy and unrehearsed, but also sound good. They he just let me run with it.”
Only one role in the show, the pageant’s M.C., Frankie Cavalier (played by B.J. Cleveland), is actually played as a man, so his range is lower than everyone else.
The rest are written in male harmonies, but often a little higher than normal. That’s a challenge Gunter is used to, having worked on Broadway Our Way, where men sing the songs written for women and vice versa, but which he also did on last year’s Songs for a New World.
“We flipped the genders of some of the songs, and you’re already dealing with a very complicated score,” he says. The best way to help the actors find their voice is often less about musical technique than acting lessons.
“When you start rehearsals, the singers are all up in their heads, self-conscious about [hitting the correct notes in front of the music director]. I try to get people out of that place and into the character. That way, you can challenge them in their expression.” He frequently works with cast members in his SMU studio before rehearsals formally begin.
Gunter had worked with a variety of scores over the years — and he prefers some to others.
“Many of the older scores are easier to work on, even if not your favorite, because you’ve heard the songs your whole life, like The Sound of Music. Some newer composers, like Adam Guettel [The Light in the Piazza], are tough — they are often more specific in the score about what they want. Jason Robert Brown [Songs for a New World] has, I assume, very large hands, from what I can tell from his scores. But he’s also a great improviser. Damon Intrabartolo [who composed
Bare, which Gunter worked on] would come in and give us his opinion, and he recognized we were creating something.” Gunter said the entire orchestra spends every performance in tears, so moving was the music for Bare.
And the score of Pageant? Well, it may not leave anyone in tears, but it is a tremendous hoot.
“I start off with what I call ‘Tempo de Love Boat,’” he jokes. “It’s cheesy, and you can either stop and wink at the audience or let them float on by.”
So, what manner of style did Gunter choose to employ on this version of Pageant? You’ll have to see it to find out.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition March 28, 2014.