A Conversation with Ian Axness
on Sweeney Todd at the University of Cincinnati
Ian Axness is Assistant Professor of Musical Theatre and Resident Music Director at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, home to the United States’ first BFA musical theatre program. In April, CCM mounts a major production of Sweeney Todd. It was a pleasure to speak with Ian about CCM’s remarkable history, his own relationship with Sondheim’s work, and how that work continues to resonate with new generations of performers. Our conversation begins below:
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It’s great to meet you. For readers who aren’t familiar with CCM at the University of Cincinnati, how would you introduce the program?
CCM is the very first BFA musical theater program in the United States, and presumably in the world as well. It came out of the College-Conservatory of Music, which has a much longer history. At a certain point, the prevailing artistic forces of the time made it necessary or preferable to create a degree program that fits the requirements for a theater school and also for a music school. We keep those accreditations up to this day.
The very first graduate was Pamela Myers, who was the original Marta in Company. She graduated from here, moved to New York, and one of her very first auditions was for Company. Sondheim essentially wrote “Another Hundred People” for Pam Myers. She’s a Cincinnati native, and after her career in New York, she’s still a very active member of the community here.
We’re coming up on our 60th anniversary of really being a Broadway trade school in a lot of ways. We used to refer to the triple threat philosophy a lot; now, it’s that plus all of the things that students are coming in with today. You know, they are songwriters, they are choreographers, maybe they’ve done work creating content, or screenwriting, or all these other multidisciplinary things. In a lot of ways, musical theater is the original multi-hyphenate—so we’re allowing that to organically expand.
The program is super rigorous, and super competitive. We’re in the middle of audition season right now. We had almost 1,400 applications, and we will take a class of about 20. It’s a super rigorous program, but a super supportive program. We were also, I think, the first school to do a senior industry showcase in New York, which provides an opportunity for our graduating class to hook into the business as quickly as possible.
Tell me a little about your own role at CCM, and what it allows you to do creatively.
This is my fourth year teaching as the resident music director. In a way, it’s the dream job I never really thought was possible to find.
Of course, it’s rewarding to teach students. I get to work with the BFA students, and I also supervise two master’s students who are studying conducting in the context of music theater. But it also allows me to continue learning so much. I spent over a decade in New York working around Broadway, on all sorts of productions and odd jobs—but there’s just such a rich history. I mean, we’re coming up on 100 years, basically, of what we think of as the musical theater canon. And in academia, I see it as a really exciting area for exploration in different ways: on the theater history angle, the music history angle, and the sociological history of American consciousness and American identity angle as well.
So, for me, it really is a dream job. It’s long hours and very rigorous, but my colleagues and I, we just love what we do here. As the kids say, the vibes are good.
You’re mounting a large-scale Sweeney Todd in April. Folks reading this will be familiar with just how much Sondheim’s work offers performers who are training. From a logistical point of view, how do you maximize those opportunities for as many people as possible?
Great question. Every single design and technical department has faculty and students working on this show. We offer degrees in sound design, lighting design, scenic design, hair and wigs and makeup, costumes, technical direction… I mean, the scope and scale of what we do here is staggering.
And then we’ve got all of these instrumentalists as well. We’re working with our top-tier orchestra, CCM Philharmonia. It’s been fun for me to preview how to position this music for them. I’m imagining saying, “Well, think of some of this like Ravel, some of this like Prokofiev, and some of it like Benjamin Britten”—some of these classical touchstones. And I’m sure as they start playing it, they’ll realize that there’s such profundity on a purely musical level in this score.
But one of the exciting things is that we’re bringing together the CCM Musical Theater and CCM Opera, which are both excellent programs in their respective landscapes, and we’re blending the cast completely. We’re also blending some of the performance and rehearsal practices. Normally for musicals, the first day of rehearsal kicks off all your music rehearsals. But instead of that, we have basically laid many weeks of runway for music coachings. Even back in December, we started principal coachings, continued in January, and then for the last three weeks, the ensemble has been working with our chorus master.
The first day of rehearsal is going to be the first day of staging, which is the way they do it in opera. In that way, the musical theater folks will learn a little bit more of the poise and preparation style that opera requires on the first day of rehearsal. And then on the other side of the spectrum, the material just has to be so dramatically digested and understood and thoroughly communicated the first time. I don’t think we’re going to have supertitles the way they would in opera. So I think both sides of the aisle are going to learn a lot from each other.
How has Sondheim’s work intersected with your own professional life? Was there a particularly memorable entry point for you?
The very first Sondheim song I ever consciously played was “Losing My Mind.” This was part of a play at Oberlin College, where I did my undergrad, and it was in the context of some other torch songs. It was actually for Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy. For one of the acts of that piece, in between the scenes, there’s a torch singer who delivers these musical numbers.
I remember thinking, wow, this song is not like the others. Even though it’s obviously in that pastiche reality, I thought, man, what is this song? This was written in ‘71, and all of these others are, like, 1930s. What’s going on here?
We did a production of Assassins there too, which was phenomenal. But then my senior year, Sondheim and Frank Rich came to campus doing their conversation tour. We put together a presentation of songs beforehand that included things like “Remember” from A Little Night Music, and a Sweeney section. That was the first time I’d ever played “Move On” from Sunday in the Park with George, and “Old Friends.”
Sondheim was very complimentary to us afterwards, and so that was an exciting moment. I was actually about fifteen feet away from him, and he was giving us props for a college performance. That was really, really nice.
What’s your sense of how your current students perceive Sondheim and his work within the broader canon?
I think he’s definitely understood to be a genre of his own. And I think there is a certain... I’d describe it as a playful reverence. People know that the vocabulary, the drama, the harmonic language, everything is advanced. And everything is specific.
And I think, at this point, we all have absorbed some of his basic tenets. I mean, I’m looking at the pink and blue books right now on my shelf. Everything in the service of clarity, God is in the details, and less is more. Pedagogically, it all intersects quite well. If you do what’s on the page, you’re 90 percent there. He’s thought this all through for you, he’s designed the puzzle for you. And then, you know, there’s a little space in the way, like a window… That’s where you, the actor, get to fill in.
What’s nice is that it really does feel that there’s almost a Shakespearean level of reverence. And sure, there are plenty of songs that don’t really serve college students so well. Much of Follies, and plenty of A Little Night Music as well… But something like “The Miller’s Son” is such a great etude for a student to work on. And that’s true on a technical level, but also on a philosophical level. You know, what is this woman saying? Is she a feminist? And so on.
For our readers who are near enough to Cincinnati to come and see your Sweeney Todd, what can they expect from this particular production? I imagine scope and scale are big factors here…
Yes, I would say this is the biggest kind of show we do. We have the full might of our top instrumentalists, we’ve got faculty designers, we’ve got student designers. The set has been created by one of our faculty members in scenic design. It’s set in a big factory with this gorgeous big glass window that will, I believe, be mostly red. It’s an old, rusted factory evoking the industrialized hellscape that Sweeney is rebelling against or reacting to. And the singing is going to be top-notch.
I will also say that the director is our chair of musical theater, Vincent DeGeorge. He directed Sunday in the Park with George about three or four years ago, which was stunning. I cried and cried at that show. His work is so deep, it’s so specific, and—whether with opera singers or with musical theater students—in every way, it’s crisp.
And so, with that combination of the rich, sumptuous orchestration, a grand visual language, and a really, really incisive storytelling direction, I do think it will be just about the best kind of show that we are able to produce here.
CCM presents Sweeney Todd April 15-19. Click here for more information and tickets.
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