Benji Goldsmith Remembers His First Audition | Benji Goldsmith

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Transcript

Goldsmith: My name is Benji Goldsmith and I am a composer, I’m also a pianist, vocalist and an actor.

Question: How did you first get involved in the arts?

Goldsmith: Both of my parents are musicians and I’ve been taking piano lessons since I was 4. So, I was always really into music. I always knew that it was something that I was very passionate about. My interest in theater probably started at the Met. Through a family friend, we found out about the Metropolitan Children’s Chorus and I just auditioned and the auditioned song is Happy Birthday and it went really well and I just started singing there. And you spend about a year there before you actually in anything but then you just start to do a lot of productions and I… I just had such a blast there and it led to a lot of things. I think as a boy soprano then, I did a gig at Tanglewood, I sang Chichester songs by Bernstein, there… down there with them, there’s a boy soprano part in the 2nd movement of that and yeah, so that was probably my first real theatrical experience and ever since then, I had a real passion for opera, I think it’s just fantastic. And then, I happen to then end up at Hunter which has a really theater program and so I don’t think I really understood what musical theater was until I ended up there. I think it was at Hunter then, once I was… my 1st show there was Little [IB] and I think once I got to Hunter, I really started developing a passion for musical theater and once I really kind of understood what it was all about, I just fell in love.

Question: How much pressure was there from your parents?

Goldsmith: From my parents, I never had a lot of pressure which I’m very greatly for. They were always very supportive of whatever I was interested in but it is true that I have insanely musical family. Most members of my extended family are musicians of some sort and I think I really get a lot from all different kind of sides of my family. My maternal grandfather was really… I never met him but I heard lots about him, he was very passionate about opera, for some reason, I seem to have that same connection. And my paternal grandfather used to… well, he played practically every instrument and he would do lots of gigs and he was doing lots of gigs during like the show era and the golden age of musical theater and he was very interested in that I think. And so I have lots of kind of inspirations I think to draw of and both my parents are musicians, my dad is in clarinet and my mom cellist. So, I don’t want to say that I didn’t have a choice but it was always a part of my life and I think music is always going to be a part of my life for as long as I’m alive.