‘Keep the Arts Alive’
11/25/2019 12AM
Inspiring the youth is a recurring role for Ben Vereen
By Scott Hall
The night before our phone interview, Ben Vereen received a lifetime achievement award from New York’s Gold Coast Arts Center.
“That always makes me a little nervous,” he said with his trademark hearty chuckle. “My life’s not over – I’m still here!”
Vereen’s Broadway resume alone is enough for multiple lifetimes: Wicked, Fosse, I’m Not Rappaport, Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Grind, Jelly’s Last Jam and A Christmas Carol. His early-career breakout role in Pippin earned him both the Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Best Actor in a Musical. His film and TV credits include an Emmy-winning role in the 1977 Roots miniseries that cemented his status as a household name.
But yes, Vereen is still here and still as busy as he wants to be. In the past few years alone, he has starred opposite Richard Gere in the film Time Out of Mind and with Laverne Cox in the Fox TV reboot of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He has appeared in episodes of CBS’ Bull and Magnum P.I., Amazon’s Sneaky Pete and BET’s Tales, and he had a recurring role in Lee Daniels’ Fox series Star. He also is working on a new Broadway show with the working title Reflections, which will include new music by Stephen Schwartz.
“If the opportunity presents itself, I am ready, let’s go,” he says. “I feel like Sammy Davis Jr. sometimes. Sammy would say, ‘Open your refrigerator door, I’ll give you 15 minutes.’”
Candid anecdotes about famous friends like Davis and Shirley MacLaine (his castmates in the Bob Fosse film Sweet Charity) will be part of Vereen’s Jan. 18 performance at the Palladium. His current “Steppin’ Out” tour with his longtime piano combo includes career highlights and plenty of standards, plus new material and elements of his musical-in-progress.
“I’m bringing you all the music that you allowed me to experience in my lifetime,” he says. “It’s a retrospective of my life on stage, and I also look forward.”
Vereen’s musical journey began in Brooklyn, where his love of performing was apparent from an early age.
“I was a showoff. I was a ham around my family,” he recalls, breaking into that laugh again. “I used to sing in church with a quartet called the Sensational Twilights of Brooklyn – isn’t that a mouthful!”
He remains grateful to the teachers and others who spotted his talent and encouraged him to audition for Manhattan’s High School for the Performing Arts, where he began developing his craft.
“Everybody I’ve come in contact with has nurtured me and encouraged me, and they still do,” he says. “So I’m giving back.”
Giving back can take many forms. Vereen makes a priority of working with young people, whether in a masterclass setting or just offering casual advice. Prior to his Carmel performance, he will participate in the Center’s KAR Front Seat program, which provides complimentary tickets to high school and college music students and brings them into the artist’s sound check to observe and ask questions.
Future generations, he says, need to make up for his generation’s shortcomings.
“We made promises about what we were going to do – make the world a better place – and we’re not doing a very good job,” he says. “We have to work with young people to make sure they don’t give up. We need to seed them and give them the tools they’ll need to make this a better world.”
His most common advice to aspiring performers and artists: Look within for your success.
“The first thing is to realize that they are in charge of their own careers,” he says. “You need agents, you need managers, but they are the ones who control it. They must continue to work on themselves and their art. We all have to do that.”
Earlier this year, Vereen performed at a private fundraiser for the Great American Songbook Foundation, founded by his longtime friend Michael Feinstein. He also has performed at Feinstein’s cabaret clubs.
“I’ve got to remind him of this: He used to come and play piano at my house in Inglewood many years ago, before anybody knew about Michael Feinstein,” Vereen recalls. “He was gathering information, learning the music of the Gershwins. He was putting himself together.”
Another passion for Vereen is working with the advocacy group Americans for the Arts, which includes lobbying congressmen and other officials to maintain public support for arts and arts education.
“We’re facing a government that looks like it wants to cut the arts away from our country, and we can’t let that happen, so we need to hold the line,” he says. “This is for our children that we do this, to keep the arts alive.”
Steppin’ Out with Ben Vereen
Saturday, Jan. 18, at 8 p.m.
The Palladium
