Musician Felciano Blurs Line Between B'way and Pop

Performing a Stephen Sondheim classic-or any Broadway musical, for that matter-eight times a week certainly isn't the obvious way to embark on a pop career. And in a time when secondary recording careers are in vogue for the current generation of up-and-coming musical-theater performers, finding a way to stand out isn't exactly easy. However, Manoel Felciano, fresh out of British director John Doyle's critically acclaimed reinvention of Sweeney Todd-for which Felciano earned a Tony Award nomination for his heart-wrenching performance as Tobias Ragg-is beating the odds.

With the pop/rock musical genre's outgrowth, the theater stage is both attracting and churning out more and more rock-style performers; in a generation of actors who grew up listening to '70s and '80s pop, it is only natural that many ultimately return to those pop roots. Felciano's approach, however, is the less-followed opposition to the norm of actors who branch out and begin solo careers.

Felciano began as a musician with dreams of rock stardom and is now coming full circle. He grew up in San Francisco; the son of a composer and a dance critic, he has always had a knack for the arts. He's been playing violin since age five, and he picked up several other instruments, including guitar and piano, during his teenage years. He believes his rock-to-musical-to-rock crossover is slightly different than that of his peers because he was a musician first and only delved into acting as an adult.

Music, he believes, is an "ancient, primal" mode of self-expression, whereas acting is more "rational" and "adult." Consequently, his acting training has made him a better musician, and has enabled him to free himself physically and lessen his performance anxiety. Though Felciano's music is certainly appealing to the non-theater crowd, he admits that his acting career has provided a "platform from which to promote [his] music." Since gaining a sizable fan base during Sweeney Todd's nearly one-year run, Felciano has performed several solo concerts throughout the city, allowing him to live out a "very early dream ... which is to be in a band singing and performing my own pop songs."

Felciano's ambitions are bold, though, and not solely defined by his musical-theater success. Many theater actors who have similar aspirations sign with musical-theater labels to record their solo endeavors. Felciano's goal, however, is to make a "serious push for a record deal" with a company that's not musical-theater driven. He thinks that his choice to start a solo career deals with his desire to "fight a natural and understandable skepticism that people have when they see an actor trying his hand at being a musician." He suspects that the desire to break away from that skepticism comes from the fact that a lot of actors who "have had some success in the Broadway world secretly (or not-so-secretly) would rather be playing sold-out stadiums as rock stars ... and being in a rock band is always going to have a more 'cool' cachet than being in a Broadway musical."

With musical influences such as John Mayer, George Michael, Stevie Wonder, Ben Folds, Marvin Gaye, Led Zeppelin, U2, and the Police, and most notably his "first great love," the Beatles, Felciano's music is a far cry from his day job in theater. He's learning more and more about the songwriting process and slowly finding his voice. His earliest music, he says, is "sort of all over the place and can wander off in several directions." He hopes to be able to keep the more "experimental" side of his writing present while being able to "straddle that line between insipid and obtuse [and] accessible but not too obvious." He is fascinated with the anatomy of a hit, and what makes one stick; "struck by the simplicity of a good pop song," he recognizes that it needs "a strong hook, a catchy groove, [and] a particularly effective lyrical turn of phrase."

This abundant awareness, natural talent, and hard work results in a body of work both eclectic and accessible, and above all, strikingly intelligent. In incorporating real-life experiences, his music has a palpable connective ability, and features sharp, smart, and solid lyrics interwoven with an impressive variety of musical complexities and an emotional vulnerability lacking in the majority of mainstream pop. A charming, witty, engaging performer with charisma to spare and a killer set of pipes, Felciano's concerts feature a multi-instrumental band and a mix of highly enjoyable originals and uniquely reinvented covers.

GO SEE HIM

Manoel Felciano

Joe's Pub

Tonight, 7 p.m.

For tickets, call 212-967-7555. For more information, visit mano.felciano.com or myspace.com/manoelfelciano.