May 2018 | view this story as a .pdf

From homeschool to Hamilton: Gray-native Sam Bagala takes us on his journey on tour with the world’s biggest musical.

By Sarah Moore

How do you land the role of a lifetime before you’ve even passed a quarter century? If you’re Sam Bagala, you start young. At 13, the precocious musician from Gray had his first paid gig playing keys for Lyric Theater’s production of Beauty and the Beast. By 17, he was thrown before a cast of Broadway stars as the teenage Musical Director at Maine State Music Theater. Less than a decade later, he was “riding a tour bus somewhere through the Midwest” when a voicemail across the airwaves delivered the news he’d been waiting for: Bagala had won his spot on Hamilton–the Broadway Box-office-smashing hip hop musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda that tells the all-singing, all-dancing, all-rapping story of the birth of our nation through a culturally diverse lens.

A graduate of the Boston Conservatory and USM’s Early Study program, Sam Bagala is now on the road with the Hamilton troupe for the play’s first excursion beyond Broadway. This month alone, he’ll bounce from California to Georgia and on to Nevada. After that? “I’ve lost track,” he says. Bagala is the show’s full-time musical associate, splitting his talent between the orchestra pit and backstage. “I love the diversity of my job,” he says. “Once a week, I’ll conduct the entire evening performance.” With his back to the vast audience, Bagala’s baton steers the 10-piece orchestra and cues the singers through the play’s 46 soaring musical numbers. On other days, “I play first or second keys.” Outside of performances, he “might lead music rehearsals with new cast members, teaching them the scores and lyrics.” Five months into the role, Bagala knows the Hamilton playbill like a first language. Behind the scenes, he’s been every character on the cast. “I play five to six dance rehearsals a week, performing the number for the dancers to follow.” The genre-bending Hamilton score features a musical spectrum that ranges from show tunes to hip hop. A one-man rendition takes vocal gymnastics to a new level. “I can be playing the piano while simultaneously rapping three different parts. Watching as I play the keys and cover the three-part female harmony and rap in ‘The Schuyler Sisters’ is particularly funny to experience.”

Early Inspirations

Childhood in Maine sounds like “Marley, Springsteen, Buena Vista Social Club–and plenty of world music,” Bagala says. “My parents aren’t musicians [he outstripped his mother’s piano tutelage at five], but our family loves music. I remember plunking away on my grandma’s piano in Rumford every Christmas. I actually played the Hamilton score on her out-of-tune keys last holidays after I learned I’d landed the job!” Homeschooled until 13, Bagala’s cacophony of influences left its mark on both himself and his brother, Marcus–a score-writer for TV and film. A classically trained pianist, Bagala was regularly playing paid gigs at community theaters, and later professional theaters like MSMT and Ogunquit Playhouse, throughout his young years. “It was a great feeling to be a teenager and get paid for playing the piano. I realized I wanted to make a career out of this.” During this time, the limelight called out for a moment–“I starred in the ensemble at the Lyric, Portland Stage, and Hackmatack”–but Bagala ultimately decided his destiny would be below the footlights. Unlike Anna Kendrick, his Maine musical theater peer, Bagala didn’t shoot off to New York and LA at a young age. By his twenties, he’d become a seasoned veteran of summer stock theater across the state. “I feel so lucky to grow up in such a small and supportive community where I had so many opportunities to learn,” he says when asked if he felt he grew up far from stage school. Bagala’s personal bio ballparks around 800 performances with Maine State Music Theater between high school and his early twenties from 2009 to 2015.

On the snatched moments he’s not on the road with Hamilton or the shows that preceded it, Rent and Elf: The Musical, Bagala lives in New York City. He tries to escape to Maine whenever he can. “The Hamilton tour comes to Boston in September. I’m hoping to get a week off to come back and see my family in Gray and visit Ogunquit Playhouse and Maine State Music Theater.” Then it’s back on the highway bound for North Carolina and a new state every week thereafter. Can he conjure a dream beyond touring with the world’s musical-of-the-moment? “It’s funny, someone on the cast said that the other day: ‘What do you do after you’ve done Hamilton?’ It could tour for another 20 years. I’d love to write my own shows and work with other musicians. I spend most of my time at the piano composing. It’s the most rewarding and organic process, and I want to continue to be as creative as I can.” n