Television and Broadway star Heather Headley is the most accomplished musician and actress who ever called Fort Wayne home. 

She will be singing her Broadway, My Way concert, accompanied by the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra, at Auer Performance Hall at Purdue University Fort Wayne on Saturday, Oct. 14.

The past four years you’ve seen Headley star in the Netflix series Sweet Magnolias. As a singer, she won the Grammy for Best Contemporary R&B Gospel Album in 2010. But she’s mostly known for the Broadway stage.

Growing up with music

Headley and I had a wide-ranging phone conversation where she told me stories from her youngest days through today. I talk to a lot of stars, but I have to say I’ve never laughed so much interviewing anybody. She is brimming over with joy when she relates her story.

Born and raised in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the southernmost island nation in the Caribbean, she grew up in a musical household. 

“My first performance, I guess, was at the age of 2,” she relates. “I did a radio show. I sang ‘Zacchaeus Was a Wee Little Man’ for a radio competition. 

“One of the great gifts my mom gave me was at 4 years old, she put me in piano lessons,” she said. “I didn’t know at the time that it would be one of the greatest gifts she would give to me.”

Singing and playing, she absorbed the whole range of music available in a seafaring, island nation. 

“In Trinidad, we listened to Bollywood,” she said. “We listened to soca, we listened to reggae, we listened to dub, we listened to American music. We listen to pop and R&B, we listened to gospel. I listened to Barbra Streisand. I listened to all kinds of stuff on any given day. This could be classical music, classical hymns.”

Moving to the States

Her father, who was a pastor, and mother had a dream to live and work in the U.S. Abruptly for 15-year-old Headley, the family started anew in Fort Wayne, “to quite a culture shock and to quite a climate shock.” 

Her father took the post as pastor at McKee Street Church of God, now known as New Life Church of God.

Headley credits her introduction to the stage, Broadway musicals, and jazz, not to mention simply being welcomed in a new country, to the teachers in the music program at Northrop High School. 

She quickly names her favorites: “Mr. (Barry) Ashton, our jazz band teacher. Mr. Hines. My drama teacher, Mr. Proctor, and then other teachers, there’s Dr. Banks.” 

Ashton had a great jazz band, and he pushed her to sing challenging material. Then it was on to Northwestern University, where she studied musical theater. Within a couple of years, she landed the role of Nala the lioness in the Broadway production of The Lion King.

When the composer and lyricist of The Lion King, Elton John and Tim Rice, wanted to develop a modern take on the Verdi opera Aida from 1871, they cast Headley in the title role, Nubian princess Aida, taken as a prisoner of war in ancient Egypt. 

As Aida, Headley achieved something revered and coveted: She created the role. That means she was the first actor to portray the role on stage, influencing everyone who came after. 

It began in 1998 with a short run in Atlanta — and I was delighted to tell Headley that I attended one of those shows — and then to Chicago and a long run on Broadway. 

Headley kept the role through 2000, when she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. I really wish I had space to tell you Headley’s stories about those heady years and hanging out and working with Elton John and Tim Rice. But let’s fast forward to today.

Headley last performed in Fort Wayne in 2019 at The Clyde Theatre, when it was just her and a pianist. 

She keeps up her connection with Fort Wayne because her family is still here. She visits about twice a year, to see her mother. She’s particularly proud of her brother, Iric Headley, who for eight years worked for the city government as executive director of Fort Wayne United. This year he took a position with Surack Enterprises.

Riding the train

These days, Headley is touring the country with conductor Ron Colvard, doing her show of Broadway tunes that she hand-picked, working with a number of top arrangers. She doesn’t want to give away which songs she will sing, but she gave us insight into the creative process.

To begin with, when learning a song, she avoids listening to recordings of other singers. She starts by reading the sheet music and playing the songs herself on the piano.

“I think when somebody gives you a song to cover, they want to hear it in your voice in a new light, in a new way,” she said. “So many times they would give me these songs and I would try to hear them in my own way, try to sing them in my own way and feel them out that way.

“I wanted people who don’t necessarily go to the theater to hear those songs and go, ‘Oh my gosh, what song is that?’

“These songs are journeys for me,” she said. “They are ways for me to tell stories about life, about my journey. A lot of them are songs that I’ve sung on Broadway or wanted to sing on Broadway, or the reason I’m picking them — you’ll know that. We’ve sprinkled some other songs in there along the way but heavily on the Broadway journey because I do think that that marries well with the symphony.”

There will be about 40 musicians in the orchestra at the Auer, all local Fort Wayne players. 

“There will be a band in there,” she says. “We always have a rhythm section because some of the orchestration calls for that.”

The orchestra is a nonstop thrill ride for Headley. 

“I think of (singing with) an orchestra as like a train,” she said. “You get on that train, and if you get on at the right time and you stand at the right position, it’s a beautiful, wonderful ride. And it takes you beautiful, wonderful places. But if you mess up and you get on at the wrong moment and you slip, they’re going to kill you!”

I crack up laughing, hearing her relate this comparison. 

“They’re going to run right over you,” she exclaimed. “And you’re standing there, ‘Come back and get me!’ They’re like, ‘We can’t come back. You come find us if you can. Run fast.’

“It’s powerful, just to stand in front of it. You know what I mean? You’re being pushed along by this beautiful, magical power that can be so gentle at times and so quiet, so intimate, and yet at times be so loud and powerful. And that’s what I love about it.”