‘Bandstand’s’ Donny Nova Band returns to its Las Vegas roots
The show has ended, but the band plays on.
“Bandstand’s” Donny Nova Band, that is, which hits The Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz for two swingin’ Saturday shows.
The Broadway musical “Bandstand” — written by Las Vegans Richard Oberacker and Robert Taylor — focused on the experiences of just-back-from-battle World War II veterans, plus one war widow, who form a band to compete in a national contest.
“Bandstand” closed last September after a 10-month run.
At the time, the cast members said, “ ‘We’re not done — this cannot be the end,’ ” recalls Laura Osnes, who earned a Tony nomination for her performance as “Bandstand” singer Julia Trojan.
As it turned out, it wasn’t.
“The nature of being a band bonded us,” Osnes adds in a telephone interview, describing how she and her fellow cast members (some musicians moving into acting, others actors who “brushed up on their instruments”) researched their roles.
The process meant “you really do have to become a band,” Oberacker says.
So when New York’s legendary jazz club Birdland asked if cast members would be available to perform as “sort of a one-off specialty thing,” he says, the Donny Nova Band had its second act.
The initial Birdland gig was such a hit, the band reunited for three return performances, Osnes says, plus additional gigs in other cities.
This weekend’s Vegas visit came about when Osnes contacted Smith Center president Myron Martin to ask about bringing the Donny Nova Band to Las Vegas, she says.
After all, Osnes has been a Smith Center presence since the March 2012 opening gala in Reynolds Hall. She also sang there with Michael Feinstein during his 2014 New Year’s Eve concert and made her Cabaret Jazz debut in December 2015.
“I absolutely loved it,” Osnes says of her first Cabaret Jazz performance, praising everything from the club’s sound system to the art deco-style decor. “I remember being overwhelmed with the whole facility,” she says. “It’s just gorgeous.”
Saturday’s concerts will include several “Bandstand” numbers, from the upbeat “First Steps First” and “You Deserve It” to the haunting, bittersweet “Welcome Home.”
“There’s a few other songs we wish we could do,” she notes, but some don’t work as well in the concert format.
“In the context of the concert, we definitely play ourselves — we are Corey and Laura and the band guys,” she explains. (Those band guys include bassist Brandon J. Ellis, saxophone and clarinet player Nate Hopkins, trombonist Geoff Packard and trumpeter Joey Pero.) “We’re not just retelling the musical. It’s a real concert, too.”
As such, the performance includes other vintage favorites (Rodgers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine,” for example) as well as newer tunes.
“It’s not just classics — we definitely mix it up,” Osnes says. “But we put everything through the swing band lens.”
Along the way, the “Bandstand” bandmates (led by music director Matt Perri) will share stories about their experiences performing the show, she adds, making for a more intimate experience than the musical itself.
“It’s such a unique, quirky happening,” Oberacker says of the chance for audiences to see the band “live, on a very small stage, talking to people, telling stories. It’s a way to get to know them as artists.”
To Broadway and back
“Bandstand” was the first Las Vegas-born musical to make it to Broadway. And this weekend, the show returns to town — sort of.
Technically, the Donny Nova Band doesn’t exist — except in “Bandstand,” where ex-GI Donny Novitski, just back from World War II, creates a band, with more than a little help from some fellow vets and war widow Julia Trojan, to compete in a nationwide contest.
Yet the performers who played those “Bandstand” roles on Broadway — including Corey Cott as Donny and Laura Osnes, who earned a Tony nomination for her performance as Julia — are still playing them during nightclub dates on the road.
Saturday’s performance is different, however, because Cabaret Jazz is where it all began.
Composer Richard Oberacker and collaborator Robert Taylor, with whom he wrote “Bandstand’s” book and lyrics, tried out their “Bandstand” tunes at the monthly Composers Showcase of Las Vegas, where local audiences first heard many of the numbers.
After all, in the show, the “Bandstand” band is performing in jazz clubs, Oberacker says, and as “Bandstand” was being created, “we were actually trying them out in this gorgeous new club.”
Because locals were the first to hear Oberacker and Taylor’s “Bandstand” tunes, they share in the show’s success, he adds.
During previous Donny Nova Band gigs, Oberacker couldn’t leave his “day job” — conducting Cirque du Soleil’s “Ka” at the MGM Grand — so Saturday’s Cabaret Jazz gig represents his first shot at catching them post-Broadway.
“To come back to the city and play on the stage where the songs were tried out,” he says, “that’s very special magic. Las Vegas retro magic.”
