It’s no secret that Booker T. Washington High School for the Visual and Performing Arts churns out a significant number of graduates that go on to have big careers. Dallas ISD recently featured one of those graduates: Mark G. Meadows, who is now the music director for Cynthia Erivo.
Meadows told the district that his cohorts when he attended included Marc Rebillet and the late James Kings. “I remember the excitement on our faces when we caught that same beat together,” he said. “We’d be crying, laughing so hard at how in sync we were. Connecting with other musicians made me fall in love with it.”
After graduation, he went on to Johns Hopkins to study psychology, while also pursuing a degree at the Peabody Conservatory. Then he toured a bit (and collaborated with people like Bobby McFerrin, Usher, and Kendrick Lamar) before getting into musical theatre. That led him to become the in-house music director at Washington, D.C.’s Signature Theatre in 2019. It was there that he first played with Erivo. “It’s all of the fine details that make or break a show,” he said. “I know what she wants, and she knows that I know what she wants. She trusts me, and that trust is incredible.”…