Ask Brandon Sturiale about the impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on his life, and he’ll tell you: “My tennis game is getting better.”
You have to press to find out that, despite his keyboard talents and off-Broadway credentials, he has been unemployed since March, when COVID-19 shuttered the musical theater industry across America – including here.
On March 15, Riverside Theatre, where Sturiale was plying his trade, closed the curtain on “La Cage aux Folles,” suddenly and prematurely ending the show’s planned three-week run. At the same time, the theater announced it was canceling its scheduled production of “The Bodyguard.”
Less than two years after Sturiale left New York to continue his piano-playing and musical-directing career here, a pandemic had put him out of work.
But you won’t hear him complain.
Oh, he’s not happy about losing those paychecks. And, when it first happened, he was worried about having enough money to survive, especially since he and his wife, Veronique, had bought a home here.
“Closing ‘La Cage’ was disappointing, but I was really bummed when they canceled ‘The Bodyguard,’ because I was going to be the assistant musical director, play every show, program the keyboardists – and it was a five-digit salary,” Sturiale said.
“They ended up paying me 25 percent of what I would’ve gotten,” he added, “but it was still a big loss.”
It didn’t take long, though, for Sturiale to find something positive amid his circumstances. In fact, the more he thought about them, the less dire they became.
He soon saw Riverside’s COVID-prompted shutdown as an opportunity – to recharge himself after 16 years of grinding out a late-night living in New York, focus on other work-related projects and, yes, play a lot of tennis.
“I love to play,” said Sturiale, 43, who became a member of The Boulevard Tennis Club earlier this year, “and I try to play every day.”
Apparently, he can afford to.
His wife is a successful yoga instructor who has retained many of her New York-based clients and has grown her student base here, continuing to teach classes remotely during the pandemic.
Sturiale, meanwhile, has devoted more of his time to All Ears Promos, his two-year-old company that sells promotional merchandise – sometimes known as “swag” – used by businesses to market their brands.
He also generates income from the sales of two self-produced albums on iTunes and Spotify. One features only piano music; the other utilizes a full band and 12 different vocalists, including platinum-selling artist Lauren Allred.
Sturiale said he also writes, produces and records jingles for different companies, including the local Mattress Market stores. He’s also writing a play.
“Ultimately, I’m hoping I write a song that gets recorded by someone of note, or I write a musical that gets to Broadway,” he said. “Performing is a lot fun, but I’ve been doing it a long time.”
Growing up a “nerdy loner with no friends” in small-town Oklahoma, Sturiale was introduced to the piano at age 12, when his father bought him a tiny keyboard for Christmas.
Sturiale was captivated by the sounds of Billy Joel, Elton John and the Beatles, and he’d spend hours in his bedroom, learning how to read music and teaching himself how to play the piano.
A year later, he was given a bigger keyboard, which sufficed until the following year, when he had mowed enough lawns to buy his first piano – and had it placed in his bedroom.
That’s when he discovered musical theater.
“My dad had an 8-track tape of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ which was everything I thought musicals couldn’t be,” Sturiale said. “So, I started going to the local record store, where I found ‘Tommy’ and ‘Rent’ and ‘The Phantom of the Opera.’
“I wasn’t much of a singer, so I knew I was never going to be Billy Joel or Elton John,” he added, “but I could play piano and rock out and be a part of these shows.”
He never joined his high school’s band or orchestra, and he opted to not pursue a college degree, much to the dismay of his father, who was a pharmacist. Instead, at age 22 – having never taken a piano lesson, Sturiale moved to New York City to chase a dream.
He struggled, of course, as so many musicians do, taking day jobs to support himself while performing in community theater productions.
It took Sturiale four years to build a musical reputation to a point where he was hired to tour regularly with productions and no longer needed day jobs to support himself.
His New York gigs included off-Broadway productions of “Iron Curtain” (music director/keyboard I), “The Marvelous Wonderettes” (assistant music director/keyboard II) and “Trip of Love” (substitute keyboard II), as well as audition/rehearsal pianist for the Universal Pictures film “Mamma Mia 2.”
He also performed on national and regional tours of nearly 20 shows, including “Les Miserables,” “Waitress,” “Gypsy,” “Urban Cowboy: The Musical,” “Xanadu” and “Cabaret.”
And his resume includes stints with Riverside Theatre productions, dating back to 2015, when he first found his way to Vero Beach – a town he said he had “never even heard of” until a friend suggested he might find work there.
“I was working in New York, bouncing around and playing different gigs in different theaters, but not doing anything great or anything permanent,” Sturiale said. “That’s when a buddy told me he had heard there was a theater in Florida that needed a keyboardist for a show.”
Sturiale made a call and learned that Riverside Theatre was seeking a No. 2 keyboardist for six weeks for a production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”
It was the dead of winter in New York. The Florida weather was warm and inviting. “It was good timing,” he said.
It was also the start of a theater-musician relationship that would prompt Sturiale to leave New York after more than 16 years and move to Vero Beach 18 months ago. His other gigs here include: “Mame,” “Hello, Dolly,” “Swinging on a Star,” “The Bikinis,” “Mamma Mia” and “Legally Blonde: The Musical.”
“New York was my home base for a long time, but I was getting tired of it,” Sturiale said. “I had turned 40, gotten married. We had a dog, and our lease was up. So, we started looking around.
“I already had a relationship with Riverside Theatre, my wife loved the area and the thought of living near the beach sounded nice,” he added. “It was very serendipitous.”
Then the virus arrived.
Sturiale, though, said he has no regrets – nor is he looking for another job.
“There’s nowhere to look,” he said. “Besides, we love it here. Obviously, nobody expected a pandemic to happen and we’ve had to make some adjustments. But how can you not like living in Vero Beach?
“Actually, it’s been a pretty nice vacation.”
Sturiale now spends more time working on his tennis game than practicing on his piano.
“I’m past the point of needing to practice just to practice,” he said. “In normal times, I’ll practice specific songs for shows. Now, I just sit down and play whatever music I want to play, or whatever my wife wants to sing.
“Life is pretty good.”
As of now, musical theater is scheduled to resume at Riverside in early 2022, when the theater’s production of “Carousel” opens on Jan. 3.
