A Trill Grows in Brooklyn

"Once" was the big winner at the Tony Awards on Sunday, taking home eight awards, including best new musical. After the ceremony, many stars in the audience no doubt continued on to glamorous parties and celebrations. Meanwhile back at home, some enrapt viewers began plotting their own paths toward Broadway.

If you fall into the latter camp, you might want to give Jonathan Hack a call.

An actor and general manager on and off of Broadway for the last 11 years, Hack moved to Carroll Gardens six months ago determined to set up his own voice studio and children's theater program in the neighborhood.

"I see a lot going on with theater in Park Slope and other surrounding neighborhoods, but I would love to recreate the pre-school programs I conduct in Manhattan in Carroll Gardens," Hack said, adding, "And I want to let local actors know—'hey, you don't have to trek all the way into the city to take a voice lesson.'" 

Hack pounded the pavement for many years himself, living in Midtown, Queens, Philadelphia, Hawaii and Florida. So he understands the value of convenience when honing your craft.

After a role as Claude in "HAIR" landed him in St. Petersburg, Hack spent a year and a half as head of the music department at the Patel Conservatory at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.

"I had a private voice studio there while heading up four orchestras and an insane number of music lessons," recalled Hack. "I met some absolutely lovely people and it was a very cool experience—until it wasn't anymore. I started to really miss New York and decided to come back."

He'd also fallen in love with a local photographer who was ready to leave Florida and had set her sights on Brooklyn.

"We spent five months searching for a place to move," he said. "Luckily, my mother lives in Connecticut. So we were sleeping there and coming in to check out apartments every weekend. It was terrible. I've never had a search take that long, but we didn't want to settle and no one was moving!"

Then, while driving through Red Hook one day, Hack's fiancée happened to pick up a local newspaper. As the voice teacher tells it, while sitting in the Fairway parking lot he spilled his coffee inside the car and when the couple examined the paper there was a stain right on top of a tiny listing for the apartment they now live in.

Six months later, he's ready to welcome performers inside of the in-home studio he's created.

"Every student needs something different, whether they are a beginner or going on Broadway," said Hack. "It's almost like a chiropractic exam, you want to get everything in place."

First lessons are generally spent evaluating the student's level of technique, according to Hack. From there, training is exercise based: "tuning, learning to support and build good old diaphragmetic breathing... and hammering it in—all the time."

Hack said he is also very big on visualization, instructing students to picture everything from hourglasses to unicorn horns in order to sustain different notes and push air up and out of their lungs.

"It's usually at that point that they buy in or they don't," he acknowledged, with a laugh. "Some of my students must think I'm crazy. But it yields results."

And results are what get you to the Tony Awards alongside Neil Patrick Harris. So don't let any more time slip away from you. The hourglass is waiting.

Hack charges $65 per hour in Carroll Gardens and $85 in Manhattan. Interested parties can visit jonathanhackstudio.com for more details.