Julian Reeve | Cultivating Presence and Impact: The Aura of Success

Srini Rao

Julian, welcome to the unmistakable creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. 

Julian Reeve
Thanks for having me, great to be here.

Srini Rao

Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. So I found out about you by way of your publicist. And when I saw that you had been involved in Hamilton, that was kind of the one line that got me. I was like, okay, that's it. That's all I need to know. This guy is definitely a yes. But before we get into all of that, I want to start asking you, what did your parents do for work? And how did that end up shaping and influencing what you've ended up doing with your life?

Julian Reeve
So both of my parents were very successful musicians, mainly in academia. My father was a professor of music at what was Cambridge College of Arts and Technology in Cambridge, England. And my mother was deputy head of music at King's Cambridge. So if any of your listeners have ever tuned into carols from Cambridge at Christmas time, and listened to the choristers and the choral singing by children there, it was my mum's.

job to teach music to those kids. So yeah, a very musical, dedicated, results-driven upbringing. Very loving, but yeah, music-centric and arts-centric creativity was a very big part of what they encouraged. But it also, the upbringing I had very much was that results-driven.

kind of style that I suppose I'm kind of part thankful for and part not.

Srini Rao

Oh, I can relate. So one, obviously, it sounds like music was pretty much in your blood from the time you are born. What I wonder is, as one, at what age did you start to pick up an interest in it? Were there points at which you felt that it was forced? And also, your parents on like this interesting blend of both sort of musicians, but academics who have the fortune of, you know, stable careers that don't necessarily come with being

musicians. I only know this because I actually got into the USC School of Music and my dad wisely talked me out of going because as somebody who's worked on musicals, you know, if you need a tuba, it's usually very limited in terms of what their needs are. You basically are waiting for a person to die for a job.

Julian Reeve
Yeah, sure, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, just repeat the start of that question, my bad.

Srini Rao

Yeah. So your parents have this blend of sort of being academics and musicians at the same time. And I wonder, one, this is obviously in your DNA, like did it start at a super early age? And also, were they sort of encouraging you to pursue a career? And were there any points at which you resisted it, which I realized like four questions in one.

Julian Reeve
No, no, it's all good. So, yeah, I mean, as you rightly saying, you know, I have music in my blood and my mother was my very first piano teacher. So I guess I probably had my very first piano lesson when I was maybe three years old. And, you know, it was I can't really remember whether it was forced on me, but there was definitely a kind of natural kind of lean into music. I was very inquisitive about.

you know, the keys and the sounds and the nuance of what music was as a language. You know, orally, I remember my ears kind of pricking up at absolutely anything that was fun and energetic and rhythmical and all that sort of stuff. So I was very much drawn to it. But I think, I think to your point about my parents being academics, you know, I quickly got good at music and I quickly

got good at performing music, and I did my first professional show when I was 14, and it was probably around that time that I made a commitment to music theater as a kind of major and a kind of career choice, if you like. And it was probably then that the, you know, the disagreements started with my folks, because even though they understood that I was very, very good for my age, they were very scared.

about the lifestyle that being a musician represents. It sounds as though you're very well connected with that. And you know, it's a, I think some of what we're talking about is a generational thing and I think some of it is a parental thing. I think parents want their best for their kids and going into a notoriously tricky industry where, you know, as you rightly say, we can be waiting by the phone for a very, very long time until it rings.

Srini Rao

Oh yeah.

Julian Reeve
But also because, you know, I think they've been so used to that kind of academic steady life that they wanted that for their kid. But generationally, I think, you know, that's how we that's how they were brought up. It's you go to school, you study all the, you know, the non arts kind of subjects, you get the most stable job that you can. You find the one that you want to love. You settle down, you have your kids, you buy a house, you buy a car, you have a nice life, you die. And, you know, it was.

very much that kind of system that I think they were encouraging me to follow. But I think in hindsight, that was something I always pushed against.

Srini Rao

Well, it sounds very similar to the narrative that I grew up with. My dad, I think the thing my dad did for me was he painted sort of a realistic picture of what I was going to be getting myself into. And he said, all right, look, here's the deal. If you go to USC, you're going to spend, you know, if you want to do 18 units a semester and double major, he said, you're going to spend half your entire college career in a practice room. And the moment he said that, that was kind of enough to dissuade me from even thinking about it as a potential option.

One thing I wonder about for you at a young age, I didn't recognize this until sort of when I finally stopped playing. I liked being really good at something and I realized I'd liked the attention of being in the spotlight. And I made Allstate Band three times, like I was a featured soloist. And I'll tell you when I finally quit, I was a featured soloist at Berklee, I won the concerto competition for the Wind Ensemble and there were 20 people in the audience because nobody gave a damn.

And that's when I realized I was like, I actually don't love the music. I love the attention, which is all the wrong reason to do it. And it took me that long to come to that realization. So talk to me about that for you. I mean, you've mentioned, you know, performance, cause there is a sort of a high to performing on a stage, doing something really well that other people can't do and having other people admire you for it. Like let's look at addictive drugs.

Julian Reeve
Mm-hmm.

Julian Reeve
Haha.

Julian Reeve
Yes, absolutely. And when I left Hamilton, that was, and actually quit the business altogether, that was something that I struggled with because, you know, I think many performers, musicians, actors, doesn't matter, you know, what kind of creative performance art they're doing. They, they, their identity is partly formed by the adoration, right? You know, if you're being applauded every night, then suddenly, you know, they're thinking, well, this is who I am. And suddenly, when, when the applause stops and we found this.

fairly dramatically in the pandemic. When the applause stops, it suddenly becomes the question of, well, who am I then? So it opens up all sorts of kind of really interesting questions, but it's interesting to hear that, you know, your own journey with the study. I mean, I now live in Los Angeles, I'm obviously British, and I was actually given the opportunity to come to LA when I was 16 to come and study at what is now MIT. And...

I ended up turning that opportunity down much because of what you said. All I saw was practice rooms filled with drummers who were practicing their rudiments. And I was like, I can't do this. I mean, yeah, sure. LA is great. You know, the weather's fantastic, you know, all of that stuff. But I was like, no, I need a much broader experience. And so I went back to the UK and actually committed to that broader experience. But one thing that I struggled with.

Srini Rao

Hehehe

Julian Reeve
I think throughout my entire career was that I never got super good at one thing because of that lack of ability to actually sit in a practice room and be the best at one thing. I got pretty good at a lot of different stuff. So I was a great drummer, I was a great pianist, I was a good jazz pianist as well as kind of classical composition, arrangements, all the business side of things, being an agent, you know, all of that.

Srini Rao

now.

Julian Reeve
You know, I was very interested in the business as opposed to the music. And to kind of follow up on that from your comment, it's only recently, probably in the last five years, that I've understood that the only reason why music was part of my life. I wasn't in love with the music. I was actually in need of what music gave me. So in the same way that you loved the adoration and you needed the adoration, I actually needed the adoration for my self esteem.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Julian Reeve
That was it. It was a self-esteem builder and part of it was identity. A lot of it actually was surrounding my perfectionism and to tie a nice bow around my kind of early musical life. It's not coincidence that I was a perfectionist when both of my parents were, and also my mother was my very first piano teacher. And so from the age of three, if I made a mistake at the piano, there was a possibility that my mother would love me less. And my music...

Srini Rao

Hmm

Julian Reeve
career was largely based on that fear.

Srini Rao

Yeah, it's amazing that what's interesting about that is that could drive you to achieve at the level you did, but also lead to kind of quitting altogether. Before we get into later career, Hamilton, all that stuff, talking about the experience, because I'll tell you, one of the most eye opening experiences for me was I did the summer program at the Ida Weld School of Music in the Arts. It was two straight weeks. And my dad picked me up on the last day and he's like, how was it?

Julian Reeve
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

all we did was practice all day long. He said, what the hell do you think being a music major is gonna be like? Cause it was literally just one rehearsal after another. And I just, you know, but I know that is the reality of life as a person who studies music. And also were your parents encouraging of the idea of a career, particularly when you got to that point, like what were they concerned about? Cause I remember the thing I wrote this piece titled, how to talk to your kids about pursuing career in the arts. And I was like,

Julian Reeve
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Srini Rao

If you're a parent who has a kid who's going to pursue a career in the arts, the best thing you can do for them is give them a reality check. Don't sugarcoat this shit. My dad didn't sugarcoat it and he probably saved me years of pain.

Julian Reeve
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think that's really valuable advice that anyone in that position should be following. It was an interesting kind of corner that time at 16, 17, 18, where, you know, ostensibly, I was still struggling. So the UK educational system is different from the US system. So I was doing A levels at that time, which effectively is the kind of upper end of high

Julian Reeve
you have a set calendar and a set number of lessons, but by no means is it a full-time study. So I was busy. I was doing all sorts of gigging and touring throughout that sort of time. I was doing radio appearances, TV stuff. I was doing some pretty big work. And at that point, my dad basically sat me down and said, listen, I know which direction you're going, and I really wanna support that,

Here's the prerequisite. You lost me? Oh, sorry. Okay, sorry.

Srini Rao

Hey, Julian, I lost you. Sorry, Julian, I lost you there for a second. Yeah, no, no worries. Can you go back to your dad went back and sat you down? I'll have my editor edit this out.

Julian Reeve
Yeah, yeah. So my dad at that point, kind of around 16, 17, 18, when I was doing all this professional stuff, understood that, you know, this was very likely going to be a career for me as a performing musician. And he sat me down and said, okay, I really want to support this. But the only way I'm going to support this is if you go out and get a degree, because you need something to fall back on. So I was like, okay, I'll go and do a music degree. And I picked the

music degree that at the time was going to involve the least amount of practice, the least amount of study and the least amount of anything seriously academic so that I could basically continue my life. And I passed with honours. I, you know, I mean, seriously, I went when I tell you that, you know, my, so my last recital, for example, in my final year, I started practice for that recital.

Srini Rao

Oh

Julian Reeve
two days prior. And I nailed it, I got a first. And the reason why is because I was actually, my academic study was being replaced by real life in the studio, on stage, living the life experience. And I got as much from that in three years as I did a degree course and the proof was in my results.

So in effect, I appeased myself, but also my father. And that's probably one of the reasons why we get on today.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, so to walk me through sort of the post college trajectory of somebody who was in a career like yours, because I remember talking to the kid who that kid beat me once. We were in all state band together from the time I was a sophomore. And at my senior year, he actually ended up being first chair. And I just fell down to fifth because I didn't care anymore. And I remember I caught up with him on Facebook. He ended up studying music. You went to the University of North Texas.

Julian Reeve
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

and then went to Yale and I asked him, how is it? And he's like, it's not great. And he was like, it's a real struggle. So talk to me about the early phase, like post-college, because I don't imagine you just get out of college with this degree and the world opens up to you. That doesn't seem like reality for any person who pursues a career in the arts.

Julian Reeve
No, agreed. And I don't know whether it's better now, but certainly, you know, when I went through my degree, which is 93 to 96, you know, there was very little focus on the business of music. It was all about let's get you really, really good at what you do and the rest will take care of itself. And ultimately, that was, I think.

the reasoning why many music students end up falling into something else pretty quickly. Because you're not taught how to survive. Now I was lucky because I chose the path that I chose when I came out of college. I largely just carried on what I was doing. I think for anyone in that position listening, I think the, well, let's rewind actually. Let's go back to the decision of whether music should be your major or even a minor.

Ask yourself, why am I doing this? Because let me tell you, if the why of music, if the why of your decision-making at that age isn't strong, you won't survive. So you have to know that the reason why you want this so badly is for the right reasons, is nothing to do with, you know, self-esteem issues. It's nothing to do with perfectionism or identity or, you know, all of the stuff that we can be affected by. And so...

If you enter college with the right why, then likely you will do the work. But I think probably one word that I would encourage people to really lean into right from where I'd go, even when you don't feel that you're good enough at your instrument, is relationships. Every single part of your career will be built out of relationships that you cultivate from a very early age. Find your mentors, use them, lean on them, be grateful for them.

pay it forward, get involved in stuff that you wouldn't normally get involved in, and try and make the relationship building non-results-based. I think we find that intrinsically difficult as human beings. It's like, okay, if I'm gonna create a relationship, I need to know what the result is gonna be, or I need to understand why I'm doing this. Try and take that off the plate, because...

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Julian Reeve
you'd be amazed at, you know, the people who have been really successful than I know, have built a community of people around them that give them all sorts of opportunities to thrive, but there was never an agenda. And I think we have to, I think when we go into that task with our eyes wide open without a result or a goal in mind, that's when the fruit tree really starts to get pretty, it starts to, you know, kind of...

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Julian Reeve
give us the fruit that will actually sustain us throughout a difficult career.

Srini Rao

Yeah. I mean, to me, it basically is a difference between connections and transactions. Like I've seen this with a lot of people. I've had people who will message me on Facebook and they will engage in sort of a conversation. It's like, how are you doing in the summer day of Raleigh? And then they literally will say, are you looking for guests for your podcast? I'm like, you know what? You could have just led with that first.

Julian Reeve
Yeah, absolutely. And it's, you know, this is something that I've had to learn. Because, you know, the art of networking certainly isn't taught at college. And, you know, it's something that comes easily to some and not to others. You know, we understand introverts, we understand extroverts, they're going to want very different rooms to kind of thrive in.

And, you know, certainly when I came out of the business, I had to really understand that, you know, it's not all transactional. In fact, almost none of business that I now do is transactional from the off. It's very, very rare. There's always stepping stones. And you know, the broader you can make those steps, the more interesting the journey becomes because actually you can find yourself going in it.

in a trajectory that you actually didn't think that you were going to from the beginning, but you pleasantly find yourself in that space.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, talk to me about the early stages of a career, like those moments when you're actually struggling to break in. Because if you think about entertainment or arts in any form, usually you start so low on the totem pole in the scheme of things. If you look at Hollywood in particular, people start in the mail room. And it doesn't matter if you went to Harvard for law school, you still start in the mail room. So talk to him about those early stages.

phases of the career, you know, where, you know, the phrase like earn your stripes or pay your dues.

Julian Reeve
Yeah, and I think, you know, one word that immediately comes to mind that I wish I'd had is strategy. Because I think, you know, I think people coming into the profession now are much more switched on than I was at their age because of social media, technology, etc, etc. Right. And they have a really valuable opportunity to get strategic much earlier than I did, because they literally have at their fingertips.

the opportunities that I didn't have. If I wanted to be strategic with my networking, I had to go and find a telephone number from somewhere because most people weren't in the phone book. So it would mean finding musicians to talk to, it was so, so difficult. These days you can just get on a social media account, follow them, start to warm up that relationship through a few comments, build the relationship, and off you go.

So I think the strategy and the decision of where you're going is super important when you first start, because that's gonna give you a leg up. I think the second element is mindset. And when we think, I think, you know, the problem with technology, the problem with social media is that we need instant gratification. So you come out of college and you need that first chair in the LA Phil, or you need to be on Broadway as a pit musician. And, you know,

as we well know, it takes many, many years, if not decades to get to those points. Sure, some people manage it, but, you know, the more common story is that it takes time. So what is your mindset in that time? If you have a strategy of, let's say you've graduated 23, 24, you've come out and it's like, okay, I'm going to give myself 10 years to become the lead chair in the LA Phil.

If that's your strategy, what does that strategy look like year by year? And what is your daily mindset to get you to each goal? And so, you know, practice is only part of it. Survival is a big part of it. How are you going to survive in a healthy way? How are you going to thrive through your survival? Because if you can achieve that, then you're going to find more time to do the practice and arguably.

Julian Reeve
you're going to achieve your bigger goal of, you know, getting the first chair in the LA fill sooner than most.

Srini Rao

Yeah. I mean, I think what you're talking about here is not just applicable to musicians. I think it applies across anybody starting a career because it reminds me of something I wish I had known when I was 20. And it was something that Liz Weisman said to me. She said more important than the first job is the person who is your boss. Like that can make the biggest difference. And I've seen so much evidence of that. Like if you look at the early sort of founding Twitter stories, Biz Stone wrote a book.

called Things Little Birdie told me and he actually talks about the role that his very first boss played in him getting to be where he's at. And that always stayed with me because I made that mistake time after time. I chose the paycheck over the boss.

Julian Reeve
Yeah, and I think for many independent, you know, contractors, if you like, as musicians, don't get to enjoy that, right? You know, if I think back to my early career, it was all about kind of short-term gigs. Even long-term contracts would maybe last a year, and you might have...

you will have a boss unless you're the boss yourself, which I grew into being. But you know, the boss didn't necessarily choose you, the choice was made by a fixer. So in the UK, and this is true for Broadway too, there are music contractors who basically decide which musicians will fit the style of each show. And if you create a relationship with those people, oh, I'm sorry, I don't know why this is so bad today. This is really weird.

Srini Rao

Hey, Julian, you cut out.

Julian Reeve
Where would you like me to start, sir?

Srini Rao

No, no, no worries. We'll do it. So just go say, just say, you know, there are musicians, like you're talking about Broadway. We'll do another cut here.

Julian Reeve
Okay, yeah, so the idea that we have one boss as musicians, I think is really tricky because historically, if you go through any career, I think most musicians will say, well, I had many bosses. I was the boss of many sometimes too. And so, the idea that the first boss is going to help bring you further forward isn't necessarily true.

But I would also, I would kind of slightly go against that in the fact that every boss you work for has the potential to take you with them. And so I think, you know, if we lean into a boss being, if we respect somebody, whether we've chosen them to be our boss or whether they've chosen us to be their employee, it doesn't really matter. I think, you know, if we understand their attributes and we understand, you know, what they're doing for us.

Srini Rao

death.

Julian Reeve
then working with them to help propel us and power us or empower us to be the best that we can be every day is super important. And there were several MDs, music directors that I worked in or under early on that did get the best out of me. There were many more that didn't because they weren't interested and that's fine. But yeah, it's an interesting thought that the boss can take us forward, because it's true.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, talk to me about the day to day life of somebody who is the music, the person who is a music director for musicals, because I played in the pit for I think one high school musical, if I remember correctly, it was Chicago. And I remember the sheer amount of work that was involved. I was like, this is crazy. We're at school every night, Monday through Thursday. Yeah, because they had to get it right, like the amount of times that they went through this.

Julian Reeve
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

But there's also something about the people in theater that they had a really special bond. Like my best friend was in theater and he's still really close to all those people from high school. But talk to me, what is the day to day of somebody like you in that role? And then we'll specifically get to Hamilton.

Julian Reeve
Yeah, so I mean on Broadway, nine times out of 10, you'll be doing eight shows a week. That might be a Tuesday through Sunday with either two shows on a Friday, two shows on a Saturday. But generally that's your performance week. Now a performance is effectively a three-hour call and officially a music director from a performance standpoint, that's what the job is.

employed on Broadway shows, that is what the job is. You come in and you play what you played last night, again to perfection or as close to it as you can get. And you come back and you do it again tomorrow and that's your life. As the music director though, you will have all sorts of nuance within that. You've obviously got the man management of the orchestra, but you've got the man management of the cast. So, you know, you've got a leadership position to think about in terms of well,

How are you doing that? How are you getting the best out of people? And you need your own systems and strategy for that too. There's also the element of understudies. So every show that you see will involve a, you know, certain number of cast, call it 30 people in the cast. Not all of those cast members will be available every night through injury or illness or all that sort of stuff. So somebody has to come in and take their place. Each of those people,

need to be educated and nuanced to the same standard that the main performer are, and musically that is the responsibility of the music director and or their team. So the bigger the show, the more complicated the understudied jigsaw is, the more work there is to do for the music director, but that kind of gives you a snapshot of the responsibilities.

Srini Rao

Yeah, so you mentioned systems that you used to manage all this because I imagine like you're dealing with one artistic personality types, which in and of itself is like a an interesting study in human psychology and insanity. But then on top of that, you're coordinating all these different things at the same time. So how does this all work? Like from a system standpoint, how do you manage all this?

Julian Reeve
Yeah, so if you take the cast that are on a Broadway stage, they are effectively your main players. And underneath the main players, there will be a system that's largely led by the creative team where it's clear in terms of how many people within the ensemble or within the other areas of the kind of performance company.

there will be a certain number of understudies per leading player. So let's take Hamilton, for example, and let's take the Schuyler sisters. There are three of them. Now, one system might have two of the ensemble members covering Angelica Schuyler. They might have two separate ensemble members covering Eliza. You might have another two that's covering Peggy and Mariah. And so you know who those people are.

largely before you get to performance. Sometimes those understudies are decided in rehearsals. Sometimes they're even decided in the casting call prior to rehearsals. But either way, once you get into performance, you have a system or a strategy, you know what you're trying to achieve. So you know that your first job as the music director is to get the first understudy for every single role up to speed musically. So...

Rather than me, for example, really drill down into the detail for Angelica Schuyler cover one only, I would need to cover the basic music teaching for all of the roles as quickly as possible so that everyone has the chance to then go away and do rehearsal. Then I prioritize the needs of the show. So if Angelica is a harder thing than Eliza, and it kind of is, it kind of isn't,

which way you look at it, then I would arguably prioritize the understudy education for Angelica than I would Eliza because there's more chance that the woman playing the role of Angelica would be off because of illness or tiredness or whatever. So there's kind of nuance within the decision-making as to the strategy, but a lot of it is just common sense. We have a jigsaw.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Julian Reeve
We know what the big picture needs to look like. Everyone needs educating, everyone needs nuancing, everyone needs supporting. It's just a question of which priority takes precedence that day.

Srini Rao

Talk to me about managing these personalities, because I know that, you know, artists range from being humble to obnoxious to, you know, almost bipolar at times.

Julian Reeve
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's actually probably the part of the job that I miss the most. And I don't think you'll find many music directors saying that because it's a hard job. But I was always fascinated by the question, what do they need? What do they need from me? And I think that's what made me a good leader was that I never led with, right, this is what we're going to do. And unless this is the way that we're going to do it, then there are going to be problems.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Julian Reeve
I always enjoyed the fascination and the discovery of how different people learn, for example. So you can teach, you know, an eight bar phrase to a hundred people. They're all going to pick it up differently. Some are going to use their ears. Some are going to use their eyes. Some can read music, some can't. People are going to be battling their internal demons, their perfectionism, their self-esteem, their imposter syndrome, all of the stuff.

Some of them will enjoy a style that says, right, this is what we're going to do, concentrate, go. Other people will be like, no, let's have some fun with this. The nuance within that is tremendous. But working with all of these, I've been very, very lucky to work with some incredibly talented and very well-known famous individuals who all need something different.

And I think the successful music directors are the people that really understand their responsibility for getting into that nuance and supporting them in the best way possible.

Srini Rao

now.

Srini Rao

Well, tell me about Hamilton in particular and why it has had the cultural impact that it has like Lin-Manuel Miranda. From what I've heard, I've heard Seth Godin reference it in a blog post that it wasn't a hit until everybody knew about it, kind of like many things had a slow start. I know Michelle Obama wrote about him in her biography saying she kind of thought this guy was insane to come and do this at the White House.

somebody who achieves at that level and why Hamilton in particular has had the sort of significance and impact that Other musicals necessarily don't because I'll tell you in my life I can tell you the names of three musicals only because I've attended a few I saw Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon and I know about Hamilton because I've seen it on TV. I've never gotten to see it in person And then I think the other one was stomp. Those are the musicals I've seen so I wonder

why in particular this one just has had such a huge sort of influence on culture.

Julian Reeve
Yeah, I think, you know, as with anything that strikes big, you know, I like to almost compare the importance of Hamilton in a creative sense and in an artistic sense as the iPhone was for technology and how we live. And I think much of the success of Apple was timing. And I would very much say that the same was true of Hamilton.

You know the shows that you've mentioned, I'm not surprised that you've mentioned them. They are perennial favorites particularly Phantom, Miss Saigon They've been around for a very long time. They keep enjoying kind of revival productions, so they keep people

They keep people kind of drawn towards those products. But I think outside of timing, the thing that really separated Hamilton and the thing that propelled it into culture in the way that it did was the fact that it was so musically different from anything that had gone before. I think the timing element really helped because everything that was happening in the world, particularly in the US with politics and...

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Julian Reeve
Donald Trump, whether you agree or don't agree with how he was going about his business. There was a real interest and a kind of a general awareness that was much greater, arguably at that time politically. And so here you have a musical that is the fastest musical in Broadway history, sung at 144 words per minute.

with a huge amount of information crammed into two hours and 40 minutes over 46 songs. It's sung through. It depicts history and it gives you a very clear idea of what that looked like, what that felt like, what it was like to be in it. It got to the heart of one man's life that has done so much for, you know, creating the country that we live in. And all of that was done through contemporary music in a way that...

appealed to everybody. I think this is Lyn's genius. I think, you know, he's an incredible wordsmith. You know, he is very Shakespearean in a way. And he has the ability, his ear and his storytelling have such an ability to take us forward quickly. And then when that compounds, so if you take, for example, the opening song of Hamilton,

is just shy of five minutes long, and it took him a year to write. But if you break that down into kind of, okay, what do I need to establish? Because the first song, as we know, it's like the first chapter of a book or the prologue, whatever, it sets the tone for the rest of the story. And so that's what the opening song needed to do. And so Lin needed to not only tell the story,

of how Alexander Hampton got from the island of Nevis, where he was born to New York City, but he needed to establish character, he needed to understand, he needed to establish journey. And I think his genius within the fact that we as human beings, particularly now with social media and how we interact, particularly Gen Z, who think in eight second windows, Lin is incredibly able to take us forward.

Julian Reeve
quickly and in a really interesting way that keeps us engaged. And when that compounds over a space of five minutes, the result is utterly genius. And then when you put another song after it and another song after that, and it takes us forward, two and a half hours later, we're like, what just happened to me? This was an incredible journey from an intellectual standpoint, from an emotional standpoint.

even from a physical standpoint, you're crying one minute, cheering the next. I think that's that's his genius. And I think that's a big part of why Hamilton's been as successful as it has been.

Srini Rao

So correct me if I'm wrong, but like I'd imagine like most artists, he is probably driven and ambitious to a degree that the average person is not. What is his personality like? What is the psychology of a human being like this? You probably worked with him pretty closely, I imagine.

Julian Reeve
If I had to sum Lin up in one word, I would just say fast. The man's brain is, it took me a long time working with Lin to let myself off the hook for not working as quickly as he does. Because he works at, I mean, you know, again, this is part of his success. He works at such a pace and

Srini Rao

Hahaha

Julian Reeve
He's so free within his creative process. So, you know, prior to Hamilton, Lyndon spent a long time in, you know, groups that were rapping and were basically spitballing, so he would surround himself by four or five different people and he'd just throw a subject out and go, right, today we're, today we're spitballing about mirrors and you'd have to come up with a rhyme about mirrors. Now, when you're, when you're that

creative and you can cultivate that degree of creativity quickly because of natural impulse. You can imagine what's going on in his head at all times, probably even when he's asleep. So I kind of, it took a minute, but I was like, okay, there are very, very few people like Lin-Manuel Miranda in this world. And so the fact that you're this close to him, just enjoy it and be you and everything will be fine.

I think the other element of Lin's kind of genius, and I've felt this a few times, and you know, it's interesting what makes us unmistakably creative. And I think it's aura. And Lin has one of these auras that allows us to kind of, you know, he's one of those guys that will walk into a room and you don't even know he's there, but the whole, the whole.

room, the feel of the room has completely changed. And that's not because he's famous and, you know, all of the stuff, it's the fact that he holds himself in such a way. And I think, you know, that's a tremendous power that Lin's learned to use for the good, not only for his own personal career, but he's done it politically through fundraising. We took a production out to Puerto Rico, for example, to help them recover from.

Hurricane Maria we raised, I don't know, 15, 16 million dollars just for the island's recovery. He's able to be in a room and to get those types of kind of juices flowing in people. And I think that's how he thinks, is that everything is present all of the time. There's almost no future because the future can't be created yet because the present mind

Julian Reeve
needs to figure itself out, if that makes sense. It's like, that's, that's again, arguably part of the genius of Hamilton, you're telling a historical journey in a very present storytelling way, because that's where Lynn likes to live. And the minute you realize that in people, and it's not just Lynn, there are other storytellers out there that rely on that. But I think, you know, when we

Julian Reeve
finding the gold in the immediate moment, then we start to create some really, really good stuff.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny when you're talking about sort of that presence, right? And you mentioned using it for good. Because it's funny if you study even some of the most evil people throughout history, like you can't argue that they weren't charismatic. Like you couldn't get millions of people to do these atrocious things without charisma. But you eventually burned out. Right?

Julian Reeve
Correct, yeah. I mean, you know, the, so three months into my job on Hamilton, I had a heart attack and I was 43 years old. And as you can imagine, that was a, you know, fairly life-changing experience and opened all sorts of cans of worms in terms of questions and, you know, all of that stuff. Now, the heart attack wasn't one of those where you, you know, you fall to the floor, grasp in your chest and...

you get rushed into hospital. I actually had a heart attack on a Friday night. It wasn't diagnosed until Sunday morning. And in the interim, I'd gone to the gym, I'd conducted a performance of Hamilton. I'd noticed, I'd noted a performance of Hamilton and I'd gone home twice kind of feeling the same symptoms on my walk back. They put in two stents and I was back to work probably 10 days later.

And I would love to say that that was kind of my one and only sort of tricky element with my health on Hamilton, but it continued sadly, probably about eight months after the heart attack, I started experiencing pain in my neck and in my wrist. Long story short, that became a repetitive strain injury or two repetitive strain injuries that sort of met in the middle, sort of around the sort of elbow area. And I was halfway through a show.

conducting Hamilton in Puerto Rico with Lynn playing Hamilton. When I was, I had tears streaming down my face and I was like, I have to quit. I can't do this anymore. I worked through the injury for eight months and it was all consuming. I couldn't think about anything else. It was all about the show. It's all about how I get to the podium at 730 or eight o'clock every night. And the minute the show was down, it was how do I get there again tomorrow? So yeah.

I burned out and I burn out physically. It's kind of different from how I now understand burnout to be. You know, I think a lot of people kind of look at heart attacks as being burnout, but it's much more nuanced nuanced than that. But that started the trajectory into what I now do, which is very, very different from performing for sure.

Srini Rao

Yeah. So one thing I always wonder, you know, when I talk to people about what might be considered a near-death experience, but this is kind of unusual in that, you know, it didn't seem like a near-death experience. And I've always asked people about this, either when they lose somebody important like a parent or they experience something like this, like what kind of questions you mentioned that you were asking yourself and like what changes did you decide to make, you know, about your life going forward?

And, you know, kind of walk us through how that leads to the work that you're doing today.

Julian Reeve
Yeah, so I think, you know, immediately I had to come up with some different thinking, reframed thinking on how I could achieve the same level of success in healthier ways. Because it was very clear that my methods weren't working. The irony of the heart attack was that I'd done a lot of the sort of immediate changes that you need to do after the heart attack, such as better diet, more exercise, concentrate on sleep, all the stuff. I'd done all of that, like five years prior.

but the stress of the job had tipped me over and I'd done all the damage to myself for the decades leading up to five years prior to Hamilton. So it very much became an exercise where I was like, okay, I can't, I need to approach every single day in as kind of stress-free a way as possible. How do I achieve that? And it was work with a psychologist that kind of really unlocked it for me because it was only then.

that I really understood how much perfectionism ruled my life. And it ruled my life personally, because I demanded it for myself, but it also ruled my life professionally, because that's what I was employed to do. People were employing me to, Lin was expecting me to reproduce the standard that they created on Broadway every night. And that was my job. And so, you know.

Perfection is being asked of me. So I jumped into that research and I read Brene Brown's brilliant book, The Gifts of Imperfection, and started to build some strategy that really helped me prioritizing the stuff that I was gonna focus on, so that rather than there being this huge forest of trees in front of me and I have to attack all of it, that actually I could look through the forest and be really mindful of which tree I was gonna focus on that.

day because that was the most important tree to focus on that day. And I think you know all of this started to become language that I would later go on to name perfect equilibrium because I think you know we all have it in us to create this sort of perfect working creative state but we need to know about ourselves, we really need to understand who we are.

Julian Reeve
And, you know, it's the same for organisations too. They need to understand their culture. They need to understand everything, their social environment, to know where the problems are so that they can identify the areas that once improved will help employees thrive. It's no different for us as individuals.

Srini Rao

So how do people discover that without having a heart attack?

Julian Reeve
Yeah, self-awareness is huge. I've learned so much from Dr Tasha Urich, who wrote a brilliant book called Insight. And I try and use three questions as a sort of compass for my day. What am I thinking? What am I feeling? What am I sensing? And simply by asking those questions to yourself, often during a day, you're presented with an answer that then empowers you to move forward.

in healthier ways. What am I feeling? I'm feeling stressed. Well, what is the stressor? What can you do to move away from that stressor? Can you reframe the situation to look at that stressor differently so it doesn't affect you as much? For example, what am I feeling? I'm feeling lonely. Well, okay, then get involved with more community projects, feeling, you know, however you whatever you can do as an individual to progress yourself away from that feeling.

you're empowered to do because you've asked the question. So I think self-awareness is a really, really valuable tool followed up by self-compassion. I think the number of people that I've worked with since my heart attack that have had to do some really serious work of being as kind to themselves as they are to others, the list is long in terms of the people that I've worked with because...

As artists, as creatives, we're driven to be the best that we can be. And that drive often involves an internal dialogue that is harsh, that is incredibly difficult and damaging to us in the long term. And so learning new language by literally, what would I say to a stranger right now in this situation, if you hear you're in a critic and it's going, Julian, you have to work harder because

other people are succeeding faster than you, you're getting left behind, let's go. What would you say to your friend, your best friend in that situation? Build that language, turn it back on yourself.

Srini Rao

So one of the things we kind of alluded to this in the earlier part of our conversation is the identity reconciliation that has to take place when something has been so intimately linked to who you are for such a long part of your life. This happens to athletes too. You know what I've seen is people always say it's kind of like, I just interviewed an former NFL player this week.

Srini Rao

I did, you know, work for retired special forces guys. And I remember like the transition apparently it was so difficult because there's a loss of community identity and so many other things that go with it when you leave.

Julian Reeve
Sorry, I lost you there actually through that question. Sorry, my bad.

Srini Rao

Oh, sorry. No, no worries. Do another Josh, do another cut here, please. So I think what I was trying to get to is the identity piece of this. Your identity has been linked to this for so long. And we alluded to it early earlier in the conversation. And I've heard the same thing from professional athletes, as well as people in the military. How do you navigate that part of it?

Julian Reeve
Yeah.

Julian Reeve
Yeah, that's a great question and one that I think everyone will be continually trying to answer for a very, very long time. I think it's a very different experience for everyone individually, and I think some of it is

based on how naturally resilient you are. I've been very lucky to be born with DNA that makes me naturally resilient. So when we moved to the States, I arrived here knowing nobody other than my wife. I started again effectively in my late 30s and was conducting Hamilton five years later. The heart attack put me into a, okay, well, I can't do this as a career anymore. So now what? And I think once we get beyond that,

that kind of natural degree of resilience. I think the thing that people can do, and again, you know, I love the word strategy, is to really, first of all, allow time to be your friend. And what I mean by that is I'm a huge fan of the phrase, let the silence speak. And like it or not, we need to be.

extricated from the situation that we were in, whether it was conducting a Broadway show, fighting on the front lines, playing a game for the Denver Broncos, doesn't matter. We have to be away from that sufficiently to understand what we miss, what we're still drawn to, etc. etc. So we can start to kind of identify the parts of what made up that identity.

that we still want to take forward. Because I think so many people regard it as one chunked problem. It's like, oh, I don't, I don't play for the NFL anymore. Well, now what? Well, okay. You, yes, you don't play in the NFL anymore, but let's break that down and go. Well, what does that really mean? It doesn't mean to say that you have to remove yourself entirely from a whole industry, there are plenty of other opportunities you can coach.

Julian Reeve
You can set up your own franchise. You can, you know, there's, there's a whole different list of stuff that you can still do within football, but why, what makes you drawn to those lists? So again, you're really getting down to, and I wonder whether this is the key. You're getting down to your values to be able to build up based on your value system to then.

bring in the skill sets that you can still bring in as an ex footballer to then create that new you that then becomes probably as successful as you were in the NFL.

Srini Rao

Yeah, you know, it's funny as you were saying that I was kind of thinking of like, okay, who am I if I'm not the host of the unmistakable creative because for the greater part of my adult life postgraduate school, this has been like so intimately linked to my identity. I think I'd feel really lost without it. But the funny thing is, you know, after you're writing two books to the publisher, I didn't have a contract for a third. And I was that identity somehow just I was able to let go of pretty easily.

Julian Reeve
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

But I also knew, and like, you know, I'd been doing AI strategy consulting and started a whole other business to manage unmistakable creative, ironically. And, you know, over and over, I've probably written this in my own notes, is that you never want one thing to define you. But the thing that really, to sort of summarize my thinking here, Sam Altman, I think, put it well. He said that you want whatever you did previously to make, you want whatever you do next to make whatever you did previously look like a footnote in your group.

Julian Reeve
Mm, yeah, I love that. I love that. I also wonder whether, you know, it's interesting listening to your story. You know, I think the identity rebuild for anybody going through that kind of, you know, forced career change has to be built from the ground up in terms of what we were talking about with values, but it's really understanding the why of what went before. So, you know,

My and I relate to this through my own experience, as I mentioned earlier on in the recording. The music for me was always something other than music. Like I, people go, well, do you not play anymore? And I go, no, I mean, I haven't touched the piano or a drum set for four years. Do I miss it? Not really, because it wasn't about the music. So getting down to the value system, let's, let's keep using the football player analogy of, you know, well, why can't you let go of football? Is it

Was it because of football? Do you miss football that much? And in which case that provides a certain problem. Or is it the adoration? Well then go be a public speaker. You're gonna find the same adoration. It will just be in a different way. All of the things, and I think, you know, our ability to let go, as you said earlier on, of certain pieces of identity as we change, might be associated with that. Well, that's not our true driver. And you know,

Part of the reason why I'm so connected to my identity now is that I've understood that I was never meant to be the, well, I was meant to be the music director of Hamilton only because it was a stepping stone to what I now do.

That's it.

Srini Rao

You know, it's funny, I will tell you people ask me, sort of the biggest influences as far as my ability to do the creative work that I do today, without question, the most influential things came from my time as a musician. And my ninth grade band director teaching me how to practice, how to stick with something, how to persist, all that basically influences me as a writer. It has had a profound impact that has played itself out to this day.

Julian Reeve
Mm-hmm.

Julian Reeve
Yeah, I think music, I always say this to parents, music is such a great trainer and discipline, structure, all of the things. And I was very, very, that's probably the thing I'm most thankful for about childhood, about my own childhood and music playing a big part of that was that I had to get really, really good at being part of a structure, number one,

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Julian Reeve
is naturally good at being part of structure. I had to get good at, well, what was my process within the process that I'm being asked to go through? And I think, you know, to your point, much of that discovery I've also built on outside of music. You know, I've started, I've created now four businesses in the creative sector, all based on that kind of knowledge. You know, the understanding of how we learn what we need in our life to be productive, et cetera, et cetera.

takes us forward and I think being creative, whether it's music, art, doesn't really matter. It can really empower us for success in many, many ways in life, not just the art itself.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, I want to finish with two final questions. So you mentioned, you know, early age music. I have this nephew who honestly I'm convinced is going to be like the next, you know, either Justin Timberlake or, you know, Pharrell, he can find music in any sound. Like you turn on a faucet and he starts dancing whether in a coffee machine, and then he'll make you turn it back on.

Julian Reeve
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

He loves music and we're discovering that if music doesn't have beats, he's finally starting to have opinions. Like we, we do, we go through a playlist every day on Spotify and now he's saying no when he doesn't like something. Uh, but the reason I'm thinking about that is I've heard from so many people and I've read often people who are these child prodigies end up not making it or they effectively burn out. So what is it in your mind? I mean, and I think this is not just apical.

applicable to musicians, I think it applies across the board. There's a certain sort of pinnacle of success, which in and of itself, I think is sort of an illusion or a mirage that we all have when we haven't achieved it. But there are people who get to that point. And the only thing I can think of that reminds me is what A.R. Rahman said in his documentary. He said, when you expect nothing, everything comes to you. And I'm thinking to myself, yeah, but that's easy to say if you're A.R. Rahman. But what is it about people who start

Julian Reeve
Hehehe

Srini Rao

get to become AR Rahman that causes them to end up being that way. And what differentiates them from the potential AR Rahman that we might have seen who basically just goes and gets a job.

Julian Reeve
Yeah, well, I think Lin-Manuel Miranda is a really good example of this, strangely, because, you know, he grew up a wordsmith. He knew his brain was fast. He knew he was very different and gifted. And he committed to, you know, just expressing himself. And it's interesting to hear of your nephew's talent. And I think that the one thing that I would encourage to, you know, the parenting, the people around him, but also to your nephew.

themselves is, you know, stay in that space, because I think so often, you know, and I learned a lot of this in terms of from physical pain in terms of the adult body becomes something that is not meant to be partly through stress, partly because of walking habits, postural habits, all the stuff. It's no different from our creativity. And to your point, a lot of creative people don't realise their potential, because at some point, they come off the true path.


Yeah, so people come off the true path of authenticity. And I think, you know, we need to be in order to be successful as a creative. I think we have to be ultimately true to our authentic self in everything that we do. And I actually believe that in business too. Now the fine line is, well, that's great. And, you know, we can say these things.

Committing to authenticity doesn't necessarily feel right because how am I gonna make money out of that? And I think that then comes back down to the strategy. If we are committed to our authentic self, at some point that will allow us to make money. It might not allow us to make money in the ways that we think will make money from our authenticity, but it will lead to profit of some description. It might not only be financial, it might be spiritual, it might be...

It might be health profit that you can pay forward in other ways. But I think staying in that childlike state and staying in joy, I think is huge. Because in the same way that people jump off their authentic path, the authentic path becomes work because people try and monetize it. Now, the minute you try and monetize something, it becomes work, which then becomes stress, which then becomes burnout.

unless you retain the feeling of joy of why you were doing it in the first place. Like right now your nephew isn't trying to be the next, you know, Pharrell or whoever. It's fun. It's joy. It's like, yeah, this is great. Turn the faucet back on and I'll dance and I'll react to it. If we can somehow keep that joy in our adult life, that's where I think we start to thrive because we retain that childlike...creative process that's so important for success.

Srini Rao
Beautiful. Well, I want to finish with my final question, which is how we finish all of our interviews at the Unmistakable Creative. What do you think it is? They make somebody or something unmistakable.

Julian Reeve

I think I alluded to it earlier. I think it's aura, sorry. I think the idea that we can all be authentic is true. I think that we should all be as authentic as we can be. But I think what really separates us from everybody is arguably out of our control. You know, I've been in, for example, and this is a funny one, I'm just thinking about it.

I was in a, I was at a film premiere in New York City, probably 2013. And I was at the store. I was taking a pee and I was just minding my own business and out of nowhere, the room completely changed and there were probably, I don't know, six, seven people in the room and there was just this feeling of wow. And I was like, okay, what just happened? And I looked up to my right and there was Morgan Freeman stood next to me.

And it wasn't anything that he said, he hadn't said anything. Wasn't the fact that other people, I'm sure this helped other people recognizing him. But I do think that his ability to be unmistakable was that it was aura in silence without doing anything specific other than being him. And I think that's really powerful.

Srini Rao
Beautiful. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom and your insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your work and everything else you're up to?

Julian Reeve
Yeah, my business is Perfect Equilibrium. Perf is the website. There's an ebook there that people can download, Six Steps to Perfect Equilibrium, which allows you and your organizations to kind of maximize what you have already to find what I call perfect equilibrium. JulianReeve.com, you'll see all my speaking stuff. Yeah, feel free to reach out, love to chat.

Srini Rao 
Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.