On the sunny side of the street

Some stars have vivid memories of eureka moments that set them on their career paths. For Tony-winning singer/actor Brian Stokes Mitchell, becoming one of Broadway's biggest stars was something that just sort of happened.

"I always had the feeling that something interesting and wonderful was going to happen to my life," he said in a recent phone interview from his home in New York. "I didn't know if it'd be as a session pianist or what. I was always pushed in the right direction by my parents. This career chose me."

Seattle-born Mitchell, who headlines a concert Sunday as part of the Minnesota Orchestra's pops series, grew up playing the piano in Guam, the Philippines and other places where his jazz-loving Navy engineer father was stationed. He credits one of his brothers with his current career.

"He was the performer, and did a lot in high school and after that," Mitchell said. "He introduced Stephen Sondheim and Rodgers and Hart on the family stereo. Before that, it was always Miles Davis and John Coltrane."

Mitchell, 54, whose friends call him Stokes, moved with his family back to the United States at 14, attending high school in San Diego. It was there that he acted in "Kiss Me Kate," the musical in which he would star on Broadway and for which he won a Tony Award.

For Mitchell, who will sing excerpts from "Kate" composer Cole Porter, the music was a revelation.

"Cole Porter is interpreted in a jillion ways -- he writes a little more loosely, more generally," he said, adding that he selects songs by trying them out on his voice.

His show at Orchestra Hall will include standards from Tin Pan Alley and jazz, including from songwriting teams such as Rodgers and Hammerstein ("South Pacific"), Kander and Ebb ("Kiss of the Spider Woman," "Chicago") and Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens ("Ragtime"). And he'll apply his deep baritone to "The Impossible Dream" from "Man of La Mancha," a sunny song that he has invested with great conviction in the past.

He expects to do a Gershwin medley, plus a new orchestration of "Straighten Up and Fly Right," in a nod to his father.

Still, when it comes to the theater, it's hard to beat Sondheim, whose music he adores.

"Steve's songs are not as popular as Cole Porter's or Rodgers and Hammerstein's, but they're just as brilliant," Mitchell said. "They are incredibly interesting and fun to sing. He composes a character. The lyrics, the harmonic and rhythmic structure, the melody, everything is imbued with the character. You hardly have to do anything; he's done most of the work."

He thought about Sondheim some more.

Building through character

Despite his fame as a leading man -- he co-starred with Patti LuPone in the stage version of the Pedro Almodovar feature "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" -- Mitchell said that he thinks of himself more as a character actor.

"I like the breadth and depth and quality of different kinds of roles," he said.

Mitchell could have become a composer. In high school, he wrote two musicals, one based on Ali Baba, the other on Aesop's fables. He studied orchestration briefly at UCLA. And he scored a number of episodes of "Trapper John, M.D.," one of several TV shows on which he was a regular.

When we spoke, Mitchell was working on arrangements and orchestrations for an upcoming Christmas album. He's also composing two holiday songs.

Mitchell talks a lot about his family -- parents "who always said that the musical gene was recessive and skipped a generation" and his siblings. An older sister studied opera, although she did not pursue it professionally. A designer brother worked on costumes for Craig Ferguson's "The Late Late Show." A younger brother died several years ago.

"He was the most creative one in the family," Mitchell said. "He sculpted, drew, wrote music. He taught me to sing because I sang duets with him when I was 2. He taught me harmony."

Names are important to him. He chose to use his middle name professionally only after considering changing his stage name altogether. He and his wife, Broadway dancer Allyson Tucker, did not name their son until four days after he was born.

"Your name is the first thing a person knows about you, so we picked a name that looks good in a boardroom or in a jazz combo," he said. "Originally, we were going to name him Kai, which is Hawaiian for ocean. It's a nice name but it didn't fit him when he came out."

They opted for Ellington.

In another tribute to his childhood memories, he tries to get back to the ocean whenever he can. When he was a boy, frolicking in waves in Guam and the Philippines, he entertained thoughts of becoming a marine biologist.

"I like to swim in the sea," he said. "I wanted to have a job that's a lot of fun."