Skip to main content

A Phantom Tribute

Alumni to hold concert in memory of former Phantom of the Opera star Kevin Gray '80

Kevin Gray's passion in life was performing. And there was no role he treasured more than the title character from the Phantom of the Opera.

Gray, who died unexpectedly from a heart attack in 2013, took on Phantom's leading role in 1990 -- becoming Broadway's youngest performer in the role. Throughout his career, he appeared in more than 8,500 Broadway and national tour performances of hit musicals including The Lion King, Miss Saigon and The King and I

Now a trio of Duke alumni are ensuring Gray's legacy does not become a phantom memory. 

Gray's former classmates Charles Randolph-Wright ‘78, Jack Coleman ‘80 and Jamie Wisser '80 are holding the Kevin Gray Benefit Concert on Saturday, April 18, in Duke University's Baldwin Auditorium to pay tribute to Gray's life.

The free, public concert -- co-directed by Randolph-Wright, the director of Motown: The Musical, and Coleman, a professional actor who has appeared in Hereos and Scandal -- will bring to the stage Broadway performers from PhantomLes MiserablesThe Lion King and other big hits, as well as Duke University students pursuing theatrical arts. In lieu of admission, organizers will accept donations to the Kevin Gray Foundation, a nonprofit fund established in 2013 to support scholarships for Duke students interested in musical theater. 

Making it possible for students to explore musical theater is something Gray would have wanted, Wisser says.

“He decided to devote his brilliance and craft to sharing with others,” he says. “This was Kevin's passion as an educator, and we are continuing his commitment to educating students.”

The concert will feature Broadway songs that were important to Gray in order to “show the different colors of Kevin,” says Randolph-Wright, as well as special performances by Broadway actors such as Josh Tower (The Lion King) and Christine Toy Johnson (Grease, The Music Man). 

The concert also will pay homage to Gray's longstanding Phantom role with a performance by two other former Phantoms, Craig Shulman and Cris Groenendaal. From 2004 to 2012, Gray, Shulman and Groenendaal toured together in a special Broadway musical showcase called The Three Phantoms in Concert.

Wisser says the Broadway concert gives alumni and the Durham community a unique opportunity to help students pursue a career in the arts. Concert donations support an inaugural grant of $5,000 for rising sophmore, junior and senior undergraduate students at both Duke and the University of Hartford’s School of Music, where Gray taught and directed beginning in 2011, to pursue nationally or internationally recognized summer musical theater programs.