When twelve-year-old Jacob Yates first saw Wicked on tour in Chicago, he wasn’t quite sure what he was watching.

“I remember being very confused about what was going on—they’re onstage, but I’m being transported to another world—they’re singing but also not? When it ended, I thought we could clap so loud that they’d do it again,” he recalled.

But something about that magical show—the lights, the spectacle, the “green and misunderstood” heroine—spoke to him. A few years prior, Yates and his classmates at school were making their own life-changing decisions: which instrument to take up for the school orchestra.

“I wanted to be different than other people, so I picked the cello,” he said. 

He might not have consciously known at the time, but these two experiences would set off a chain reaction that would lead him straight to the pit (and even the podium) of some of the greatest contemporary and classic hits Broadway had to offer. 

“I did eventually discover, by reading the little pocket of the Wicked cast album CD, that there were real musicians playing that music. I reached out to one of the original musicians, cold—on Facebook,” he laughed. “I asked ‘hey, can you really make a living doing this?’ and he actually responded. From then, there was not a doubt in my mind: ‘I’m going to play the music in musicals.'”

And play the music he did. In the near-decade Yates has been gracing the Great White Way as a multi-instrumentalist and music director, he has played the likes of Hadestown, Les Misérables, Spring Awakening, Rock of Ages, and more. But the very first Broadway show he played was, in a twist of queer fate, Wicked. 

“Wicked as definitely an out-of-body experience. You can’t rehearse for these things—they don’t give you a rehearsal. They send you a video of the conductor conducting, and it’s up to you to know it. It’s like being shot out of a cannon.”

If playing in the pit of the show that started it all wasn’t surreal enough, Yates was in for yet another twist that night: 

“The conductor who asked me to come play,” he continued excitedly, “he got sick that night, and the guy who conducted my first show was the guy I reached out to on Facebook. He texted me during intermission, and he was like ‘are you in the pit of Wicked on Broadway?’ It’s trippy to look back and be very conscious of your dream coming true.” 

Most recently, Yates’ dream brought him to the Kit Kat Club in the latest incarnation of Cabaret at the August Wilson Theatre. In addition to doubling on piano and accordion and stepping in to conduct the show, he also serves as Music Associate. In this role, Yates is primarily responsible for the production’s immersive “prologue,” a preshow sequence wherein dancers and musicians spill off the main stage and into the theater’s lobby to delight guests as they enter, drink, and eventually make their way to their seats. 

“I started getting wind of this production of Cabaret. I basically snaked my way into it—I was very clear that I wanted to be a part of it,” he said. 

One of the principal thematic threads in Cabaret is the tension between those who are mobile and those who are not, those who have the energy and resources to choose their next move and those who are bound to their circumstances and must make do. While Yates’ career of travel and storytelling places him squarely in the first camp. When reflecting on his journey thus far, he is quick to credit those who helped him achieve this level of skill and success: his hometown community in Kentucky. 

“I think it’s crazy that I received such a high level of support in the arts, especially in Kentucky. I can trace everything I’ve ever done to those teachers who helped me clarify my vision for the future—like Ms. Goff, my teacher at Beaumont,” he said. “The artistic teachers were always people I felt seen by—and that makes sense now, identifying as a queer person.”

Yates’ investment in these spaces—and their investment in him—paid off when he earned one of two spots in the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music’s Cello Performance program. As with many young people thrown into the new, proto-adult context of university, Yates’ explorations went far beyond the classroom. 

“When I went to Cincinnati, I was confronted with a ton of queerness I didn’t see in Kentucky. I didn’t know whether to be scared, whether to embrace it—was this the rest of the country? They had this phrase, ‘gay by may,’ but it was more gradual for me. I took everything really seriously. I need to get this degree; I need to find out who I am; there’s no stopping this train now.  I was like ‘I have to get to Broadway, I have to get to Broadway,’ and I moved to New York the day I graduated.”

Now, a decade into a career that has taken him all over the world, Yates is rediscovering his home state with the help of his partner. 

“I didn’t come back to Kentucky for along time. It was a loaded thing. But it’s important for people who don’t think like me to see me as someone who is not a threat. My partner and I, we’re planning on getting married in Kentucky—something I was very opposed to when I first proposed. But after the last election, I was like ‘no, we should [get married] in Kentucky because our New York friends need to see Kentucky, and Kentucky needs to see New York.”

Yates’ fiancé, Zach Booth, is from Westchester, NY, and it was his fascination with Yates’ Kentucky origins that prompted this change of perspective. 

“When we got together, he had a desire to explore where I came from. But my family is fractured, it’s difficult to get everybody in one place. Ultimately, I realized I was just making excuses and refusing to deal with whatever complicated feelings I had about my past. Through engaging with him, and deepening our relationship, I was able to heal a lot of that. And that’s nice.”

As he reflected on the parts of Kentucky that he loves most, Yates’ voice softened. He described flying over the state, on his way back from New York, and seeing the open fields, the farms, the animals milling about, microscopic and growing upon the plane’s descent. 

One of these eastern Kentucky farms, he recalls, was home to his great-grandmother, who left for Cincinnati to sew major-league baseballs for the MacGregor company during the Great Depression. 

“She worked in a factory that was two doors down from where I lived. When things got a bit better, she asked if she could take the technology—it’s called a horse—back to Kentucky to teach people. She went back to Powell county and taught these women in town how to sew baseballs. Those families could afford refrigerators and cars because of her.”

We joked that perhaps this would be Yates’ next musical project, a way to merge his life as a New York musician with the history that made that life possible. 

“I don’t think this whole musical theatre thing is random—I come from a very rich cultural place that has a lot of stories to tell, and chooses to tell those stories in really unique ways. I just hope that in continuing my journey, I can circle back on it all and lift up these types of stories that need to be told. I feel very clear in this part of my life that I want to be involved in KY, that it made my unique individual voice, and you can’t run away from that.” 

In the coming year, Yates will be working on an off-Broadway production of The Baker’s Wife, starring Ariana DeBose, and music directing Brokeback Mountain in Chicago, as it transfers from London.