From Banking To Broadway: Jessica Vosk Ditched Her Finance Career To Perform On The World’s Greatest Stages Including Carnegie Hall

On December 12 Broadway star Jessica Vosk will return to Carnegie Hall to perform Get Happy: A Judy Garland Centennial Celebration.

Garland, who would have been 100 this year made her Carnegie Hall debut after nearly four decades into her career. The show was so legendary, it is considered to be one of the most memorable nights in the Carnegie Hall’s history.

When a live recording was released a few months after it won five Grammys and was on the Billboard charts for 73 weeks. Garland became the first solo woman to win the coveted Album of the Year.

In this tribute to the life and artistry of Garland, Vosk will perform her classic songbook amid rare performance footage of Garland herself. Vosk will sing alongside another theater great, Andy Karl, who has starred on Broadway in Groundhog Day, Rocky, Pretty Woman, Legally Blonde and On The Twentieth Century. Get Happy also has a team of creative heavy hitters. Written by Robert Cary and Jonathan Tolins, the show is directed by Michael Arden with Mary-Mitchell Campbell as music director.

Vosk, whose credits include Elphaba in Wicked on Broadway, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Fiddler on the Roof, Finding Neverland and The Bridges of Madison County, was approached with this concept during the pandemic.

“It was coming up on Judy’s 100th birthday and made me think, Wow. We lost this woman so early in her life, and yet she’s been ever present since then. Like she never left us,” says Vosk of Garland who passed away eight years after her Carnegie Hall concert when she was 47. “How do I honor the memory of this icon, who famously played Carnegie hall before her death, yet hopefully breathe new life into her cannon of music? I love a tricky task like that.”

As the old joke goes, when the pedestrian approached a musician for directions asking, “How you get to Carnegie Hall?” The musician replied “Practice. Practice. Practice.” In Vosk’s case, not only was it practice that led her to Carnegie Hall. She also got there by way of Wall Street.

Before she even graduated from college Vosk took a job at a financial firm in midtown Manhattan. “I started entry level, had no clue what I was doing, but was given a dictionary of investment terms, which I still have and a cubicle and told what to do,” says Vosk. While she had clients in all areas of finance and was climbing the ladder of success in that world she left behind her the piece of her that spent her childhood doing theater and singing.

“I basically killed the creative parts of me. I left it all behind. The theatre I did as a kid, the singing lessons, the countless hours of practice,” says Vosk who equates her singing to breathing. “All gone.”

But cutting off that key part of her manifested in anxiety and ultimately full-blown panic attacks. “I knew I had to fix it, and I decided to leave the job,” she says. “No safety net. Just hope. I trust My gut always, even to this day. And my gut said that if I didn’t go after my passion, I’d regret if for the rest of my life.” Vosk was convinced that even if she fell flat on her face which she still sometimes does she could say, ‘I took the chance on myself. I’m so glad I did.”

That risk on herself paid off. Seven years after leaving her finance job Vosk made her Broadway debut in The Bridges of Madison County in 2009. In 2018, after playing her on tour, she landed the role of Elphaba in Wicked on Broadway.

Vosk says that her dive and persistence kept her going. “I woke up for the cattle calls, I barely ever got seen because I didn’t have an equity card,” she says. “I stayed up for the open mic nights where I hoped someone “important” would hear me. I thought that if I went Through the sacrifice to quit a secure career for this new one I’d better show up . But it wasn’t pretty.”

Despite the exhaustion, sacrifice, depression and thickened skin, she credits the experience as essential to her growth. “It’s all a part of who I am today and why I’m here,” says Vosk. “But it has taken a lot.”

Devoting a concert to Judy Garland in the great hall where she legendary performer made such a profound impact is particularly meaningful. “To me, Judy was a creature of utter complexity. To loosely quote her, she sang about rainbows and she’d been searching for rainbows for her whole life. It’s no secret that Judy had demons, but don’t we all,” says Vosk who is inspired by Garland’s unwavering spirit. “The resilience and tenacity of this woman to survive in a business since age 3 is unbelievable. A business that was not kind to women, in particular. Exotically those two wanted to run their own show and be their own boss.”

As Vosk sees it women like Garland created the mold and opened the doors for other women like herself to run through. “She and countless other women are who I look up to as I continue to navigate my own path,” says Vosk. “These things are scary to do. They’re lonely.”

So what can people expect to experience at Get Happy? “They will see historical moments Judy created, but also with a real look at the life Judy led—good, bad, magical and everything in between,” says Vosk. “And then you’ll also hear me belt my a** off.”