By Scott Tady
MIDLAND — As a starting pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Steven Brault savored the cheers from a hometown stadium crowd.
Since fifth grade, Brault also has harbored a love for singing on stage.
His Major League Baseball career ended prematurely with a shoulder injury, and now Brault works as a Pirates broadcaster. His passion for singing still burns brightly, prompting the 33-year-old San Diego native to meet Wednesday with Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School students.
Speaking, singing and fielding questions from students in the Midland school’s packed MainStage Theater, Brault delivered an 80-minute Master Class, hoping to inspire students to find their true voice.
“I grew up never as one of the spectaculars,” Brault said. “I was always pretty good at baseball. I was always pretty good at performing arts. But for me, it’s all about just finding the thing you love and are passionate for, and then going for it. Just making sure you sink everything you have into whatever it is you’re doing. And then if you decide you don’t like it and it’s not for you, then you can change.
“It sometimes takes ‘thinking outside the box’ to achieve your goals,” Brault added, “and sometimes failing a good amount before finding a good thing.”
Like a stealth pickoff move from the pitcher’s mound, Brault pivoted successfully in his career, going from baseball player to a Sports Net Pittsburgh broadcaster, while also becoming a recording artist with an impressive 2020 debut album.
First, Brault joined the Pirates in 2016, following three years in baseball’s Minor Leagues. Brault amassed a 12-18 record and notched 291 strikeouts for the Buccos. In 2022, the Chicago Cubs acquired him, though Brault only pitched nine innings for the Windy City squad. A shoulder injury ceased his pitching career, and after a short stint trying a comeback as a Minor Leagues positional player, he retired from playing baseball in 2023.
Though by then, Brault’s far-soaring vocal range was a new focus of attention.
Having studied music performance in college, Brault volunteered as a last-minute replacement and sang the National Anthem in his Pirates uniform as an active member of the team before a home game. He later appeared as a special guest vocalist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
Which of those gigs was more daunting: Singing the anthem at PNC Park, or performing with the PSO at Heinz Hall?
“That’s a good question,” Brault said. “It takes a little bit of the nerves away when you’re at Heinz Hall because you got the orchestra behind you and you know they’re going to be great. You know, ‘If I mess up, maybe they can mask it a bit’ with the fantastic music going on behind me. But for the National Anthem, I think I was so nervous because I knew if I screwed up there was going to be this huge, hilarious story about this dumb Major Leaguer who tries to sing the anthem in uniform and screws up. So I was more nervous for that. I was more prepared for the symphony, so that helped.”
In 2020, Brault swung for the fences, releasing his first album, “A Pitch At Broadway,” featuring renditions of musical theater show-stoppers like “Defying Gravity” from “Wicked” and “Wait for Me” from “Hadestown,” plus theater classics like “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from “Carousel.” The well-praised album featured much-coveted rockers like drummers Kenny Aronoff (John Mellencamp) and Vinnie Colaiuta (Sting) and bassist Leland Sklar (James Taylor, Phil Collins).
“If you want the best background music, you get the best studio musicians,” Brault said, crediting the clout of his album’s producer, Grammy Award nominee Loren Harriet, who also helmed albums for former New York Yankee Bernie Williams, West Homestead-bred film and TV star Jeff Goldblum and author Stephen King.
No current recording projects are in the works, as Brault and his wife — with their 5-month-old daughter — have been busy relocating fulltime to Pittsburgh, having been splitting time between Western Pennsylvania and Arizona.
“But once I get into one place year-round, I will at least join a band,” Brault said. “I’ve always been in a rock band growing up. That is probably more the way I’d get into the consistent music scene.”
“But I just grew up loving Broadway,” Brault said. “The first time I got into it was fifth grade when I was in a school play, and sixth grade when I went out to a community theater for the first time and auditioned and got a tiny role in ‘My Fair Lady.'”
His voice is Broadway-caliber, as Brault proved at Lincoln Park. His voice glided effortlessly from soaring heights to commanding depths on a delightful rendition of “You’ll Be Back” from the musical “Hamilton.”
In 2021, during the Covid lockdowns, Brault performed online with the Broadway cast of the smash-hit “Hadestown.”
Aware of his passion for sharing his singing, Lincoln Park part-time artist-in-residence instructor Liz Pontis invited Brault to host a master class at the Midland school, enabling him to talk to the charter school’s performing arts, design and broadcasting students, as well as school athletes.
“He was as excited to come here as this whole group of students was,” Pontis said.
