Husky grad reflects on ‘Circle of Life’ as professional musician

Tereasa Payne has been living her musical dreams for a number of years now, always close-up and personal to the action -- like Disney’s The Lion King on Broadway -- while serving as a member of the pit orchestra.
Payne graduated from Aurora High School with the Class of 1992, recently being inducted into the Aurora Alumni Hall of Fame. She has since moved to New York City and lives with her husband, Simon Hutchings, who is also a musician.
“I started in first grade,” Payne said on how long music has been a part of her life. “I started piano lessons with Shirley Barnell and I came home from my first piano lesson and told my parents I wanted to be a musician.”
This surprised her parents, she said with a laugh, but she never changed her mind. Payne would stick with music all throughout her initial academic career, eventually starting up private lessons.
“My mom would literally drive me to Omaha every week and sit in the car while I took a two-hour lesson and then drive me back home,” she said. “It has been ever since then (that I’ve been with music) and there has never been really a day without it.”
Payne has also spent time learning from the best throughout her post-secondary educational career, which has included places like Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D., where she obtained her bachelors in music education.
“Along the way I decided that I really wasn’t that great with teaching groups, I am much better one-on-one, so I kind of started thinking, ‘Well, I want to be a college music professor,’” she recounted. “So I went on to grad school… at Arizona State University.”
While in Arizona, Payne decided that being a professor was great and all, but she really wanted to perform.
“So I started taking orchestra auditions and kind of figuring out what I wanted to do,” she noted. “And then along the way, I met my now husband, who was playing woodwinds and I thought, ‘I want to be that.’ So I started taking clarinet and saxophone lessons and got into music theater and just loved it. It was just, it was my place.”
Orchestral performances were her love, she agreed.
“And everything I do (now), really theater, has so many different styles,” she said. “Because you play classical music, you play rock music, you play world music, everything in one kind of setting. That really spoke to me.”
After obtaining her masters, Payne went on toward her doctorate at Boston University.
“And I didn’t finish the degree, I actually went more for the education and more performance opportunities to play in the orchestras and things there,” she explained. “Then I started working.”
What started out as a lot of weddings and other performances has since given way to mostly theater performances, alongside accompanying some bigger names in the industry.
“I got into, especially in Florida, playing with a lot of acts that would come through, like artists that would travel through Florida and pick up bands or orchestras to play with,” Payne said. “So I’ve played with, and I still play with, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Johnny Mathis, Idena Menzel (and more)… it’s been so amazing.”
Payne’s performances have also included The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
“It’s been really amazing, the amount of people I’ve gotten to play with,” she said. “And then when I moved to New York, (I) started playing (with The) Lion King. I also have subbed on a lot of other Broadway shows -- Phantom of the Opera, Something Rotten -- lots of fun things.”
She added that she’s also had the opportunity to play on a few TV Shows (other than Fallon), like being a part of the Bombshell Orchestra on SMASH and the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
It has all been a bit of a whirlwind, she confided.
“People ask me all the time if (I) still pinch myself,” she said. “And I’m like, ‘Yes!’ Every time I sit down in the pit, I always take a little bit of time before the show to just kind of look around at the audience. And when it’s in New York, I’m like, ‘I’m on Broadway. I’m playing on Broadway in The Lion King, in this incredible show.’”
This moment of reflection often includes how appreciative she is of everyone who has helped her along the way -- including teachers.
“I know this sounds cliche, but Aurora was such a part of who I am, because the teachers and the work ethic that you learn being in a community that’s so strong like that,” she said. “I couldn’t have done it without it.”
Asked how her life path came to include being a “regular sub” in the pit orchestra for The Lion King, Payne dove into a story about her first pit experience. They needed an artist who played both the flute and the clarinet. She didn’t know the latter, but decided to challenge herself to learn.
“I got into the world flutes that I play for The Lion King the same way,” she noted.
There are 14 different flutes used in The Lion King, Payne added, all from different countries. Thanks to an earlier experience that proved playing bamboo flutes was harder than it looked, Payne dove into learning the world flutes through lessons and the mentoring of others -- some from the countries of their flutes’ origin.
“Then lo and behold, years later here I am playing the very same show that kind of brought me to them all,” she said.
It never loses its sparkle, she admitted.
“Lion King is who I am now,” Payne reported, asked what her favorite show has been. “It’s really kind of my identity. So that’s number one, but there’s just been so many cool things… I’m just like a kid in a candy store every time I get to do (a show). It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve played Lion King. Every time I’m skipping over there.”
Being a “regular sub” for The Lion King means that Payne is on deck when the regular flute performer is sick, wants to take vacation or just needs a break. This allows Payne to revisit the production often, sometimes flying out to take stead in other states, while also chasing other pursuits and opportunities.
One of her favorite pieces in the production, she revealed, is the first song, “Circle of Life.” The song begins with iconic chanting, big drums and, of course, an appearance by a flute or two.
“I get to play this big bass pan flute that’s five feet tall,” Payne noted. “It is really a low kind of sound. So it’s just like I can hear it vibrating throughout the show. And then I switch to a Romanian pan flute and I’m playing along and there is this big, big solo there. So just you get kind of thrown into it right at the beginning.”
Being a musician that plays as many world flutes as she does, Payne is classified among the elite.
“What I do is really unique, to play all these different flutes, and there’s a pretty good stat about it,” she said lightly. “Because the amount of people that can play the book, the instruments that I do for Lion King, the amount of people that can do it is less than the amount of people that have walked on the moon.”
All that aside, Payne is as humble and grateful as can be.
“I still have so many supporters from my times in Aurora and growing up,” she reflected. “And throughout my life, everyone’s been very supportive. And my band directors that I studied with at Aurora I’m still in contact with them. They still support me. They still come to my concerts when they can or, when everything kind of went virtual, I was able to share a lot of concerts with them.”
In a beautiful culmination to what started so many years ago for Payne, she reflected that her love for music and desire to perform has really come full-circle -- a part of the circle of life.