From Broadway to Beethoven: Inside Josh Groban’s Charlotte Performance

August 27, 2026

Lawrence Toppman

By Lawrence Toppman

Josh Groban doesn’t swing. He doesn’t scat or bend notes or improvise. He doesn’t do comic songs or uptempo numbers. What he does, in a show lasting nearly two hours with a couple of guest soloists, is deliver a series of power ballads with complete sincerity and elegant diction in a wide-ranging, well-focused, butterscotch-smooth voice.

That’s enough.

He came to Belk Theater Wednesday night for a single performance, backed by the well-used Charlotte Symphony and 16 underused members of the Charlotte Master Chorale. The woman standing behind me to get tickets at the will-call window worried we wouldn’t get inside by 8 p.m. for the nearly sold-out show. “His concerts start promptly,” she warned. “The one in Norfolk last week started right on time. The one in Hershey the week before, too.” Hershey … Pennsylvania? “Oh, yes,” she said.

The 45-year-old who inspires such loyalty is not the callow kid who released his debut album in 2001, after dropping out of Carnegie Mellon University to pursue a recording career. His voice remains a high baritone, verging on tenor, but he no longer just sings: He inhabits his material. When he delivers a (too-short) snippet from “Sweeney Todd,” you see why he earned a Tony nomination in that role in 2023. When he makes one of his rare forays into the Great American Songbook, “As Time Goes By” gains fresh, wistful appeal.

He dresses simply: a suit you could have convinced yourself was Carolina blue in the first half, a white suit in the second. He doesn’t move around the stage much; he’s most at home behind the microphone stand or sitting on a stool with a handheld mic. He delivers gently amusing, mildly self-deprecating chatter. When he engaged a brassy audience member in the second half, she explained she was there with her husband of 37 years: “And I told him he WAS going to see Josh Groban!” The star smiled at her spouse and said, “Don’t worry, sir, it’s almost over.”

The tour is titled “Stage, Screen and Symphony.” The CSO occasionally serves as a lush, bland accompanist in these kinds of settings – what Richard Wagner called “the big guitar,” referring to primitive orchestration in early 19^th-century Italian operas – but it was crucial to the success of this endeavor, from a briefly dissonant “Send in the Clowns” to the looming menace of the Oscar-winning “Skyfall.” That song was one of my favorite moments in the concert, with music director-guitarist Tariqh Akoni delivering James Bond-style licks and the Master Chorale giving the lyrics extra weight.

Groban likes to compliment people, whether they’re the kind of arts educators who inspired him or subtle pianist Danae Greenfield. He introduced 18-year-old Samia Posadas, winner of the 2026 Jimmy Awards, for a solo (“On My Own” from “Les Miserables”) and a tender duet on “All I Ask of You” from “The Phantom of the Opera.” He gave violinist Lucia Micarelli a sizzling five-minute solo, had her accompany him in the poignant title song from “Cinema Paradiso,” then duetted with her vocally on another Oscar-winner, “Falling Slowly” from “Once.”

He dedicated that song to co-writer Glen Hansard, who died in a motorcycle accident last month near Dublin. But he saved his most poignant dedication for the encore, where he did “Over the Rainbow” as a tribute to Dolly Parton.

I’ve never gushed over that song or the movie from which it comes. (I know, it’s shocking for a former professional film critic not to love “The Wizard of Oz.”) Yet his restrained, unfussy, deeply felt performance, eschewing vocal heroics, really captured me. I was reminded of Beethoven’s inscription at the head of his Missa Solemnis: “Von Herzen – möge es wieder zu Herzen gehen!” “From the heart – may it go to the heart again.” That’s Josh Groban for you.