Interview: Josh Groban

Josh Groban may only be 45, but he has an old-school reverence for the craft of making huge, complex musical statements that harken back to the days of storied film arrangers like Bernard Herrmann, Henry Mancini and Quincy Jones.

That kind of appreciation reverberates through “Cinematic,” a 10-track homage to film music that found Groban and producer Greg Wells (“Wicked,” “The Greatest Showman”) paying homage to generation-spanning songs dating as far back as 1942’s “Casablanca” all the way up through the 2017 animated Pixar feature “Coco.” For Groban, the inspiration for this project started when he was asked to perform the Sicilian-language rendition of “Brucia la terra,” “The Godfather Theme,” in front of Francis Ford Coppola for the American Film Institute.

“I always knew I would want to sing some of these [songs] live, but when you decide to take on a theme on an album a lot of things kind of have to fall into place to make it very apparent that this is the right time to do these songs,” Groban said in an early May interview. “A couple of those things the universe put in front of me. One instance was singing that song in that room with that arrangement in front of Coppola himself and the cast members of ‘The Godfather.’ I enjoyed singing the richness of that melody so much that I kind of took the nucleus of that night away and thought, ‘Huh, that’s a song for my toolbelt now.’”

Groban and Wells got the ball rolling in early 2025 and pieced together the creative process that included a six-month period of emails flying back and forth with ideas. Technology was kept at bay to the point where the duo didn’t even record any demos. For Groban, Wells was a crucial partner and the creative process needed to be as organic as possible. In many ways, it was a throwback to how albums were done back in the day.

“I think for an album that could be perceived as such a broad stroke of an idea, every song had a very, very specific and emotional reason why, which guided our path for sure,” he explained. “Greg Wells was the glue for me of keeping us on track, keeping our creative vision and our tastes where it needed to be. Having somebody who is so focused like Greg is and has such an incredible Rolodex of arrangers that can help these songs come to fruition was vital to being able to not get lost in the weeds.”

Groban added, “The beautiful challenge was we wanted to do it in a way Frank Sinatra might have said to Nelson Riddle, ‘Here’s a song, I’m going to sing it, what’s the arrangement?’ That’s it. We really wanted to let the arrangers have the first say, which is not something I often get to do. In this business, a lot of times you record a track and then you send it to a string arranger and ask him to wrap it with his strings. For us, it was more about here’s the song, here’s the key, I’m the singer, we’re going to give you a few adjectives about what we do want it to be and what we don’t want it to be. We’ll let you put pencil to paper and let us know what you come up with. These great brains that can orchestrate and arrange are a member of the band. They are the secret sauce.”

Special moments aplenty popped up throughout “Cinematic” for Groban. One particular highlight was having his father Jack, a former first-chair trumpet player, join him in the studio to play and solo on a lush reading of “Moon River.”

“Being able to include my dad, who played that song when he was in college, was something that was emotional and powerful for us,” Groban said.

Equally rewarding was having longtime friend Jennifer Hudson, who is also part of the current tour, join Groban on “Unchained Melody.” While both artists first met a decade-plus ago at a Clive Davis Grammy party, Groban recalls the duo’s friendship truly got rolling when he appeared on Hudson’s talk show followed by her duetting with him on a television special he hosted.

“I invited Jennifer to be on a Christmas special I did for CBS and we sang, ‘O, Holy Night’ together,” Groban recalled with awe. “To hear my more classical style and her more versatile, soulful style come together when we were singing this final note, I thought, ‘Oh my God, our worlds are blending in a real beautiful way.’ We kind of looked at each other and decided to find something else to do together, we just didn’t know what it would be.

“When I knew this was going to be an album of big singing and big feelings, I asked her what song would be great and we gave her a few options. She said ‘Unchained Melody.’ That’s what she said she wanted to sing forever and I said ‘Me too.’ The only problem was that it’s always been a solo because that lyric is about that longing and you’re singing to nothing. Greg, Jen and I all kind of figured out how to make it about two people who are miles apart and need to keep stepping toward each other? We had a great time figuring it out and we’ll do it on tour, of course.”

As for this string of dates, Groban looks at it as an opportunity to hit the road with Hudson having parallels to his experience making “Cinematic” -- a lightning-in-a-bottle moment he is enthusiastically sharing with audiences everywhere.

“The world we’re in right now, I feel so blessed that I get to be in a room where I can recharge my soul with music and bring people into one space,” he said. “And to get to do it with a voice like Jennifer’s -- we all need to leave the world outside for a couple of hours and literally and figuratively sing the same songs together. Having the catalog I have right now from over 25 years, and these songs that are so meant to be done live, they are so epic and so beautiful. We just want to make this a night of melting faces with our voices and singing each night like it’s our last night on earth. We’re going to have an amazing time doing it.”