Cynthia S. Meng ’15 on the Leap From Software Engineering to Music Directing for Broadway

How does a software engineer become a Broadway music director? Meet Cynthia S. Meng ’15, the assistant conductor, keyboardist, and music director behind a slew of recent Broadway hits — “Hadestown,” “The Outsiders,” “Back to the Future,” and more. With a Harvard Computer Science degree in one hand and a conductor’s baton in the other, Meng has taken transferable skills to a new level.

Meng began her journey with music as a classical pianist, participating in California’s Certificate of Merit program. In high school, her school theater’s program’s need for a rehearsal pianist helped her expand her repertoire.

“It was a great exchange,” Meng said. “I loved doing it, and they loved having me.”

Meng arrived at Harvard with experience in choir and theater, on top of classical piano. She knew she wanted to join an a cappella group — which ended up being the Harvard Callbacks — and immediately got involved with the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club. Later, she worked heavily with the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, eventually taking music directing positions within each group.

Still, Meng’s academics took a completely different turn. She did not enter college with a plan. However, after being captivated by one of Harvard’s most popular classes — CS50: “Introduction to Computer Science” — Meng found herself a Computer Science concentrator.

“I really had a knack for it, too,” Meng said.

Meng was “curious about how it all worked,” particularly the world wide web. Meng remembers practicing elementary web design through online games as a kid, and credits the virtual pet game of her childhood, Neopets, as her entry to computer science.

“When I came to school, I don’t think I considered that music was a viable career path,” Meng said.

When senior year rolled around, Meng found herself without a concrete plan. While Meng believes the Hasty Pudding has had to come to terms with its “old social institutionalized practices,” she credits it for expanding her idea of what jobs in music could be. Working in collaboration with professional theatermakers as the Pudding’s student composer for one year and conductor for two years, Meng envisioned herself working with music for a living.

“I was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool. I’m good at that. I have a knack for it, I really enjoy it, I love the rehearsal process,’” Meng said.

However, Meng did not jump straight into the music scene because she “had this realization pretty late” — Meng’s last year in college, in fact. That same year, Meng was hired by a musical analytics startup, Next Big Sound, which was soon acquired by music streaming service Pandora. Still, she was delighted by its location at the center of music and theater: New York City.

“The important thing to me was that the job was in the city, and that would allow me to move there,” she said.

While working as a software engineer, she began to “gig a little bit on the side,” often taking unpaid jobs on Playbill.com for exposure. Luckily, Meng’s friends from groups like the Pudding who had already stepped into the professional music world helped her land jobs as a music assistant, where Meng was in charge of the score for a theater production. Expertise with computers and notation technology helped Meng land the first jobs that would kickstart her musical career. After juggling gigs and work at Pandora for years, Meng quit her job as a software engineer, concluding she was at a point where she could make a living with music. Meng remembers thinking, “I need to jump.”

So how did Meng go from payless gigs to award-winning musicals? Meng decided to email the director of Broadway musical “Hadestown” as a fan of the show since its concept album stage, asking to be connected to the show’s music director. In hindsight, Meng admits the move was “a little bit ballsy.” Yet Meng interviewed with the music director and got the job of music assistant.

“He was sort of impressed by the computer science thing,” she said.

What did Meng’s parents think of this newfound success? Cleverly, Meng kept her new job a secret until “Hadestown” won the Tony for Best Musical.

“I don’t think my parents were super thrilled about it, but at the time, I thought it was the best way to go about things,” she said.

Meng’s parents are immigrants from China and had no notion of Broadway growing up. Thus, Meng felt that with the big win from “Hadestown,” she finally had the tangible evidence necessary to show her parents that she could support herself with a career in music.

Even with her success in the music industry, her computer science training has remained beneficial. Meng says computer science taught her “how to think logically and algorithmically,” which she finds highly applicable in her world of music — not to mention technology’s role in creating music for the stage.

“If I didn’t know how to do something, I would just figure it out. And that, I think, took some of the critical thinking skills that you learn doing problem sets and these kinds of things that you learn in the CS world,” she said.

Amidst her success, Meng finds she is “learning so much still as I go.” Through the positions she has held as an assistant, associate, music director, supervisor, and more, she constantly reminds herself that no one works in the same style. She sees her work in music as utilitarian, balancing artistry and efficiency. To Meng, one of the most important skills is the ability to collaborate and communicate effectively. Introspection, practice, and failure have been necessary to work well with people and grow in one’s career — for Meng, it is an ongoing learning process.

Now, Meng is playing keyboard for “Ragtime” at the New York City Center, which runs through Nov. 10, and in the near future, she will be music directing “White Christmas” at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey.

“I love that my career is multifaceted — that I do different things,” Meng said. “To me, that’s the spice of life.”