Elena Bonomo on finding delight in infinite possibilities
The Broadway drummer tells how curiosity and versatility have helped chart her course
Written by Lisa Battles
Elena Bonomo says it’s a meditative moment when she takes command of the beat eight shows weekly as the drummer for Broadway’s Tony-award winning musical, SIX.
The setting wouldn’t give just anyone a sense of ease. The band is part of the onstage cast for the high-energy, pop-rock show. After playing her dream gig for almost four years, Bonomo says the show’s music has become “part of her body,” yet she still fully embraces her role within the show’s dynamic in new and different ways.
In her mindset, there’s always something to learn or discover, and that philosophy brought her to this stage – on Broadway and throughout life.
Early keys to curiosity
As a young child growing up an hour outside of the city, Bonomo spent many hours sitting next to her grandmother, watching her play the piano. She specifically requested it during their time together, loved seeing the joy it brought and benefited from some early lessons.
While time at the piano with her grandmother sparked her love of music, Bonomo also discovered the drums around that time, thanks to a few other relatives who played. With some help from her uncle, she was hooked after a couple of lessons. Her parents heard her pleas for a set of her own, which she got for Christmas at around age 9.
Bonomo began private lessons and played in the middle and high school bands. But it wasn’t until playing in her school musicals that she first felt the pull toward musical theater. “I realized, ‘Yeah, this is what I want to do for a living,’” she says.
Feeding a love for versatility
When considering college, Bonomo sought a program to help her develop her skills across musical styles.
“A lot of schools are very classical-oriented or very jazz-oriented, and I knew at that time that I loved playing all styles of music. I loved rock and funk and Latin music and even the possibility of Broadway, which can sometimes be every single style of music combined into one show,” she says.
She says she chose Berklee College of Music because “they weren’t so focused on just one style.”
She was also ready to experience life in a new place. Beyond that, some of her favorite artists had attended Berklee, like John Mayer and Terri Lyne Carrington, the latter of whom she got to study with at school, along with Neal Smith, Bob Gullotti and Jamey Haddad.
After college, Bonomo joined the Boston-based Americana folk band, The Novel Ideas, for two U.S. tours. That meant five people squeezed into an unreliable van with little money to cover lodging, yet innumerable treasures in seeing new places, making friends and having fun, she says.
“It was an amazing experience because it was my first time touring around the country. Before that, I hadn’t seen too much. With this band in our little van, we got to see the U.S. and play different types of venues,” Bonomo says.
After developing a love for travel with this first post-college gig, Bonomo revisited the idea of working on cruise ships after auditioning back in school. She landed a gig with Holland America Line and set sail on new adventures.
Taking in the world of sights and songs
Bonomo played on cruise ships and saw more places she’d never thought she would, like Australia, New Zealand, Greece and Fiji. Guest entertainers would fly to meet the ship, rehearse with the house band and deliver shows together.
“Every night was different. It trained me to be the working musician I am today in New York because I was sight reading music, playing with different artists every night, playing along with a click track, using in-ear monitors and playing along in a real show with actors. All of that was such a great way to prepare me,” Bonomo says.
Between cruise contracts, she’d return home, play community theater locally and visit the city frequently to work and network. She played with singer-songwriters and wedding bands, did workshops for new shows and picked up some opportunities subbing for other musicians on several shows.
“Somebody once said to me, ‘When you first get out of school, just say yes to everything. You never know where your next opportunity is going to come from.’ So even with the smaller shows, I was like, ‘Yes, absolutely. This sounds fun. It’s more experience,’” she says.
The power of mentorship
Bonomo credits many people and mentors who recognized her passion and facilitated connections along her path. After all, you have to have the question to answer “yes.”
“Sometimes it’s luck; sometimes it’s the stars aligning. But I don’t think the stars are going to align for you unless you put yourself out there and you make yourself open to receive these opportunities. It’s all about putting out your energy into the universe and then you’ll get it back,” Bonomo says.
Being so close to Broadway helped. Her high school choir accompanist had a career on Broadway and introduced her to drummers Larry Lelli and John Redsecker. Bonomo contacted them and asked if she could shadow as they played a couple of shows, and they both agreed.
She and Lelli reconnected when he did a clinic for Berklee’s percussion department, and they stayed in touch. When Lelli needed subs for Cagney, an off-Broadway show he had been working on, he called Bonomo. That gig opened doors, and soon after, she got the call to sub for Waitress, marking her Broadway debut.
“I was ecstatic. It felt like everything I’d worked for was finally paying off,” she recalls.
After that, she was offered the Waitress National Tour, so off she went for a year around the country.
Dynamism and consistency
With SIX, Bonomo says that establishing the comfort with the show over the past several years has allowed her to channel different things into her performances and tune into the nuances of interaction between people on the stage and in the seats. Show after show, she still loves the show’s groove-based, pop-rock drumming and being on stage.
“It’s just so much fun to actually be part of the show and be able to interact with the rest of my band members and the queens and see the audience every night. They laugh at different things all the time,” Bonomo says.
Meanwhile, she keeps her calendar full and skills sharp with other gigs, saying “yes” to all she can manage “just for the variety.”
“Something that I feel like I can always relate to is that I’m a forever student. I’m constantly learning and growing as a musician, and I need that in my life to feel healthy and keep me on my toes,” Bonomo says.
Taking care of the music
An important principle of lifelong learning is giving back by empowering others to learn, too. Bonomo teaches privately and mentors through Maestra Music, an organization that connects mentees age 18 and older pursuing music careers in theatre with professional women and nonbinary mentors working in the industry.
“Every day that I’m playing the drums, I feel so lucky. I feel so grateful to say that I get to do what I love. That’s because I had other people to look up to as a kid … not only just to look up to but people who offered guidance and showed that they cared about helping me – someone brand new to the scene that they didn’t know,” she says. “If I didn’t have that, maybe I wouldn’t have broken into the Broadway world. Maybe I wouldn’t have become a musician. It just takes one person to change somebody’s life.”
