OHIO musical theater graduate found more than competition on the stage at Lincoln Center

For many musical theater undergraduates, it would be an absolute dream to perform on a stage at Lincoln Center in New York City, but for Jacob Simmons, that dream was made a reality.

On April 12, Simmons, a 2026 musical theater graduate, was one of 10 finalists performing in the American Pops Orchestra NextGen National, a vocal competition that “gives collegiate vocalists the opportunity to learn from industry professionals while competing for a chance to win scholarship money and paid performance opportunities with APO.”

Simmons’ musical theater journey dates all the way back to his high school years in Covington, Louisiana, where he mostly performed in straight plays before discovering his talent for singing on stage.

“It was the end of my freshman year of high school,” Simmons said. “I was just being loud in the back of the theater, singing to myself or something. It was one of those ‘High School Musical’ moments. I was playing football at the time, too. Someone was like, ‘Hey, you can kind of sing’…and so they told me to audition for the school musical, and I did.”

Eight years later, as he was nearing the finish line of his bachelor’s degree in musical theater, Simmons heard about the NextGen contest in a message from the School of Theater.

“I just sent in a video and then I went on with my life,” Simmons said. “Then I found out I was a semi-finalist…They put together a live stream on YouTube with all of the videos, and kind of set it up like a live competition but it was all virtual, and then I became a finalist.”

In preparation for the final round of the contest, Simmons prepared two songs: “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon & Garfunkel and “Old Devil Moon” from the 1947 Broadway musical “Finian’s Rainbow.” 

“The whole competition is about uplifting and keeping the Great American Songbook and all these jazz standards in the public eye,” Simmons said. “They do a lot of educational outreach programs all about music, and that's really great.”

This competition not only gave Simmons the chance to perform on one of the world’s most esteemed stages, but he got a glimpse into the working life of an actor. After staying awake to record an audition for a talent agency on Thursday night, Simmons was then off to the airport in the wee hours of the morning on Friday to begin his weekend in New York City.

In the days leading up to the competition, Simmons attended his first Broadway show, rehearsed in the same rooms that had housed legends like Kendrick Lamar and Paul McCartney, was coached on his repertoire and spent time getting to know the other contestants.

“Never once did it feel like a competition,” Simmons said. “Everybody was just super sweet and super talented. You couldn't be anything but proud of everybody getting up there and performing.”

On Sunday, the finalists competed for three prizes.

“I've never been in a room full of so many phenomenal singers,” Simmons added. “I consider myself an actor that sings loudly, but these people are singers, really masters of their craft. Just watching them, I felt like I was learning so much.”

The discourse surrounding undergraduate competitions varies based on perspective, with some people finding these contests unnecessarily stressful and others finding them to be good platforms to hone performance-based skills. After experiencing one of his discipline’s most prestigious competitions in the country, Simmons walked away with his own opinions about collegiate competition culture.

“If they're setting it up to be cut-throat, like if you're not good enough, you're not going to win, I disagree with that,” Simmons said. “Everybody is on their own incredibly specific journey. No one of us two performers were alike in any way… I feel like something like this…where everybody is just there to learn, have a good weekend and get to perform, do the thing that they love at Lincoln Center, you're a winner even if you don't get a title.”

As Simmons looks to the future, where he plans to move to New York City in the fall, he is internalizing some of the most important takeaways from his NextGen National experience.

“Don't see other people's successes as your failure, because it's just going to rob you of the joy of experiencing something,” Simmons said. “I felt so much joy the whole weekend…They called out Mikey, who ended up winning the Chip Hand…I just felt all of this proudness and energy come out of me, and that feels so much better than hearing somebody else's name and being like, ‘That's not fair,’ because what's the point of that?”