Dez Duron left Yale for The Voice. Then Broadway made him a Grammy nominee

A record-setting quarterback left Yale to sing

At Evangel Christian Academy in Shreveport, Louisiana, Duron was the state's Gatorade Player of the Year and set state records with 58 touchdown passes as a senior. Yale recruited him, and he played quarterback on its junior varsity team in 2009 and 2010. He had made a demo of crooner songs in high school and had an agent at Yale. In 2011, when The Voice called about its second season, he took two semesters off and moved to Los Angeles. To get him ready for TV, his hair was styled into a pompadour and he was told to sing the Backstreet Boys' “I Want It That Way.” No coach turned around.

Three coaches turned for “Sara Smile” in 2012

Duron stayed in Los Angeles, took voice and piano lessons, learned the guitar and made music in the studio. When The Voice invited him back for season 3, a second try meant officially withdrawing from Yale. “I really felt like if I didn't make a team twice, my career's over,” he told InsideHook in 2025. On the advice of the show's bandleader he sang Hall & Oates' “Sara Smile.” Blake Shelton, Christina Aguilera and CeeLo Green turned their chairs, and he chose Aguilera.

Viewers' votes carried him to the Top 8

On Team Christina he won his battle against Paulina with Bruno Mars's “Just the Way You Are” and his knockout with Lionel Richie's “Stuck on You.” Viewers then voted him through three live rounds, with Hunter Hayes's “Wanted,” “Can't Take My Eyes Off You” and Michael Bublé's version of “Feeling Good.” He told TVLine that “Can't Take My Eyes Off You” showed the music he wanted to make: “classic melodies with relevant beats underneath them.” He sang Justin Bieber's “U Smile” in the Top 8 week and was eliminated on November 27, 2012. With his exit, Aguilera became the first coach on the show with no singer in the finale.

A wedding singer from Harlem won the role of Gil Brentley

A casting director on The Voice warned Duron that the red carpet rolled out for contestants is “being rolled up behind them as they walk.” Duron chased mainstream stardom in Hollywood, then turned to theater in New York. When he first auditioned for Maybe Happy Ending, he lived in Harlem and sang “Cake by the Ocean” and “Mr. Brightside” in a wedding band to make ends meet. At his callback he offered to sing like Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Chet Baker or Mel Tormé, and director Michael Arden asked for “The Way You Look Tonight,” as intimate as a studio take. “Do what you do,” Arden told him. He booked the part.

Gil Brentley is a robot's favorite crooner

The musical is set in Seoul in 2064. Oliver, a retired Helperbot, lives a quiet life in a one-room apartment, listening to the jazz records his former owner loved, and Gil Brentley, a fictional singer from the time of Sinatra and Nat King Cole, is his favorite. Gil opens and closes the show with “Why Love,” and for the English-language version the writers, Will Aronson and Hue Park, gave him a new song, “A Sentimental Person.” They told InsideHook that Duron had “such a gorgeous ‘crooner’ voice with a contemporary sensibility.” Duron told Pop-Culturalist that he first pictured Gil as Sinatra, then found Sammy Davis Jr. in the song “Jenny” and Nat King Cole in “Why Love.”

Atlanta saw his Gil first, in 2020

The English-language version of the musical opened at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre in early 2020, with Duron as Gil. Reviewing it for ArtsATL, Jim Farmer singled out Duron's jazz sequences in the score. In April 2020 Arden called him with a plan to open on Broadway in early 2021, and the pandemic kept Broadway closed until September 2021. Duron was the only actor to stay with the show from its Atlanta debut to Broadway.

Frankly Dez brought Sinatra nights to Nashville

During the lockdown Duron moved home to Shreveport and wrote song after song. In 2021 he moved to Nashville to work as a crooner. With his friend David Byerley he created Frankly Dez, a weekly Sinatra-themed show at the Dream Hotel. The sets mixed Sinatra with John Legend's “All of Me,” Michael Jackson's “The Way You Make Me Feel” and his own “Promise Me.” By May 2022 the show ran monthly so it could tour. “Singing on stage and playing quarterback are very similar,” he told the Shreveport-Bossier Journal. “The pocket is going to break down. It happens during every show.”

Critics singled out his Gil on Broadway

Maybe Happy Ending opened at the Belasco Theatre on November 12, 2024, and Gil Brentley was Duron's Broadway debut. In The New York Times, Jesse Green wrote that when the robots' duets “become trios with Duron's Gil Brentley, we understand just how powerful popular music can be: It has given these robots hearts.” Time Out called him a “handsome smoothie.” In July 2026, reviewing the show with its new leads, TheaterMania wrote that Duron's “silky vocals will send you straight to the cast recording.”

When the show stopped, he sang his audition song

In spring 2025 a medical emergency in the audience paused a performance for an extended time. Duron walked onstage and sang “The Way You Look Tonight” a cappella, the song that had won him the part, and Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen later joined him for an impromptu concert. “My biggest priority was making sure everyone felt comfortable,” he told Pop-Culturalist.

The cast album earned him a Grammy nomination

In June 2025 Maybe Happy Ending won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Its Broadway cast album opens with Duron singing “Why Love” and ends with a bonus track credited to Gil's fictional band, The Gil Brentley Jazz Orchestra: “Why Love (Live in Amsterdam, May 1948).” At the 2026 Grammy Awards the album was nominated for Best Musical Theater Album, with Duron among its credited nominees. The award went to Buena Vista Social Club.

Lincoln Center booked him, and Joe's Pub sold out

Lincoln Center's American Songbook series booked his Lincoln Center debut for March 20, 2026: All My Tomorrows, a tribute to the American crooner, at the Appel Room. In August he sold out back-to-back shows at Joe's Pub, singing standards and pop songs in a jazz style along with songs of his own, and the jazz singer Stella Cole joined him as a guest. On October 20 Cole took over Gil on Broadway for a run through November 15, and Duron is set to return to the Belasco Theatre on November 17, 2026.

• Dez Duron: career and music
• Listen to Dez Duron on Apple Music