Stellar Duo

Merideth Kaye Clark 00C was born singing. She’s been told that she lulled herself to sleep as a baby, and remembers her parents’ frustration when ordering her to her room as punishment just meant more “private studio time,” she says.

At five, Clark was cast in her first musical, Pinocchio, and she recently completed a two-year stint as the Elphaba understudy in the first national tour of Wicked, a musical retelling of the story of the witches of Oz. She performed the role about 150 times in more than thirty cities, but still spent a lot of time “waiting backstage for the chance to be painted green.”

The experience of living on the road informed her new folk-pop solo album: Young Stellar Object (a term borrowed from astronomy, which describes a star not yet fully formed). The album was produced, engineered, and mixed by Emory classmate Ricky Marson 00C.

“We both have such amazing memories of our time at Emory—and if we hadn’t met and become friends while in college, none of this music would have ever happened,” says Clark, who majored in neuroscience and behavioral biology but also studied classical voice at Emory.

This summer, the duo returned to play at the Atlanta Room at Smith’s Olde Bar and Java Monkey in Decatur.

Clark and Marson previously teamed up to create Girl Robot, a concept album and YouTube series.