Meet Kirk Hill, the MMC Staffer Commanding Audiences After Hours
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As MMC’s performing arts students and faculty dove into a hectic production schedule this spring, Kirk Hill, a mailroom coordinator at the College, was juggling his own calendar of shows. It included singing before packed crowds at Hawaii’s Neal S. Blaisdell Arena on Valentine’s Day and Connecticut’s Foxwoods Resort Casino in March; performing alongside his eight-year-old son in the Creative Stage Spectacular, an original theatre production co-created with children at NYC’s Symphony Space; and headlining a Jazz ’n Creole concert on the island of Dominica.
If MMC’s artistic energy has long attracted talented students, it has also drawn talented staff in a range of roles and departments. Hill’s a prime example. In addition to his job at 71st Street, which he’s held since 2017, he’s an actor who earned his BFA in Theatre from North Carolina A&T; a singer/songwriter; and a member of The Manhattans of Sonny Bivins, an incarnation of the classic soul group The Manhattans, best known for their 70s hit Kiss and Say Goodbye. (The founder of Hill’s group, the late Edward “Sonny” Bivins, was an original Manhattans member.) Hill and his bandmates frequently play venues like Foxwoods, the Blaisdell Arena, and Dominica’s Jazz ‘n Creole, with performances scheduled through the fall across the U.S.
Though you’re likely to catch Hill singing in his Carson Hall office, most at 71st Street have no idea he’s a performer, said Evan Colon, MMC’s mailroom supervisor. “People know Kirk as helpful and easy to work with, but he’s also a quiet, humble guy—the kind of person who’d want to hear all about your life before volunteering anything about his own,” he said. Their student workers, who tend to be Theatre majors, are among the exceptions, and often seek out Hill’s advice and stage stories. “Kirk encourages them and gives them tips on projecting their voices or finding songs that fit their range,” Colon said. “And they like hearing how he got started and what he’s working on.”
At 31, Hill is the youngest member of his group, having been discovered in 2018 while working night shifts at the historic Beacon Theatre on the Upper West Side. He’d taken a second job there as an usher, thinking it would bring in extra money and a fun environment—not at all expecting it might change his life. “I’d tell my family about all the celebrities I saw—Bruce Willis one night, Martin Scorsese another. I never thought this was how I was going to catch my big break,” Hill said. “But it happened because people saw my spirit and potential.”
The Manhattans were performing at the Beacon’s Seventies Soul Jam when they mentioned to Hill’s friend, the head of security, that one of their members was retiring and would need to be replaced. He immediately suggested they listen to Hill sing. “I was nervous at first and wasn’t going to go through with it, but my friend pushed me to take advantage of the opportunity,” Hill said. “He told me, ‘This is your time, man,’ and that I had to believe in myself and just do it.” Hill sang the Michael Jackson song Butterflies on the spot.
A month later, he got an email from the group asking him to join. Fellow band members—singers Charles Hardy, Harsey Hemphill, and Keni Jackson, who’d all been performing for decades—sensed he was an old soul, appreciated his humility, and saw similarities between his upbringing and their own. A Harlem native, Hill got his start performing in the junior choir at the storied Abyssinian Baptist Church. “We just seemed to be aligned,” Hill said. “They grew up singing in the church, and so did I. They saw that I was focused and there for the right reasons—that I only wanted to join because I love music, and that’s the kind of person they wanted.”
He would also impress the group with his work ethic, studying The Manhattans’ catalog, choreography, and videos of their shows, even when the pandemic temporarily paused their performances in 2020. By the time they booked their first post-pandemic gig at a California winery, Hill was fully in lockstep, as if he’d been performing alongside them for years.
That discipline, Hill said, was instilled by his parents, who were both talented athletes; his dad played minor league softball, among other sports, and his mother played high school basketball. “They always told me that no matter what I did in life, if it was something that I loved to do, to never let up and train and prepare for it.”
Being in the group, he added, falls into the category of things he loves. “Singing with them is so fun for me,” Hill said. “It never feels monotonous; it never feels repetitive. No one performance feels exactly the same. I’m on a different stage with a different audience each time. I just feel super blessed and grateful to be a part of it.”
Finding his path
Hill taught himself how to sing as a child by listening to his mother’s old R&B records. After joining Abyssinian’s junior choir—one of the first places, he said, where he received real instruction on how to use his voice and grow vocally—he began writing and recording his own music. By high school, he’d formed a singing group with friends, performing at school events and even once at the Apollo. Though the group eventually disbanded, Hill kept working, later partnering with a cousin who rapped and releasing a mixtape during his senior year that earned praise from friends, classmates, and members of the Abyssinian choir.
“It’s little moments like those where you think, ‘Oh, this is about to be it for me—I’m going to be famous,’” Hill said. “It didn’t happen that way, but I never gave up on my dream of performing or doing my own music professionally. I’m always writing, I’m always working on songs.”
Hill is similarly committed to his acting career. He first fell in love with the stage during an eighth-grade play, when he was cast as the Wizard of Oz in The Wiz. The applause was intoxicating, but the most meaningful moment came afterward, when a little girl in the audience, excited by his performance, insisted on taking a picture with him.
“From then on, I knew this was exactly what I wanted to do in life, because whatever I had done on stage affected this little girl so much that she wanted to take a picture with me,” he said. “And she didn’t know me—she just knew the Wiz. The fact that I could give that feeling to somebody was really cool.”
It drove his decision to study acting at North Carolina A&T, where he found his theatre family among classmates and professors.
“A lot of who I am is because of my time at college. The way I approach acting, the way I see the world—a lot of that has to do with my experience as a Theatre major. It’s a big part of me,” Hill said. During his senior year, he starred in his first professional play, a production of A Raisin in the Sun, and most recently appeared in Mad Scientist, a comedic play produced by the Asase Yaa Cultural Arts Foundation that teaches young audiences Black history.
But few experiences have matched the excitement of performing alongside his son in the Creative Stage Spectacular, while his wife cheered them on from the audience. Hill has appeared in the annual production for the past two years, and both times with his son in the show’s youth troupe.
“I don’t know if acting is something he’ll want to stick with, but he’s learning how to express himself creatively and be comfortable in his own skin, and that’s all that matters to me,” Hill said. “Those have been two of the most important lessons in my own life, and I’m happy that I get to pass them on to my kids.”
Published: June 05, 2026
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