News
UPCOMING
UPCOMING
Sep - Nov 2024: Sweeney Todd
Off Square Theatre Co., Jackson WY // Dir. Kate Gleason
MD/key 1/conductor
Nov - Dec 2024: White Christmas
Lakewood Cultural Center, Lakewood CO // MD Fischer
keys 2
Mar - May 2025: A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder
The Arvada Center, Arvada CO // Dir. Geoff Kent
MD/key 1/conductor
Coming Home For Christmas - Nov. 2023
Coming to you sixteen times a week from Branson, MO’s historic Silver Dollar City, I’m music directing the effusive Coming Home For Christmas, a musical theatre celebration of everything wholesome about the holidays. Though many of the tunes might be familiar, the happenin’ pop-jazz arrangements by visionary writer/arranger/director Susan Draus feel vibrant and new every single day. This show has pushed me in so many ways — beyond the technicality of the music and the frequency of shows, I jump from role to role in this show. In any given number, you might catch me at the keyboard, conducting from the stage, singing with the ensemble and even dancing! With a cast whose talent is met only by their kindness, and a formidable band consisting of Matt Streuber (bass), Mike Jackson (drums), Rick Medlin (key 2) and myself, Coming Home For Christmas is a true spectacular and not to be missed.
A Song In The Air - Oct. 2023
The fantastic guitarist, singer and MD Joe Mazza (whose name you might recognize from some other postings on here) brought me together with musician Brian Barrentine to record a beautiful Christmas EP! The four songs on this record balance traditional tunes and carols with new arrangements, updated lyrics, and even an original song. I’m so glad I was able to lend a hand in the studio that day, laying down piano, electric piano, organ and even a little virtual harpsichord to thicken out the sounds. The whole EP is a treat from tip to tail; dig in this Christmas season and enjoy!
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical - Sep. 2023
From September 8th-October 15th 2023, you could catch me music directing/key 1 conducting Beautiful: The Carole King Musical at the Arvada Center for Arts and Humanities and having the time of my freaking life doing it! It was such a special show for so many reasons — the joy of bringing Carole’s distinct piano lines to life; the stellar design and direction; and the unique challenges that come with MDing a show with so much diegetic music come to mind. But the thing that made this show stand out from the rest was the crazy amount of talent on, behind and underneath that stage, night after night, and mutually admiring and respectful environment that these professionals cultivated. This show was directed by director/artistic director Lynne Collins, and I was joined in the pit by Sean Case (drums), Keith Ewer (percussion), Jon Cullison (bass), Pete Lewis (reeds), Zach Stailey (key 2) and Russ Callison (guitar). It was a show that lived up to its name in more ways than I could have ever imagined.
Amanda Tipton Photography
Courtesy of RDG Photography
Read the writeup in Westword here.
The Henry Awards - Jul. 2023
On July 24th, 2023, I had the incredible opportunity to music direct the Henry Awards, a ceremony mounted by the Colorado Theatre Guild celebrating outstanding contributions to Colorado’s theatre scene. This year’s theme was "Metamorphosis - A Celebration of a Year in Transformative Theatre," and we chose music that spoke of change and transcendence to bring that idea to life. With direction from Alicia Young and Samwell Rose, and a spectacular band consisting of Joe Mazza (guitar), Jon Cullison (bass), Keith Ewer (drums) and myself on keys, not to mention a sparkling array of Denver’s finest singers and nominees, we paid homage to the beautiful art of this community. It was an unforgettable night!
The Women Who Discovered How To Measure The Universe - June 2023
Imagine my delight when I was approached by the powerhouse team of Chicago creators, Ellie Levine and Olivia Zapater-Charrette, to compose an original score for a premiere of the play The Women Who Discovered The Universe at the Raven Theatre in Chicago. A contemporary telling of a piece of real history, Universe follows Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Leavitt through their lives from precocious kids with their heads in the stars, to Harvard Observatory coworkers redefining gender stereotypes in their male-dominant field, to visionary scientists who inevitably make groundbreaking discoveries that have shaped our understanding of the celestial world to this day. The music needed to live somewhere between modernity and antiquity, so I combined choice elements from the classical and the technologic to produce a tapestry that felt it could do justice to this beautiful story, caught between the world and the heavens. It was a joy to compose for this moving show.
Listen to some excerpts below!
The Brotherhood of DIX - Jun 2023
On June 16th, a new musical I’m working on with bookwriter/lyricist Hamish Marrisen-Clark received a staged reading at the One Night Only Festival held by Space Space Revolution in Toronto, ON. The play, an absurdist examination of masculinity in its many contemporary forms — toxic, fragile, allied and otherwise — follows freshman Kevin Everyman into college, where his attempts to cast himself as a champion of women’s rights are thrown into question by his choice to rush the “most change-affecting feminist organization on campus,” the Brotherhood of DIX. But when he learns that the final rite of initiation involves castration, it’s his own bodily autonomy on the line as he grapples with how performative his allyship truly is. With plans to expand this work into a feature-length musical throughout 2024, keep an eyes out and your jewels guarded for further news on this front.
Guilty Pleasures on Virgin Voyages - May 2023
From early May to mid-June, I was lucky enough to be music director, accompanist actor in Guilty Pleasures, a show mounted in on the festival stage of Virgin Voyages’s Scarlett Lady. This production, a thematic continuation of Pop The Holidays (dir. Nick Chase, Local Theater 2022) follows Michelle “Shells” Hoffman (Roslyn Hart) through a cabaret performance through hell. In my roll as a slightly theatricalized version of myself, I fight tooth and nail to keep the show from coming off the rails, to limited success. We performed aboard the ship as we traversed the North Atlantic, with stops in Miami, the Bahamas, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. I made some unforgettable memories on this contract, and am forever grateful for Virgin Voyages for letting some truly deranged art onto their beautiful ship. Until next time, Scarlett Lady!
Single Wombat - Apr. 2023
The long-anticipated second EP of passion project Stage Wombat Collective dropped on Earth Day, 2023. This four song EP, cowritten by myself and Jordan Knitzer, produced by Samer Bakri and including bandmembers Jared Decker (drums), Sean Decker (bass), and Will Finnegan (guitar), represents a departure from the indie-folk influences of their first EP and follows a darker, more personal bent. Elements of techno-pop and indie grunge blend with humor and an ever-present funk influence in this unique offering. Listen wherever you get your music today!
Charlie Brown’s Piano Bar Gig - Jan. 2023
As of early this January and hopefully into perpetuity, you can find me any given Sunday night working the keys at Charlie Brown’s Bar and Grill in downtown Denver. Come 6-8:30 to hear ambient classical, jazz, lounge and enjoy some tasteful accompaniment with your tasty meal. After 8:30, we drop the manners, break the fourth wall, and get the bar singing! Requests, piano-vocal performance, and piano karaoke are the law of the land until close. This dinner gig feels like a dream come true, and it’s a guaranteed good time for all participants. Roll through!
Say My Name - Jan. 2023
In January, I had the great pleasure to music direct and accompany the new musical Say My Name, written and directed by Cecelia Pang and produced by Insight Colab Theatre. The show follows a group of Asian-Americans as they prepare for their citizenship exam, and the tortured spirits of immigrants who visit the classmates in the night. Insightful, provocative and downright spooky, the process challenged me both artistically and intellectually. Between in-depth research on non-Western musical modes and practices, sourcing arcane pedals to produce the perfect ghostly timbre, and interpreting David Nehls’ beautiful score, I had my work cut out for me. The result was a powerful show and a wonderful set of memories and experiences to take with me going forward.
Pop the Holidays! - Dec. 2022
After a month of rehearsal, I’m thrilled to have just opened Pop the Holidays to a sold-out crowd on December 2nd, 2022. Playing until the 17th, this irreverent cabaret is both funny and unexpectedly poignant. I’m accompanying, music directing, and taking part in some good old-fashioned banter, as the incomparable Michelle “Shells” Hoffman does her thing. Here’s an excerpt from Onstage Colorado’s rave review:
Alec Steinhorn, the show’s music director and live accompanist (whom Shells treats as a human jukebox and doormat), is truly exceptional. Not only does he provide interesting arrangements of the songs Shells sings, but he hilariously improvises behind Shells’ musings. He weaves in musical motifs from classical music, film and TV soundtracks, and pop hits to create original atmospheric compositions that bring you into the emotion happening live.
Summer Road Trip! - June. 2022
After almost two years in Portland, the time has come to say goodbye, in style. So this June, I embarked on a four-and-a-half month road trip with my partner to see just about every part of America (and a fair bit of Canada) that we could squeeze in. Even shy of halfway through, I’ve climbed more new mountains, heard more new music, and had more new foods than I could’ve thought possible. Never far from my 61-key MIDI controller, I’ve been teaching and composing on the road whenever possible. It’s been an incredible experience so far, as I’m sure it will continue to be until I move into my new home in Golden, Colorado this November!
Stage Wombat Collective Single Drop - Feb. 2021
Since early this year, much of my time has been spent working on an indie rock project with Jordan entitled Stage Wombat Collective. After months of writing, rehearsing, recording, mixing mastering and marketing, the first single from this band, "Clown Wolf,” has hit streaming services everywhere! We at SWC couldn’t be more stoked for the world to hear our fresh new tune, and the best thing is that this release is only the first of many from this specific project. Keep your ears peeled!
Move to Portland, OR - Nov. 2020
As of this November, my writing partner Jordan and I have relocated to Portland, Oregon! Living in the southeast side, we intend to use this time to commune with the bountiful natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest and focus on music. Since the move, we’ve been preparing a new, very exciting musical project for release… details forthcoming!
People You May Know Virtual Production - Oct. 2020
Jordan and I set out in spring of 2017 to write a musical based on an idea that neither of us could shake, and three and a half years later, throughout which the show has gone through four drafts and the writing team has grown to include book-writer Katie Duggan (Princeton University, grad. 2019), the show was at long last put up virtually by the American Musical Theatre Project as a staged reading. A ridiculously talented cast and probing and engaged creative team combined forces to put up a production of this show that was able to honor the ambiguity, nuance and sensitivity of the content, even through the medium of the web necessitated by social distance. Though the piece is still undergoing revisions, this reading helped the writing team understand so much about how an audience would interact with this subject matter, and how a cast could parse our ideas into tangible acting. We look forward to the next chance People You May Know gets to be staged, to see how the notes we have from this reading will continue to strengthen the show!
Graduated Northwestern University - June. 2020
This June, I graduated Northwestern University with a degree in theatre and music composition — along with and never far from the side of best friend, roommate and writing partner Jordan Knitzer, also pictured. A top-notch education is an incredible gift with which to go forth into the professional world, but is by no means the end of my musical journey. Instead, I think of my education as a framework and a toolset for making continual discovery, and always seeking both to understand sounds that have been created by other musicians, and the sounds I create myself.
