I can’t predict how 2020 is going to go, but I can tell you one thing: I was more than ready to be done with 2019. Show #56 of the SubCulture Residency was designed to start the year off right. As we begin our sixth year of concerts on Bleecker Street, I was looking forRead More »

Yesterday, December 16, I was the musical director of a memorial for my mentor, the legendary director and producer Hal Prince, at the Majestic Theater on Broadway, where The Phantom of the Opera is still playing, as it has been for almost 32 years. Almost two thousand people showed up to pay tribute to HalRead More »

Audition story #1: On January 9, 2006, we had our first auditions for a workshop production of 13 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. A girl named Sara Niemietz came in – I had previously seen her on Broadway as a young Carol Burnett in a play that Hal Prince had directed calledRead More »

In the summer of 1984, I signed up to be in the Rock Band program at French Woods. Every other kid in Rock Band that summer was a guitarist or a drummer; no one ever knew what to do with a keyboard player. (And in those pre-DX7 days, a keyboard was generally an unmiked uprightRead More »

It feels like a cliché to write about a performer’s “passion,” such an overused word, and yet I can’t think of any other way to discuss the experience of putting this show together with Raúl Esparza. What was evident from the outset was his incredible passion – passion for telling stories, passion for doing theRead More »