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The American conductor and music pedagogue, Steven Gross, saw his first show at the age of six and started playing the piano at the age of nine, though he says of his earliest recollection of a conductor, "I thought that the guy waving his hands in the air was cooler." He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in conducting from Northwestern University, and a Doctorate of Music in Conducting from Yale University. He is a Fulbright and Rotary Scholar.
After a doctorate in music from Yale University and work in Germany, France and Italy conducting opera, Steven Gross found his way back to musical theatre and has been the musical director for Urinetown and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in New York, as well as MD for some of Miss Saigon's London run. His responsibilities on shows include a lot of musical and staff housekeeping, on top of which he is a player/conductor, a dual role he says is the case with nine out of ten musicals thanks to budget concerns on the part of producers.
Steven Gross has worked on Broadway and the West End as conductor and pianist on such shows as The Life, Urinetown, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Chicago, Miss Saigon, The Wedding Singer, Saturday Night Fever, Dreamgirls plus the New York City Opera productions of A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, The Most Happy Fella and Candide. He has worked off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, the Algonquin Theater, and his adaption of The Pirates of Penzance at the South Street Seaport was Lortel nominated for best musical. Regional theater work includes music direction in St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Miami, Philadelphia and Chicago. He has conducted the European premieres of such works as The Life, Urinetown, Falsettos, Beehive, Forever Plaid, Closer Than Ever, and Flora the Red Menace.
Steven Gross has collaborated as an orchestrator/arranger on new musicals with composers such as Benny Andersson & Bjorn Ulvaeus on their new version of Chess, Cy Coleman on two of his last performed musicals, David Friedman, and Mark Hollmann. He has also worked on developing new works with such composers as Cy Coleman, Mark Hollmann and David Friedman. He also works actively as an orchestrator and arranger for many symphony orchestras, as well as varied Television, radio, video and on-line stations. His musical Nijinsky has been performed in Berlin, Hamburg, Zurich, and will debut in Lausanne and Paris in the next 2 seasons.
Active in operatic and concert work, Steven Gross has conducted in opera houses in London, Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, New York and Zürich and appeared with orchestras in cities such as Tel-Aviv, Sao Paolo, Marseilles, and Cincinnati. He has assisted such notable music directors as Daniel Barenboim and Michael Gielen and has conducted and assisted on the world premieres of operas by such composers as Aribert Reimann, Alfred Schnittke, Daniel Schnyder, and Chandler Carter. He also works as an orchestrator and arranger. His first musical about the ballet dancer Vaclav Nijinsky was premiered in Europe in 2011.
Steven Gross serves as Theatre Music Director, Director of the BW Singers and Associate Professor at the Baldwin-Wallace College in Brea, Ohio. He is also Faculty member at Coastal Carolina University since 2010. |
