6-4-13 Audio Interview with Steve Orich – Orchestrator

Steve’s Mom says that when the piano arrived at their house eight year old Steve walked over to it and immediately began to pick out melodies. He says “I learned how to read music instantly, it was a language that spoke to me on a very special level, I looked at it and within days I could read anything.” He was understandably bored by the series of traditional piano lessons that followed, so he stopped taking them and just taught himself. Steve’s career included musical direction, accompaniment, playing for off Broadway and then Broadway shows, until a course with legendary orchestrator Don Sebesky completed his training and showed him what he was really meant to be/do. Listen to how he became the orchestrator for the smash hit Jersey Boys, the soon to be Broadway opening of the revival of Cole Porter’s Can-Can and the orchestrator for Noah Racey’s Pulse.

11/13/12 – Interview

Currently running at FST’s main stage is Smokey Joe’s Café. In this show you can hear the Musical Director, Corinne Aquilina, who was the arranger/music director for the long running, Off-Broadway show Menopause, The Musical, and played in the Broadway pit of Boy From Oz, talk about this play which she has “gotten up” several times and this particular production. Then listen to the funny, passionate and exuberant Arthur Marks, one of the remarkable players appearing in Smokey, talk about his journey to becoming the versatile and in demand performer he is. When Arthur was 5 he heard his mother sing in church. Without a mike the former Opera singer’s glorious voice filled the room and seeing that the congregation was just as “moved and captivated” as he was, Arthur decided that he too would do that. He made his debut the next year at the same church. And at 6 ½ had his first professional job as a boy soprano in a production of The Magic Flute – for which he sang in German. Gene Kelly’s Singing in the Rain made him want to dance and he studied ballet, tap jazz etc. He studied the piano and the viola (because everyone else was learning the violin.) When the band needed a trombone player he volunteered to learn it, when the symphonic band needed a Bassoonist – ditto. He says he was like a sponge. Listen to him talk about a life filled with the joy of performance and come see the result of all that rigorous training on stage in Smokey Joe’s Café.