Bringing Broadway's incredible musicians from the pit to the stage!
Steve Marzullo, composer
Composer Steve Marzullo's New York credits include the music supervision and vocal arrangements for the Off-Broadway hit Disaster!, music direction for Once on This Island, and associate conductor for Mamma Mia, Seussical the Musical, the first revival of Grease, Saturday Night, Floyd Collins, and A Little Night Music. As a pianist, Steve has played for Ragtime, the first revival of Sweeney Todd, Smile, and Olympus on My Mind, as well as the concert versions of Dreamgirls, Funny Girl, Chess, On the 20th Century, They're Playing Our Song, and the original cast of Company.
His songs have been recorded on solo albums by Stephanie J. Block, Andrea Burns, Andrea McArdle, Matt Zarley, and Rebecca Luker. Steve has also released two albums of his music, Show Some Beauty and Kiss Me While We Have the Chance, which feature vocals by Judy Blazer, Ann Harada, Julia Murney, Heidi Blickenstaff, Annie Golden, and Terri Klausner.
Doug Besterman, composer
A three-time Tony Award winner and six-time nominee, Doug Besterman's Broadway orchestration credits include Bullets over Broadway (2014 Tony Award nomination), Rocky, On a Clear Day, Sister Act, How to Succeed . . . (2011 Tony Award nomination), Elf, Young Frankenstein (Drama Desk Award nomination), Tarzan, Dracula, Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002 Tony and Drama Desk Awards), The Producers (2001 Tony and Drama Desk Awards), Seussical the Musical, The Music Man (Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations), Fosse (1999 Tony Award), Big (Drama Desk nomination), Damn Yankees (Drama Desk nomination), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, as well as additional orchestrations for Aladdin, Annie, The People In the Picture, and the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular.
Russell Anixter, composer
Russell Anixter moved to New York from San Francisco in 1990 to attend the Manhattan School of Music, where he obtained a master's degree in Composition as a student of Manny Albam. For the past twenty-five years, Russ has enjoyed a busy career as a music copyist, and has been a partner in Anixter Rice Music Service since 2004. Anixter has worked on over fifty Broadway shows, twenty-five major motion pictures, numerous recording dates, and for live concerts around the country. As a composer, Russ had his orchestral work An Excerpt from Steppenwolf performed by the Queens Symphony Orchestra in 2008 under the baton of Constantine Kitsopoulos, and his Octet for Four Players was played at the Alfred Loeffler New Music Symposium in 2006 at California State University, Chico.
As an arranger, Russ was a contributor to the New York Fusion Ensemble, which performed in New York clubs and featured Russ's arrangements of music by Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and Weather Report. His arrangements have also been featured on concerts by the Lehigh Valley Jazz Repertory Orchestra and the Lehigh University Wind Ensemble. In a prior life, Russ played trombone and other low brass instruments in big bands and orchestras in the San Francisco Bay Area. Currently Russ enjoys playing his Fender P-bass in loud hippie bands.
Alex Bender, trumpet
Currently trumpeter on Broadway's Finding Neverland, Alex Bender is thrilled to collaborate with colleagues from the Broadway Chamber Players. He has performed as guest principal trumpet with the Harrisburg, New Jersey, and Springfield (MA) Symphony Orchestras, as well as with the New Jersey Choral Society and Stamford Symphony Brass Ensemble. Next season he will solo on piccolo trumpet with Symphony in C, where he has served as principal trumpet since 2013.
As a commercial artist, Alex has performed and recorded for NBC's Peter Pan Live!, MTV, Radio City Music Hall, Celebrity Cruises, John Zorn, Dave Liebman, and the Kyle Athyde Dance Party. Additional Broadway credits include Side Show, shows with the Radio City Orchestra, and as a substitute musician for Wicked, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, If/Then, A Night with Janis Joplin, and Matilda.
Gilbert Dejean, bassoon
Bassoonist Gilbert Dejean is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Leonard Hindell and Steve Maxym. He is a member of the American Symphony Orchestra, Chappaqua Orchestra, and the Saratoga Opera, and regularly performs with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, Stamford Symphony, New York City Ballet, and New York Philharmonic.
Dejean performed in the orchestra for the Broadway productions of The Scarlet Pimpernel and West Side Story. He has recorded for BIS, Telarc, and Albany Records, and is a member of the Moose Hall Chamber Ensemble, which performs annually at the Inwood Shakespeare Festival.
Photo: Roy Lewis
Nicholas Gallas, clarinet
Clarinetist Nicholas Gallas has performed with a diverse range of artists and ensembles, including the American Modern Ensemble, Cleveland Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, American Ballet Theater, Harrisburg Symphony, Stamford Symphony, and the current revival of The King and I at Lincoln Center. An avid chamber musician, Nicholas has performed with the Imani Winds, Decoda, Argento Chamber Ensemble, Ensemble Signal, and the Metropolis Ensemble. He has also taught and performed in Mexico with Cultures in Harmony, an international cultural-diplomacy project.
From 2009 to 2014, Gallas was a member of the Quintet of the Americas—a woodwind quintet founded in 1979 in Bogotá, Columbia, and currently engaged as an ensemble-in-residence at New York University.
Bill Hayes, percussion
Bill Hayes has toured the world with Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Audra MacDonald, performing everywhere from the Paris Opera to Carnegie Hall and a parking lot in Uruguay. He has played for over fifty Broadway shows, most recently Dr. Zhivago, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, Anything Goes, and Promises, Promises, and has played on fifteen Broadway cast albums as well as the NBC productions of The Sound of Music Live! and Peter Pan Live!
Studio work includes three albums with Barbra Streisand, six with Liza Minnelli, and others with Ms. MacDonald, Sinatra, Rufus Wainwright, Neil Sedaka, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Harolyn Blackwell; jazz albums with Lea Delaria, the Maria Schneider Big Band, Gerry Niewood Sextet, and Dave Stahl Big Band; rock albums with Korn, David Byrne, and Shannon MacNally; and chamber music with Meredith Monk and Judith Sainte Croix.
Bill is the timpanist with the Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra and has played with orchestras including the American Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Orchestra of St Luke's, Monte Carlo Opera Orchestra, and Tokyo City Symphony.
Tony Kadleck, trumpet, flugelhorn & piccolo trumpet
Tony Kadleck has been praised as a highly effective sideman, and is currently one of the most sought-after trumpet players in the New York City area. A graduate of the New England Conservatory and Manhattan School of Music, Kadleck has performed with the Boston Pops Orchestra and the Buddy Rich Band, and has toured with Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, and Blood, Sweat, and Tears. In the studio, he has worked with Luther Vandross, Michael Jackson, Elton John, and Celine Dion. Kadleck also spends plenty of time playing a wide variety of live concerts, having performed with Stevie Wonder, Count Basie Orchestra, Ella Fitzgerald, Issac Hayes, and, most recently, Steely Dan.
In addition to playing on countless jingles and for many films and shows, including Honeymoon in Vegas, Aladdin, Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark, just to name a few, Kadleck has also done a great deal of composing and arranging. His recent recording, Around the Horn, features ten of his arrangements for big band. Kadleck is currently a member of many organizations including the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, the New York Pops, John Fedchock's NY Big Band, Westchester Jazz Orchestra, and John Pizzarelli's Swing Seven. In addition, Tony is a faculty member at Manhattan School of Music and Montclair State University.
Steve Kenyon, soprano sax, clarinet & alto flute
Steve Kenyon has led ensembles performing his original music at New York City's Blue Note, Birdland, Carnegie Hall, and live on WNYC Radio. He has performed throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia with the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, American Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony, New York Pops, Philip Glass, Maria Schneider, Garrison Keillor, Barbara Cook, Chuck Mangione, Aretha Franklin, and Beyoncé.
As an in-demand doubler on Broadway, Steve currently plays Reed 1 with Matilda the Musical, and has performed in the orchestras for over forty productions, including Annie, Porgy and Bess, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, La Cage aux Folles, Finian's Rainbow, The Little Mermaid, Oklahoma!, and Titanic. On television, Steve has provided music for Smash, Ed, The Today Show, Late Show with David Letterman, and NBC's The Sound of Music Live!
Randy Landau, bass
Randy Landau's distinctive and virtuosic bass playing has landed him in the company of a wide spectrum of music legends, from Chuck Berry, Paul Anka, The Loretta Devine and Patti LaBelle, James Taylor, and Bette Midler, to Larry Coryell, L. Subramanium, Gary Burton, and New York Voices. Randy's many Broadway and national-tour credits include The Bridges of Madison County, First Date, Ghost: The Musical, Billy Elliot: The Musical, High Fidelity, In My Life, Spamalot, Legally Blonde, Man of La Mancha, Bombay Dreams, Rent, City of Angels, Aida, and many more.
As a longtime member of Jason Robert Brown's band, The Caucasian Rhythm Kings, his work includes the original cast recordings of Songs for a New World, The Last Five Years, as well as Wearing Someone Else's Clothes and Lauren Kennedy's Songs of Jason Robert Brown. Other recordings include Georgia Stitt's This Ordinary Thursday, Loudon Wainwright III's Grown Man, Next to Normal, and several albums with New York Voices.
Dan Levine, trombone, euphonium & alto horn
Dan Levine has maintained an active career as a trombone and low brass freelancer in New York City for over twenty years, performing everywhere from CBGB's to the Blue Note and Carnegie Hall. Dan's long-term association with the Grammy Award–winning, platinum-selling They Might Be Giants has led to numerous recordings and television appearances. Dan is also a veteran of multiple Broadway productions, including the entire run of The Producers, Newsies: The Musical, Follies, Ragtime, and, currently, It Shoulda Been You.
Selected recordings include Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, Natalie Cole, Cyndi Lauper, Phillip Glass, They Might Be Giants, Tori Amos, Björk, Rufus Wainwright, Linda Eder, Liza Minnelli, Jay-Z, and multiple Broadway cast albums. World tours include Ray Charles, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Frank Sinatra, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, They Might Be Giants, and Toshiko Akiyoshi. This is Dan's first performance with Broadway Chamber Players, and he promises to get even with Russ Anixter for writing such difficult parts.
Jonathan Levine, alto sax, bass clarinet & flute
Jonathan Levine is a veteran woodwind player in the orchestral pits of Broadway. He has performed in dozens of productions, including Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, Ragtime, Les Misérables, The Music Man, and Fiddler on the Roof—where he shared the stage with Alfred Molina and Harvey Fierstein as the on-stage klezmer clarinet soloist. Jonathan is presently playing clarinet and saxophone for Leonard Bernstein's On The Town and can also be heard on the recent cast recording of NBC's Peter Pan Live!
Prior to his Broadway career, Jonathan toured the U.S. and Europe extensively with various national tours and also served as the orchestra manager for Seaside Music Theater in Daytona Beach, Florida. He has performed and recorded with a wide range of artists including Ray Charles, Roberta Flack, Mel Tormé, Barry Gibb, Harry Connick Jr., They Might Be Giants, and the Florida Symphony Orchestra. On radio, Jonathan has been heard on NPR's A Prairie Home Companion, while his bass clarinet work can be heard daily on Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Jonathan is also equally committed to music education and has been the director of music for Manhattan’s Rodeph Sholom School since 2000.
Clay Ruede, cello
Cellist Clay Ruede has performed with ensembles as diverse as the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Speculum Musicae, and was the cellist in the Arden Trio for twenty-five years. Mr. Ruede can be heard in film scores for Spike Lee, Disney Studios, the eminent film composers Ennio Moricone and Elmer Bernstein, and as the solo cellist in Robert Altman's The Company. He has recorded the Beethoven sonatas, the caprices and etudes of August Franchomme, piano trios of Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Mendelssohn, Haydn, Arthur Foote, and Evan Ziporyn, and is currently recording the sonatas of the French Post-Impressionist composer Joseph Guy Ropartz.
Eric Van Tielen, narrator
Eric Van Tielen is currently on Broadway in Les Misérables, and has also toured with the twenty-fifth-anniversary production of the show, performing in eight hundred performances. Previous credits include A Tale of Two Cities on Broadway, Mr. Erlanson in A Little Night Music with the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Matt in The Fantasticks with Syracuse Stage, Freddy in My Fair Lady at Arrow Rock Lyceum, and Ralph in H.M.S. Pinafore with the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Additional tours include Fiddler on the Roof, where he played Fyedka opposite both Topol and Harvey Fierstein, and a three-month engagement as soloist with the Tokyo Philharmonic.
Sally Wilfert, soprano
Soprano Sally Wilfert has appeared on Broadway in the Tony Award–winning production of Assassins, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and King David, and also toured the country in the first national tour of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Off-Broadway, Ms. Wilfert's credits include See Rock City, Make Me a Song: The Music of William Finn, The Mistress Cycle, and The Prince and the Pauper. At Carnegie Hall she has appeared in Cole Porter's Jubilee, South Pacific in Concert (starring Reba McEntire), and Sondheim: A Tribute, all of which were broadcast on PBS.
Wilfert has performed throughout the country, including shows at the LaJolla Playhouse, Cincinnati Playhouse, Baltimore Center Stage, Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, New Haven’s Schubert Theatre, Barrington Stage, Goodspeed Musicals, Hartford Theatreworks, The Fulton Opera House, Connecticut Grand Opera, and The Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, in such shows as Footloose, LMNOP (World Premiere), Little Miss Sunshine (World Premiere), Marry Me a Little, Elegies, Les Misérables, The Last Five Years, Amadeus, Into the Woods, and The Threepenny Opera.