Born in Valley Stream, Long Island, music was always a part of his life. STEVE ORICH began playing piano at the age of eight, and soon moved on to other instruments, studying drums, guitar and trumpet. He even began writing some band arrangements in junior high school. At 15, he got his first professional job, Musical Directing shows at a summer camp in the Catskills.
Attending the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he studied Music Composition, Arranging and Conducting, and co-founded a theatre company.
After school, he went on to Musical Direct seasons of summer stock at the Thomaston Opera House and the Lakewood Musical Playhouse. The last show of the season was Godspell, and was so well received that the production was moved to the famed Bucks County Playhouse and eventually went on an International Tour with Steve as Musical Director.
Having seen a little bit of the world, he headed back to New York to pursue his dream of working on Broadway. Along the road, he paid his dues by playing shows at dinner theatres, off-Broadway, and industrial shows. He also studied at the New School, Manhattan School of Music and learned music arranging from legendary arranger Don Sebesky.
During this period he also did shows at the Dorset Playhouse, the American Musical Theatre Festival, the Goodspeed Opera House, the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
One of his great thrills came when he was asked to work on a series of concerts with Stephen Sondheim. Working directly with Sondheim and Angela Lansbury, he also played keyboards for the album, A Stephen Sondheim Evening.
Eventually he attained his goal of working on Broadway, playing in the pit of Little Me and Baby, as well as conducting the orchestra for a National Tour of Annie. During that time he started to focus more on composing and orchestrating, writing underscore for off-Broadway shows as well as scoring some films. He conducted and arranged several off-Broadway shows, including Godspell, Snoopy, Potholes, Personals and Hamelin.
In 1985, he moved to Los Angeles to become a film & television composer. During that time he worked on the Academy Awards and numerous feature films, and composed scores for sitcoms, documentaries, animated series, game shows and movies of the week. He was also active as a conductor/orchestrator, working on many orchestral projects including the cult classic, A Very Brady Christmas.
Around this time he met Bruce Kimmel, and was given two weeks to orchestrate his album Lost in Boston III. After that, he went on to orchestrate, conduct and play on many albums for him, including Helen Reddy: Center Stage, Petula Clark: Here for You, Judy Kaye: Diva by Diva, Judy Kaye: Songs from the Silver Screen, Debbie Gravitte: the MGM Album, Debbie Gibson: Colored Lights, two cast albums ‘You Never Know and Do I Hear a Waltz? and several compilation albums.
It was around this time that Steve started to come back to the theatre, Musical Directing/Orchestrating Both Barrels (re-titled A Good Swift Kick) in LA and off-Broadway, Paint Your Wagon at the Geffen Playhouse, and many shows at the Pasadena Playhouse including Do I Hear a Waltz?, 110 in the Shade, Plaid Tidings, and A Class Act, taking the latter production to Tokyo for a month.
He had done several other productions in Los Angeles, including Michael Feinstein’s Great American Songbook at the Mark Taper Forum and Bernstein’s Mass at the Hollywood Bowl when he was hired to orchestrate a new show at the La Jolla Playhouse. The show was Jersey Boys and after a record-breaking run in California, it opened the following year on Broadway. The show received eight Tony nominations, including one for Steve for Best Orchestrations. It won four, including Best Musical, and then won the Olivier Award in London. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album and has gone platinum, selling over a million copies.
Steve has written arrangements for many TV shows including American Idol, Late Night with David Letterman, The Tonight Show, The Tony Awards and The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. He’s also written for such renowned orchestras as the Boston Pops, the National Symphony and the Pasadena Pops.
More recently, he orchestrated Turn of the Century at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago (Directed by Tommy Tune), Time After Time at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, A Christmas Memory at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto and Stephen Schwartz’s Snapshots at the Northlight Theatre in Chicago.
He resides in New York and Los Angeles.
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