Cincinnati Music Theatre Announces Master Class With Broadway's Richard Oberacker

Cincinnati Music Theatre (CMT) is excited to announce a Master Class with Broadway's Richard Oberacker, composer and co-lyricist/librettist of the Tony Award-winning musical Bandstand, and the musical conductor of KA by Cirque du Soleil at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

This unique experience is open to the public and will offer a rare view inside the process of performing, dissecting, analyzing, and directing a musical theater song at the professional level. In traditional master class format, individual singers will present a song and work one-on-one with Cincinnati-native Richard Oberacker, who will help each participant explore their musical piece in depth, developing and using techniques that will achieve the most truthful and authentic performance. This is a rare opportunity to learn and grow with the guidance of a professional composer, author and conductor who has worked "behind-the-table" in the creation, casting, and performance of theater in regional theaters, national tours, and on Broadway. The class will be accompanied by Steve Goers, a member of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music musical-theatre faculty and composer, pianist, and producer.

Tickets are $25.00 for general admission and are available at CincinnatiArts.org, (513) 621-ARTS [2787], and the Aronoff Center Ticket Office.

One of Cincinnati's oldest and most successful community theaters, CMT is proud of its long history of presenting popular, large scale, award-winning musicals to enthusiastic audiences from across the Greater Cincinnati area. For more information, visit www.cincinnatimusictheatre.org, LIKE us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cincinnatimusictheatre, and follow us on Instagram @cincinnatimusictheatre.

Richard Oberacker is the composer and co-lyricist/librettist of Bandstand, which premiered at The Paper Mill Playhouse and transferred to Broadway for a run at the Jacobs Theater. The production was nominated for 20 various industry awards including the Drama Desk, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle, and Tony Awards. Mr. Oberacker's other original musicals include Ace, which had successful runs at four Tony Award-winning regional theaters across the US including the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, The Parenting Project (formerly Don't Make Me Pull This Show Over) at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, The Gospel According to Fishman at The Signature Theatre, Dracula at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, The Sandman at Frederica Theatre in Denmark, Journey to the West at the NY Musical Theater Festival, and The Great Gatsby which premiered at the Nissay Theater in Tokyo, Japan before a Japanese national tour. Mr. Oberacker has been the conductor for KA by Cirque du Soleil at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas since its creation in 2004. He has also served as the conductor for the first national tour of Disney's The Lion King and Cirque du Soleil's Dralion, as well as associate conductor for the national tours of Cats, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Music of the Night, and the Harold Prince/Susan Stroman revival of Show Boat. As a pianist/keyboardist, his other Broadway credits include Miss Saigon and Mathew Bourne's Swan Lake. In concert, Mr. Oberacker has conducted and accompanied such theater greats as Betty Buckley, Colm Wilkinson, Bernadette Peters, Heather Headley, Donna Murphy, Cloris Leachman and Len Cariou, and Jeremy Jordan. As a pianist, he has appeared with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and The Bolshoi Symphony in Moscow. Mr. Oberacker holds a BFA in Drama from CCM, and has lectured and taught master classes at CCM and at theater schools and universities across the country.

Steve is a member of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) musical-theatre faculty and has worked with Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, The Children's Theatre of Cincinnati, Covedale Center for the Performing Arts, The Carnegie, Showboat Majestic, Cincinnati Young People's Theatre, Commonwealth Theatre Company, Ovation, Clear Stage Cincinnati, Hugo West Theatricals, Performance Gallery, Theatre IV ArtReach, and Northern Kentucky University. He has received multiple Acclaim and League of Cincinnati Theatres awards, including a 2010 Season MVP Award. Steve has composed numerous works for theatre, industrial video, radio, and film, including his on-going collaboration with Chicago playwright/lyricist Alyn Cardarelli on their internationally distributed musicals for young audiences and featuring world premiere adaptations of Where the Wild Things Are, Stellaluna, and Peter Pan and Wendy. Steve has toured the US and Africa with productions of Barnum, Jersey Boys, and Bubbling Brown Sugar, and was featured as pianist and session producer on the album Ella Jenkins and a Union of Friends Pulling Together, which received a Grammy nomination for Best Children's Album. Steve is a graduate of the DePaul University School of Music and CCM.

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