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Pictured: Alan Steinberger, sitting at the original theatre organ from the Fox stage, used on many films including the Sound of Music. It is now totally refurbished and installed in a Tarzana recording studio.
OSM: What is your principal instrument and do you play any others?
Alan Steinberger: I’m primarily a pianist, though I also regularly perform on anything else with a keyboard including celesta, organ, harpsichord and synthesizers. For Disney’s motion picture “Wish”, I had solos on an old and fragile instrument called a dulcitone. I was hired to play harpsichord for “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” only to arrive at the session to find they needed me to play a blisteringly hard solo line on accordion as well. My bingo card will be complete if/when I ever get a call to play carillon.
OSM: Would you list some of your film studio work?
AS: One of the projects that helped put me on the map, and which to this day remains as one of my favorites was Alex Wurman’s evocative score to "March of the Penguins," winner of the 2006 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. But I’ve been fortunate to have gotten to work with many other talented composers including John Williams, Randy Newman, David Newman, Alan Menken, Alan Silvestri, Michael Giacchino, Christophe Beck, Rob Simonsen, and others.
OSM: Can you briefly describe what it’s like to do studio work?
AS: The challenges of studio work greatly appeal to me. A big stack of music covering any and all genres appears on our stands shortly before downbeat, and we’re expected to perform it near-flawlessly on first reading. Over the course of a single session I might be called upon to play as softly as possible for an emotional solo, then on the very next cue to lay into the piano with all my might, so much so that I once set off the fall alert on my watch.
OSM: How does studio work differ from performing on stage?
AS: Recording sessions differ from orchestra concerts in how we have to pace ourselves. Underscores are typically divided into many separate cues, each one usually no more than a few minutes long, so we’re intensely focused for many brief periods over the course of the session, perfecting each cue before moving on to the next. Performances of film music, by contrast, assemble all those separate bits into a non-stop whole, and what may have been initially recorded over the course of hours, days or weeks can be much more demanding physically when presented as a concert work.
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