About Michael Roth

MICHAEL ROTH. whose work has been described as “music one could imagine Charles Ives composing had he encountered rock-and-roll and beat poetry,” is a composer, musician, sound designer, conductor, music director, arranger, orchestrator, and pianist who has created a body of work that encompasses chamber music, music for film, THE WEB OPERA, new and experimental opera and music/theatre, many collaborations with Randy Newman, work for PBS and Disney, music for dance, and especially music and sound design for theatre, having worked on over 250 productions at major theatres throughout North America, including Broadway, off-Broadway, as a resident artist at both South Coast Repertory (57 productions) and La Jolla Playhouse (35 productions) in California, and the Stratford Festival in Canada.

Recent projects include: with Tom Hanks as Falstaff, the recent HENRY IV in Los Angeles ; THE TEMPEST with Christopher Plummer, onstage and filmed and Mr. Plummer’s solo show A WORD OR TWO; the PBS documentary JEWS & BASEBALL, narrated by Dustin Hoffman; IMAGINATION DEAD IMAGINE, his chamber music-theatre treatment of the Samuel Beckett text, for string quartet, recorded voices, and laptop, recently premiered in LA, San Diego and Prague; two American premieres with Tom Stoppard; collaborating with Stacy Keach on PAMPLONA, his solo show as Hemingway; a new musical collaboration with Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig; and three piano sonatas: SHEETCAKE, FATS NOVEMBER, and TUESDAY FOR TOY PIANO. Michael received a Santa Monica Arts Commission Grant for THE WEB OPERA, his exclusive online film/opera experience.

Michael’s many collaborations with Randy Newman as music director, orchestrator, arranger, and pianist, include musical direction for THE PRINCESS & THE FROG (Disney Animated Features), orchestrationsfor FAUST – recently revised for a concert presentation in New York –
and editing five definitive anthologies for Alfred Music Publishing.​

Michael has also collaborated with, among many others, Anne Bogart, Brian Dennehy, Des McAnuff, Richard Montoya & Culture Clash, Carey Perloff, Bill Pullman, Peter Sellars, Daniel Sullivan, Thomas Kail, Mac Wellman, MacArthur Fellows Sarah Ruhl and Samuel Hunter, and as a pianist has accompanied singers from Alice Ripley to Madonna, Michael McKean, Marni Nixon, and Alicia Keyes. His music is also featured in Wearable Tech Insider.

​​​​Michael, a lecturer in sound design at the University of California, San Diego, is a founding board member and west coast rep of the THEATRICAL SOUND DESIGNERS & COMPOSERS ASSOCIATION and spokesperson for FINALE notation. He has composed for the UN and was a fellow at the 2011 Sundance Composers Lab and 2013 Baku Forum. Michael graduated cum laude from the University of Michigan and studied with William Bolcom. His work, including his chamber opera THEIR THOUGHT & BACK AGAIN, is available via iTunes and CDBaby.

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