Artist • Composer • Lyricist
Raised the son of “a preacher and a nurse” from Arkansas, Steve Schalchlin (pronounced Shack-lin) was playing for his “daddy’s” church from the age of 10. Now a New York based composer and lyricist, Schalchin’s work has won many prestigious awards from coast to coast, especially his two off-Broadway musicals with partner Jim Brochu, a New York Drama Desk Award-winning playwright and actor. Steve Schalchlin combines his instinctive understanding of congregational singing with the healing power of music in clever, real world storytelling songs, honed in theaters, schools, colleges, universities, cabarets and concert halls all over the world. He is currently a resident composer and soloist at Christ Church Episcopal, Bay Ridge, New York, collaborating and studying with conductor/composer/arranger Mark Janas, who conducted for Leonard Bernstein.
Steve’s many awards as composer/lyricist of the hit off-Broadway musicals The Last Session and The Big Voice: God or Merman? include nominations for Best Musical by NY Drama League, 1997 and Best Musical Nomination, NY Outer Critics Circle, 1997. He is the winner of Best Musical Score, L.A. Drama Critics Circle, 1997 & 2003; Best L.A. Theatre Production, GLAAD Media Award, 1997; Best Musical Theatre L.A. Ovation Awards, 2005; and PFLAG-LA Oscar Wilde Award, 1997 & 2003. His choral song cycle, New World Waking, debuted at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall, with the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus and the Women’s Community Orchestra, along with four time Academy Award nominee, Piper Laurie, and Tony winner Jennifer Holliday (“Dreamgirls”).