Alki Steriopoulos

Alki Steriopoulos (born July 13, 1953 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is a concert pianist, singer/songwriter, musical director, and musician. The third of five children to immigrant parents, Theresa Lucia Benvenuto from Italy and Phillip Alkiviades Steriopoulo from Greece, and raised on Pittsburgh’s notorious “North Side,” Alki discovered early on that music would be his ticket out of poverty.

Learning young

At the age of nine, he began the piano, and was quickly asked to play at a grade commencement where a visiting public school official singled out his performance of George M. Cohan’s You’re a Grand Old Flag as exemplary.

Alki quickly moved into the professional arena, playing for everything from strippers to comics to tap-dance classes, at the same time delivering newspapers, morning and evening editions, while running numbers between businesses on his paper routes for local bookies. Even though his mother hoped her son would become a “normal adult,” she wrote local piano celebrity Johnny Costa asking that her son be allowed to play for him. Costa, recognizing his talent, sent him to the legendary piano teacher, Bill Chrystal.

When Alki was thirteen, his parents divorced, causing him to become the “man of the house,” responsible for raising his younger brother and sister and helping to support his family.

A Musician’s Life

In an attempt to become a music teacher, he attended Duquesne University, but found academia wasn’t for him. In the 1970’s, Steriopoulos began work as a traveling musician, playing for his supper, finally ending up in New York City and Broadway’s musical theater.

Beginning in the orchestra, he became the musical director of dozens of shows. One of his first excursions into musicals introduced him to a young Michael Giacchino at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s production of Grease. Through Giacchino’s influence, Alki wrote, arranged, and recorded music for The Muppets, the DreamWorks Interactive Medal of Honor series, and LucasArts. He also conducted the double-Tony Award nominated musical, Those Were The Days, and national tours of Five Guys Named Moe and On Second Avenue (starring Paul Dimeo). He directed Jacques Brel is Alive and Well at the Village Gate during its twenty-fifth year revivial, Daisy Egan in the off-Broadway adaptation of The Little Prince, and the perennial Christmas hit, The Gifts of the Magi. He lived, and served, as in-house composer for one year at the world renowned La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village, creating music for The Dark and Mr. Stone trilogy by Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Foster. Alki served as Assistant Musical Director at Carnegie Hall for their star-studded celebration of Ira Gershwin’s Centennial, filmed as part of PBS’ Great Performances series.

His European tours include A Chorus Line and
several tours with step-dancer, Ira Bernstein. He also musically directed the multi-celebrity benefit gala concert, A Call for Bread, at Madison Square Garden.

As a performer

Steriopoulos is a frequent mainstay of the Off-Stage Piano Festival in Luzern, Switzerland, and in Portugal has shared a bill with Brazilian, Milton Nascimento. Another Brazilian musical legend, Hermeto Pascoal, wrote and dedicated a piece to him. Alki toured Africa as a member of the Friends Across Borders project; a multi-cultural collaboration that saw members of formerly warring tribes coming together to celebrate the end of the brutal sixteen year long civil war in Mozambique, culminating in a concert in South Africa’s Sudwala Cave.

He has played and recorded with Joel Gray, Bruce Adler, Richie Havens, and The Band. In the field of jazz, he’s performed with jazz-legend Bob Dorough, cellist Eugene Friesen of the Paul Winter Consort, and does several concerts a year at the Omega Institute.

Alki has three recordings of his own music, Philately, Music for Sentient Beings, and the soon to be released As. Is.

In 2007, he married his long time partner, the Broadway dancer, Shannon McGough.

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