Biography

AndrewGerle.com

Born into a family of classical musicians, Andrew started piano lessons as a small child and soon began making recital, TV and concerto appearances in the Baltimore area, where he grew up. The world of theater also attracted his interest, and he won starring roles in children's theater and high school productions, plus children's roles in local and regional opera and operetta productions.

These two spheres began to come together during his undergrad years at Yale, where he continued his piano studies with the eminent teacher Peter Frankl while conducting theater productions and a men's a cappella group. It was at Yale where he began to write for the theater as well, composing an entire score for Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade and a full incidental score for A Midsummer Night's Dream. As winner of the Yale Symphony Concerto Competition and the National Symphony Orchestra's Young Artists' Competition during this time, he appeared as soloist with both orchestras, and was invited to play for Maestro Mstislav Rostropovich in a private competition at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

Andrew moved to New York City in 1994 and began to forge a career as a music director, accompanist, orchestrator and arranger. Over the past thirteen years, he has been fortunate to work with such artists as Kitty Carlisle Hart, John Raitt, Jennifer Holliday, Mary Testa, Michael Rupert, Malcolm Gets, and Leslie Uggams. He was selected by the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization to create a complete re-orchestration of South Pacific for a major regional production, and has worked on projects for composers such as Ricky Ian Gordon and John Kander. His symphonic orchestrations of Broadway standards have been performed by the Boston Pops and over a dozen other US symphony orchestras. He created an evening of new arrangements and orchestrations for the Baltimore Symphony's Gershwin Centennial celebration, in which he also performed the "I Got Rhythm" Variations with the symphony. His work as a musical director has taken him from off-Broadway houses to regional theaters, and from Texas to Cape Cod.

His first two original musicals, Kepler (for which he wrote book, music and lyrics) and The Gift (book and lyrics by Maryrose Wood) were both finalists for the prestigious Richard Rodgers Award, administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and chaired by Stephen Sondheim. His third, The Tutor (also with Ms. Wood) remains the only musical ever to win the award three years in a row.

His latest completed show, Meet John Doe (lyrics and co-book by Eddie Sugarman) won him a Jonathan Larson Award, and has been a part of the ASCAP Musical Theater Workshops, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, and recently had its world premiere as a co-production between Goodspeed Musicals in CT and the historic Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC. If all goes well, look for it on Broadway in '08-'09!

Andrew has also recently returned to the stage as an actor in productions of the play Two Pianos, Four Hands. Watch for him this fall in a production at Penguin Rep.