About
Steve Hackman
Composer/Conductor/Producer
A multi-hyphenate music powerhouse and creative visionary, Steve Hackman is a daring voice intent on redefining art music in the 21st century. Trained at the elite level classically but equally adept in popular styles, his breadth of musical fluency and technique is uncanny—he is at once a composer, conductor, producer, DJ, arranger, songwriter, singer, and pianist. He uses these polymathic abilities to create original music of incisive modernism yet rooted in elevated classicism. His groundbreaking orchestral fusions, such as Brahms X Radiohead and The Resurrection Mixtape (Mahler X Notorious BIG X Tupac Shakur), are introducing the symphony orchestra to its future audience; he has conducted these pieces to sellout houses across the country with the orchestras of Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dallas, Seattle, Pittsburgh, San Diego, Colorado, Phoenix, Nashville, Oregon, Indianapolis, Grand Rapids, Columbus, Charlotte, Southwest Florida, Alabama, Colorado Music Festival, and the Boston Pops.
In 2023 Hackman launched his original music project THE BRINK, a four-part, 300-minute work incorporating elements as wide-ranging as lyric opera and art-song cycles to conceptual hip-hop and experimental electronica. The work is immersive and experiential in nature, with additional creative direction by Jacob Jonas, wardrobe by Greg Lauren, and visuals by Michael N. Meyer. The music is written for a hybrid ensemble implementing strings, woodwinds, brass, synthesizers, multiple vocalists, bass, drums, guitar, piano and multiple keyboards, with Hackman conducting, playing and singing. Chapters I and II premiered at underground performances in March and June of 2023; Chapters III and IV will premiere in the 2023-24 season.
Hackman has teamed up with some of the biggest pop superstars of today to add a signature virtuosic and classical dimension to their work. He has collaborated multiple times with Steve Lacy, most recently reimagining and conducting Lacy’s repertoire for full orchestra at his tour-culminating show at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. The sellout performance was streamed live on Amazon Prime. Hackman has also collaborated frequently with Doja Cat, performing with her at the 2021 VMA’s in Brooklyn, following orchestrating and arranging strings for her performances at the Billboard Music Awards and iHeart Radio Music Awards. In December 2019, Hackman collaborated with Kanye West and the Sunday Service Choir in their production of the opera Mary. Hackman contributed as composer, conductor, and orchestrator. The opera had public performances at Art Basel in Miami, Laskey Mesa in Calabasas and Lincoln Center in New York City.
In the Summer of 2022, in a span of three weeks, Hackman created And I Love Her, the music of the Beatles reimagined. It depicts the music of the Beatles through the lens of the women that inspired them and the female characters they invented through their music and lyrics. The two-act production combines the symphony orchestra with an r&b band and four vocalists, as the music careens across the spectrum between classical and pop, from a post-romantic tone-poem reimagining of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ to a funk- and gospel-inspired version of ‘She’s A Woman’.
Steve Hackman is an elegant conductor, precise, imperious in the gesture and rhythm, with a beautiful flexible and undulating left hand.
- Bertrand Renard,
Le Voyageur de Notes
In Fall of 2021 Hackman composed the 60-minute ballet AT WORK in partnership with Jacob Jonas the Company, premiering the piece in consecutive weekends at Century City Park and the Water Gardens in Los Angeles. It was the culmination of a busy two years of composing: he wrote five original scores for the global film initiative films.dance, teaming up with Hilary Hahn, Dave Koz, Voces 8, and musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra in the process; his music was featured on the American Express campaign Stand For Small, alongside the voice of Lin-Manuel Miranda; and during the summer of 2021 he completed recording of a solo piano album. 2021 also saw the completion of two orchestra fusions: The Resurrection Mixtape, a synthesis of the Mahler 2nd Symphony with the music of Notorious BIG and Tupac Shakur; and Bohemian Rhapsody in Blue, a fusion of George Gershwin with the music of Queen.
Hackman serves as the conductor and curator of the BSO Fusion with the Baltimore Symphony, presenting multiple concerts per year of his fusion productions. He is Creative Director and Conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony’s Uncharted Series, one of the most successful millennial-focused concert experiences in the country. Hackman has been instrumental in the development of this concert series since 2010.
Hackman has conducted for and collaborated with Andrew Bird, performing on piano at the live taping of the PBS show Articulate. He is a frequent collaborator with violinist Joshua Bell; other soloists and ensembles Hackman has composed/arranged for and collaborated with include the Beach Boys, Michael Bolton, Aoife O’Donovan, Storm Large, Carly Rae Jepsen, and choral ensembles Chanticleer, The Tallis Scholars and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. In addition, he has collaborated closely with the group Time for Three for nearly a decade, serving as their music director for a time, producing two of their albums, and penning over fifty arrangements, orchestrations, and compositions. Hackman is a frequent contributor to From the Top, and in 2023 taught his first course on reimagining classical music at the Juilliard School.
In 2001 Hackman applied to Otto Werner Mueller’s conducting studio at the Curtis Institute of Music and Juilliard School; he was the only outside student to be accepted, and was awarded a full scholarship position at the Curtis Institute of Music. He received his advanced diploma at Curtis, were he also studied counterpoint, composition and improvisation under his mentor Dr. Ford Lallerstedt. He subsequently studied conducting with David Zinman at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen. He received further training in orchestration from the Broadway orchestrator and composer William Brohn. His undergraduate degree is in piano performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied with Gustavo Romero.
Hackman is active on social media under the handle @stevehackmanmusic.
