My name is Michael Alfera and I’ve played piano since I was five years old.

It wasn’t until just a couple of years ago, though, that I was sure that making music was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Lest I get ahead of myself, here’s what happened before that.

Like many kids, I began playing piano at a young age. Like many other young piano students, I carefully worked my way through the method books. By about sixth grade, I was finished with them, and the next two pieces my teacher gave me were the first etude from the Czerny School of Velocity and the first of the Bach Two-Part Inventions.

Big mistake. They were way beyond me. I spent a couple months on both of them, became frustrated with the music and with myself, and quit playing piano.

I didn’t stop making music, though. At the time I was also playing trombone in my school band. My private instructor at the time was a wonderful man named Paul Destito. I owe him a lot because he made me aware of a place that I would eventually, for three years, call home. That place was the Interlochen Center for the Arts.

Nestled in the woods of northern Michigan, Interlochen was and remains the most wonderful place I’ve ever been. I have wonderful memories of my three years of high school that I spent there. I attended Interochen as a music composition major, and during my time there I wrote works for solo piano, chamber ensembles, and full orchestra. In 2005 I was the winner of a national orchestra composition competition, and I had my work premiered by the Hurley Orchestra at Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana. Also in 2005 my work was performed by the Bogota Youth Symphony in Bogota, Colombia. At Interlochen I got back into piano, studying under Yoshikazu Nagai. Having been out of practice for so long, though, I wasn’t very good.

In the fall of 2005 I began attending the University of Southern California as a music composition major. For some reason, though, the urban grit of Los Angeles failed to inspire me the way that the woods of Northern Michigan had, so after a semester I dropped the major and stayed on for a time as a math major. During this time I was taking piano lessons through the USC Thornton School of Music with Myong-Joo Lee. I haven’t heard from Dr. Lee in a while but to this day she was one of the most helpful piano teachers I’ve ever had; she helped me relax into a healthy, natural playing technique.

The math major lasted about a year before I was invited by the USC Thornton piano faculty to be a piano major. I had always wanted to get really good at piano, and I saw this as my opportunity to do so. So I began as a piano major under the instruction of the well-known teacher and pedagogue Stewart Gordon.

Up to this point, my musical studies focused mostly on the classical repertoire. I adore classical music and to this day it is still my first and greatest musical love; however, I struggled for years to figure out how I would make a career out of classical music. The life of a solo performer seemed lonely and difficult, and while I enjoyed teaching, I didn’t want to do it as a full-time job. I was searching for a way of making music that allowed me to do what I loved while paying the bills.

And in the summer of 2008 I had my first glimpse into that. I played piano in the pit of American Tales, a musical having its world premiere in North Hollywood. And in the fall of the same year I began serving as the piano accompanist for a musical theatre class taught by John Rubinstein at USC.

And that was it. I’d found it. Musical theatre was the answer to my question. Music directing shows and playing in pit orchestras has challenged and fulfilled me like nothing else I’ve ever done. Since the summer of 2008, I have played in the pit for Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Assassins, and I have served as musical director for See What I Wanna See, Urinetown, Starmites, and A Little Night Music, to name a few.

Additionally, I am currently the principal accompanist for the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, and I maintain a studio of piano students in the Manhattan Beach area.