We are pleased to introduce you to the incredible Beardo music team, who will be bringing to life Dave Malloy’s powerful and eclectic score.
“The music of Beardo is very much straddling two worlds. There’s the music of the Russian aristocracy and the palace, and that world is very much classical and based around a string quartet. Then there’s the world of Beardo. He comes from the countryside and is more of a rough character. His music is more raw and draws more from folk and rock and even some techno traditions. So the music pulls from a wide spectrum of styles. There’s a Patsy Cline number, and a ukulele number, and the whole third act is a Russian ballet for a string quartet.”
– Dave Malloy, Composer
Only a handful of pre-sale tickets are allotted to each performance of Beardo, and those discounted early-bird tickets are already beginning to sell out! Purchase now and save.
Music Team
Dave Malloy (Composer) is a composer/writer/performer/sound designer. His shows include Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 (now on Broadway); Ghost Quartet; Preludes; Black Wizard/Blue Wizard; Three Pianos; All Hands; Beardo; Beowulf – A Thousand Years of Baggage; The Sewers; Sandwich; Clown Bible; and (The 99-cent) Miss Saigon. He is the winner of two Obie Awards, the Richard Rodgers Award, an ASCAP New Horizons Award, and a Jonathan Larson Grant. Future projects include The Happiness of Fish (a show about Taoism, atheism and evolution), and adaptations of Moby-Dick and Shakespeare’s Henriad. He lives in Brooklyn. davemalloy.com
Ian Axness (Music Director) is a collaborative pianist and conductor working between forms of concert music and contemporary theater. Selected credits: A Ride on the Irish Cream (Abrons), Pericles (Two River), Mermaiden (Spring Street Social Society), Clown Bar (Pipeline Theatre), The Threepenny Opera (Atlantic), As You Like It (Public), Carousel (NY Philharmonic), Political Subversities (Ars Nova & The PIT). Faculty: Playwrights Horizons Theater School.
Sam Kulik (Guitar/Conductor) has been making creative music and theater in New York City since 2004. His recent recording The Broadcast is his own play-by-play commentary of a complete baseball game set to original music and released as a collectible set of baseball cards. Another artistic highlight was his collaboration with the band Talibam! on an opera/recording/comic book about Atlantis, sex, and environmental catastrophe. Other theater collaborations include work with Normandy Sherwood, Cesar Alvarez, Cynthia Hopkins, the Talking Band, and Banana Bag & Bodice. www.samkulik.com
Blake Allen (viola) is a violist and composer living in Hell’s Kitchen NYC emphasizing in contemporary music and theatre. Blake has soloed with the El Paso Symphony Orchestra as well as given the NY, EU and Canadian premieres of Judith Shatin’s Penelope’s Song. Blake was an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre in 2014 and has been principal of Little Orchestra Society, frequently plays with the New York Pops, performs on Broadway, is a prolific recording artist, and has played every major hall in NYC. As a composer, Blake made his classical debut at the Met Museum of Art, has had his own solo show at Feinstein’s /54 Below, and AEA Staged Readings of his shards and, in March 2017, Boston|Nebraska. Blake has been Rob Fisher’s music assistant for 5 years and plays on a 1988 Nicholas Frirsz 18-inch viola.
Ezra Gale (bass) has toured West Africa, Europe and North America with various bands playing various styles of music, and since settling down in New York City some years ago he now tours Brooklyn, Manhattan and sometimes even Queens. He’s been privileged to perform in Jason Craig and Dave Malloy’s Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage and Sandwhich, as well as Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 and the theater production of Cassavetes’ Shadows. He also leads the NYC bands Super Hi-Fi (dub), Molly Tigre (afro-jazz) and Bourbon Sprawl (country).
Sarah Elizabeth Haines (violin) is a New York City-based violist, violinist, vocalist, and performer. She has toured with Todd Almond’s Kansas City Choir Boy, as well as being a part of the original run at Beth Morrison Project’s Prototype Festival 2015. She is an ecstatic member of Contemporaneous, and co-manages with Jessica Clinton the Brooklyn-based Americana group Bellehouse, as well as being violist and vocalist for Emanuel and the Fear, and for Kenyon Phillips and the Ladies in Waiting, with whom she performs in the burlesque circus glam rock opera The Life and Death of Kenyon Phillips. In addition, she also played the run of Jenny Schwartz and Todd Almond’s Iow@ at Playwrights Horizons in the spring of 2015, and has played on many musical and theatrical productions throughout the Tri-State Area.
Serena Ebony Miller (cello) is an actress/cellist/vocalist/ bassist from Baltimore and Pittsburgh, who is thrilled to be a part of Beardo! Recent appearances: Madam Pompey Overdone in Measure for Measure (The Drilling Company), Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The DC/ Shakespeare in the Parking Lot), Writopia Lab Worldwide Plays Festival 2016, Henrietta in Salty Folk. Currently, she is working on a cello score for a new play called La Bestia, by Tom Block. She has additionally performed at various venues such as Ars Nova, The Cutting Room, The Bitter End, Heinz Hall, The Metropolitan Room, and many a church. Serena also loves to write, and is the resident Music Director for EndTimes Productions. 2510/100. www.serenaemiller.com
Hajnal K. Pivnick (violin) is a Hungarian-American violinist and was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. She advocates the performance and promotion of music written in the 20th and 21st century, and works extensively as an educator and arts administrator. She is co-founder of Tenth Intervention, a collective of musicians that presents new music in New York City. Hajnal performs regularly with IRIS Orchestra, ensemble mise-en, and Quartet Metadata, and has played with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, and the Hungarian New Music Chamber Ensemble (UMZE). In New York, she performs in venues ranging in scope from The Park Avenue Armory to Joe’s Pub to Carnegie Hall. Hajnal is a member of the violin faculty at Interlochen Arts Camp, and maintains a violin studio at Greenwich House Music School and Opus 118 Harlem School of Music. She is also a chamber music coach with the Face the Music/Kronos Quartet program.
