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ENTERTAINMENT

Meet Cincinnati's man behind the music

David Lyman
Enquirer contributor
Music director Steve Goers works with singers during a rehearsal for the College-Conservatory of Music production of “Children of Eden,” which takes place March 30-April 1.

Steve Goers knew he‘d been lucky.

It was 2:30 a.m. and he was hurtling along a freeway in Chicago’s northern suburbs. He’d just finished one of the endless series of gigs he scheduled every weekend.

Suddenly, he found himself in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. His Honda Civic hit a huge patch of water and spun out of control. He careened into the concrete median wall, leaving a huge trail of sparks behind him.

The car was totaled. Physically, Goers was unhurt, except for a few minor aches. But emotionally, he had reached a crossroads.

“I knew something had to change,” says Goers, one of Greater Cincinnati’s most gifted and in-demand music directors.

For two years prior to the 2006 wreck, Goers had been leading a dual existence.

“I would leave Cincinnati every Thursday night, drive to Chicago, then play five or six gigs with a bunch of different bands,” recalls Goers. “Then I’d drive back Sunday morning and start all over again here. It was crazy.”

Clearly, he couldn’t go on that way.

“So I stopped the Chicago gigs cold turkey,” says Goers. “I decided I’d try to make it work in Cincinnati.”

Music director Steve Goers leads a rehearsal in the College-Conservatory of Music’s Dieterle Vocal Arts Center for the school’s March 2016 production of “American Idiot.”

It’s a gamble that paid off. In the years since then, he’s been music director for scores of shows at dozens of theaters, including the Carnegie, Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, Playhouse in the Park, the Covedale Center for the Performing Arts, the Showboat Majestic, Warsaw Federal Incline Theatre, the Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati and Falcon Theatre. There are many others, as well, including what has become his most established gig, the musical theater program at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, where he is an adjunct professor.

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Tim Perrino, executive artistic director of Cincinnati Landmark Productions, remembers his first encounter with Goers. It was 2004 and Goers had only recently moved to town. His buddy, Eric Baumgartner, was a frequent collaborator with Perrino at the newly opened Covedale Center for the Performing Arts. When Baumgartner wasn’t able to work on Perrino’s production of “Diamond Studs” at the Showboat Majestic, he recommended Goers.

“I talked to him and we were off to the races,” says Perrino.

It didn’t take long for Goers to become Perrino’s go-to music director, handling everything from “1776” to the annual productions of the Cincinnati Young People’s Theatre. Last year, in fact, Goers and Perrino collaborated on a world-premiere musical about Clement C. Moore, the man who wrote “The Night Before Christmas.”

“He’s excellent with just about everything,” says Perrino. “But he’s really, really good at getting a chorus to sound like a chorus instead of a collection of people who show up on stage at the same time. That’s an art all its own.”

By the time he was three, Goers was already sitting at the family piano and pecking out tunes he’d heard on the TV. Before long, he was spending more and more time at the community theater where his parents were involved.

After doing the leading role in the theater’s production of “The Fantasticks,” he was convinced that he would end up making his living as an actor and singer.

“But I had an epiphany my freshman year at Valparaiso University,” says Goers, who is now 48. “I realized that, as much as I loved theater, I wasn’t really very good at it.”

A production shot from CCM's 2016 production of Green Day's "American Idiot." Music director Steve Goers is visible playing the keyboard on the platform above the actors.

So he turned to his other great musical loves, jazz and rock ‘n’ roll. He transferred to Chicago’s DePaul University and earned a degree in jazz studies in 1992. But somehow, theater kept pulling him back in. As soon as he graduated, he spent a year touring with the musical “Barnum,” then went right into an African tour with a company performing “Bubbling Brown Sugar.”

But somewhere in the back of Goers' mind, that wasn’t good enough.

“I thought maybe I wasn’t achieving what I ought to be, you know,” he says. “I had gone to school with all these really heady musician types and here I was doing all this theater stuff. I wanted to be a real musician.”

So, once again, he abandoned the theater. For the next 12 years, he devoted himself to everything but musical theater. He played with rock bands and jazz combos, country bands and even, on one occasion, a klezmer group.

He didn’t realize it then, but what he was really doing was broadening his musical chops to the point that he could successfully step into nearly any musical genre. In time, the extraordinary range of expertise he was building would make him invaluable, especially in the theater.

As a result, he feels equally comfortable whether he’s working on “Jane Eyre” at the Playhouse or “Elf Jr.” at the Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati or “Sweeney Todd” at the Carnegie.

“What I love most about Steve, as a music director, is that he’s true to the page,” says Vince DeGeorge, CCM’s chair of acting for the musical stage. What DeGeorge means is that, in his own way, Goers is something of a purist. When he’s working with singers on a piece of music, he not trying to compete with the composer. He’s trying to realize the spirit of the composer’s intentions.

A production shot from CCM's 2016 production of Green Day's "American Idiot." Steve Goers was music director for the show.

Goers and DeGeorge are now working together on their fifth production at CCM. This one, “Children of Eden,” opens March 30.

“What’s best is that he’s great with the students,” says DeGeorge. “He’s demanding, but not in a negative way. He has high expectations of them.”

And to those students, the experience is memorable.

“First and foremost, I would say Steve is the most fun music director I’ve ever worked with,” says Brianna Barnes, who graduated from CCM’s musical theater program last year. “He is always a good time and absolutely hilarious. I know that makes it sound like it’s all fun and games. But it’s not. That’s the way he put performers at ease. There’s no tension or anxiety when you work with Steve. That’s when you can do your best work.”

And that, after all, is the goal. To make good music that serves the show.

“Look, my goal as a music director is to have my role in the show be as invisible as possible,” says Goers. “I’m there to be an advocate for the composer. And then, I’m there as an advocate for the director. I’m executing the director’s vision while being a champion for the composer. It’s simple, really.”

The idea may be simple. But accomplishing it is anything but. Goers, it seems, has found the key. And to local producers and directors, that ability has made him invaluable.

“He delivers,” says Perrino. “It’s as simple as that. He delivers. Every time."

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