Bio

Larry Pressgrove has served as music director, conductor, and orchestrator on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and national tours, and has composed, arranged, and worked as vocal coach and educator in numerous award-winning productions and programs.

He served as Music Director and Orchestrator, and originated the role of ‘Larry’, in the Tony-nominated Broadway musical [title of show]. 

He then collaborated with that same team to create the original Off-Broadway musical Now. Here. This. at the Vineyard Theatre. Larry was Associate Music Director for Disaster! on Broadway. He can be heard on the original cast albums of these musicals and Children’s Letters to God.

He conducted the Broadway production of Cats and the National tours of Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables and music directed galas featuring such performers as Ben, Vereen, Norm Lewis and Tyne Daly. 

As a composer, Larry’s original musicals include Waiting for Spring, Bed No Breakfast, Tony and the Soprano, and The Angle of the Sun, which was featured as the premier production of NMYF’s 2007 season. In 2013, he received the NYMF Award for Best Orchestration.

Larry also serves as Music Supervisor for various projects at the prestigious ‘Fame’ school--La Guardia Arts High School. Amongst the hundreds of students he has mentored are Oscar-nominated Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name), Ansel Elgort (The Fault in Our Stars, Baby Driver) and Jharell Jerome (Moonlight). 

He has conducted residencies at various universities including Baldwin Wallace University and The University of Illinois at Champagne/Urbana.

Larry was raised on a farm in Eastern Kansas with seven brothers and sisters, 30 cows, 10 cats and 2 dogs. He was a disaster working on and using farm equipment but acquired great skill with farm animals, especially pigs. Pigs are smart and friendly but NEVER get in between a sow and her piglets because she will attack in the blink of an eye! 

Since 1984, Larry has been an active member of the peer counseling community called Re-Evaluation Counseling and was certified as a teacher in 1986. RC teaches people how to reclaim access to the processes of emotional healing, such as crying, laughing, shaking, etc. These insights have been invaluable in the process of working with actors both in helping them access their feelings and in processing their frustrations and fear as they reach for greater skills.

Larry has worked in the theatre since he was in high school. Although there have been challenges throughout the years, he feels grateful to have spent his life collaborating with other people to create experiences that uplift and inspire others.