Greg Pliska biography

Greg Pliska
At Writers Theatre: TREVOR the musical

Greg Pliska is a composer, conductor and orchestrator who diverse career includes award-winning work in theater, film, television and other media. His recent orchestration work includes new themes for CBS Evening News, IMAX, HBO Feature Presentation and Hulu, along with the films The Infiltrator (featuring Bryan Cranston), Manhattan Nocturne (featuring Adrien Brody), Beethoven’s Treasure Tail, The Little Rascals Save the Day, The Wildest Dream and the BAFTA-winning documentary Flying Monsters 3D. He previously co-orchestrated (with Michael Starobin) Julianne Wick Davis' musical When We Met. Greg’s compositions include music for the Broadway play Sylvia and Shakespeare in the Park productions of Twelfth Night, Comedy of Errors, and As You Like It (co-composed with Steve Martin, Drama Desk nomination). He contributed music and orchestration to the BAFTA-winning TV series Life, along with other Discovery Channel and National Geographic programs and several short films. His off-Broadway scores include The Government Inspector, School for Scandal, Vigil, The Window Man, Ice Island, Oy!, and Pericles. He is composer of the theme music for Audible’s podcasts Presidents are People Too and Authorized. He wrote an opera with David Ives, The Secret Garden, and is currently developing a new piece on the life of labor leader Walter Reuther. Greg was the music director for the Tony-winning play War Horse (as well as the Toronto and North American tour productions), for which he also won a web award for Best Musical Direction of a Play. He has conducted off-Broadway and regionally, including the national tour of Jekyll and Hyde, and acclaimed New York productions of Tintypes, The Portable Pioneer and Prairie Show, and Michael Gordon’s Chaos.

As an educator, Greg is a frequent festival artistic director and workshop leader for the International Schools Theater Association, which has brought him to more than 35 countries to date. He is a former faculty member of the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at New York University, and a teaching artist for the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan School of Music and the national school reform initiative Different Ways of Knowing. He helped developed the highly acclaimed Creating Original Opera program for the Met, as well as curriculum for schools in New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Chicago and Washington, DC, through the organization Arts for Anyone. Greg was a recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Grants for Young Composers and a Fellow at the Sundance Documentary Composers Lab. He has served on the Board of the Society of Composers and Lyricists for two years, and is the chair of the organization’s New York chapter.

In his other life, Greg creates puzzle hunts for corporate and private clients, including two events per year at New York resort Mohonk Mountain House. He is a contributor and puzzle guru for NPR’s Ask Me Another, and a commentator and competitor for Will Shortz’s annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Greg grew up in California and lives in Manhattan with his wife, Jessica, and two children, Margot and Nicholas.

[Bio as of June 2017]