Alex Tirrell is a music director and conductor who has been working in the southern New England region since 2002. He started at the age of 16 with a youth production of Annie and has since become an avid music director and keyboardist in Rhode Island, nearby Massachusetts, and Connecticut, working on regional, college/university, community theatre, and high school productions.
Selected works as music director include the Rhode Island premieres of Rent (February 2010) and 13 (April 2010) at the Courthouse Center for the Arts in West Kingston, RI; Hair for New Bedford Festival Theatre (July 2011); Grey Gardens (March/April 2012) for Salve Regina University; Miss Saigon (February 2012) and Jesus Christ Superstar (March 2013) for Marquee Theatre Productions in Fall River, MA; Legally Blonde (October 2012) for The Community Players of Pawtucket, RI; Titanic the Musical (May 2013) and Les Miserables (October 2014) — which won the 2015 NETC Moss Hart Award for Community theatre, with Little Theatre of Fall River; and [Title of Show] (February 2015) with the Academy Players of Rhode Island, for which Alex won Best Musical Direction from Motif Magazine‘s 2015 Theatre Awards.
Alex studied at Rhode Island College, where he received a BA in Music in 2011, double majoring in Voice and Piano. While at RIC, he studied musical theatre, accompanying, jazz, and orchestration, and was a member of the RIC Chorus, Chamber Singers, Men’s Chorus, Concert Jazz Band, Early Music Ensemble, and Middle Eastern Music Ensemble. He was also an editor/director for The Anchor Newspaper, and webmaster for 90.7 WXIN, Rhode Island College’s campus radio station.
Outside of musical theatre, Alex is keyboardist and one of the vocalists for Shryne, an alt pop/rock band from Providence, RI, which he joined in 2004. Shryne has received several accolades, including Best Indie Live Act from Limelight Magazine in 2008, Band of the Year from Limelight Magazine in 2009, and Break-Thru Band of the Year from Motif Magazine in 2010. The band’s sophomore album Here and Now was released in February 2010 and is available for purchase on CD Baby as well as most digital stores & streaming services including iTunes, Apple Music, Amazon, Spotify, Microsoft Groove, and more.
Alex was most recently a core faculty member of the Musical Theatre department at the CREC Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, where he served as an accompanist and vocal coach for Junior Voice, Senior Scene Study, Acting a Song, Freshman Ensemble, and departmental events. He was also pianist/conductor for the school’s May 2013 production of Hairspray, and music director/pianist/conductor for the school’s productions of Into the Woods (January 2014) and A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine (December 2014).