Michael Keefe | Resident Composer

Michael Keefe has provided music for First Folio for ten seasons, having composed scores for The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, As You Like It, Antigone, Twelfth Night, and The Comedy of Errors among others.  Most recently, Michael conducted and played for the WTTW Soundstage concert with Raoul Malo (of "The Mavericks"), performed with Dennis DeYong (formerly of "Styx") as well as playing keyboards for the Chicago engagements of Wicked, Hairspray, Billy Joel and Twyla Tharp's Movin' Out, the ABBA musical Mamma Mia and many other Broadway touring shows.  Michael has also performed with such artists as Henry Mancini, Shirley Bassey, and Eddie Arnold, as well as accompanying Edith Piaf singer Raquel Britton at Orchestra Hall, Charlotte Church at the Chicago Theater, the Three Tenors at the Chicago Theater, and the Joffrey Ballet's restaging of the 1967 groundbreaking ballet "Astarte" at the Auditorium.  As a composer, Michael was commissioned by the Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii in Chicago to write a setting of the "Passion According to St. John" and composed the score for WTTW's "Treasures of the Art Institute" as well as composing commercial music for clients such as 7-UP and Ruffles Potato Chips.  Michael is also one of the principal synthesizer programmers in the Chicago area, working with such groups as the Chicago Symphony, Lyric Opera, and Steppenwolf Theater.