Brian Usifer (photo by Mari Uchida)
Nominations for the 2026 Tony Awards were announced on May 5, and SUNY Fredonia alumnus Brian Usifer is a nominee.
In the category of Best Orchestrations, Brian was nominated for his work on the first Broadway revival of the musical “Chess.” He also serves as music supervisor for the production.
The awards ceremony is slated for June 7 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
Brian, a 2003 graduate of SUNY Fredonia, received the Fredonia Alumni Association’s Outstanding Achievement Award in 2019.
He is a New York City-based music director, pianist, orchestrator/arranger, producer and composer. On Broadway, his credits most recently include “Chess” featuring the music of ABBA and lyrics by Tim Rice; “Swept Away” with music by The Avett Brothers; “The Heart of Rock and Roll” featuring the songs of Huey Lewis; “A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical,” Disney’s “Frozen,” “The Book of Mormon,” and “Kinky Boots,” with an original score by Cyndi Lauper, which won the 2013 GRAMMY award for Best Musical Theatre Album.
Brian has performed at venues including Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden, The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” “The Late Night With Stephen Colbert,” “Good Morning America” and Carnegie Hall. On television, he contributed orchestrations to NBC’s “Annie Live!” and “The Wiz Live!,” performed a PBS special with Clay Aiken, and can be heard as a pianist on Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
As a producer, Brian produced the recently released Broadway cast recording of “Chess,” as well as the original cast albums of “The Heart of Rock and Roll” and “Swept Away.” He is also the co-founder of Joy Machine Records, an independent label dedicated to theatre music and Broadway artists.
His upcoming projects include “Begin Again,” with music by Pat Monahan of Train, premiering this summer in San Diego, and a new Broadway show about Galileo this fall.
While at Fredonia, Brian, a piano student of the late Professor Robert Jordan, won the School of Music’s Concerto Competition. He also directed the Fredonia Jazz Ensemble. Brian earned a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance and the prestigious Performer’s Certificate from Fredonia in 2003, and a master’s degree in Collaborative Piano from New York University.
He has returned to campus on more than one occasion to share his expertise with students. Brian also provided an arrangement for alumnus Marc Goldhaber’s original composition “Somebody in Love” which had its world premiere at the Michael C. Rockefeller Arts Center’s 50th anniversary gala concert.
The Brian Usifer Fund for Careers in the Arts, which was endowed in his honor in the Fredonia College Foundation, gave its first award in 2020.
