Arlington grad a big player on L.A. music scene
Thor Steingraber still remembers the excitement every summer when marching band practice started at Arlington High School. He and his mother would walk over to the football field and watch them play.
Those summer days created in Steingraber a lifelong love of live music and of the fine arts.
He went on to sing with the Choraliers at Arlington and perform in the school's musical theater productions. When Steingraber graduated in 1984, he was student body president and given the task of delivering the school's final address before it closed.
Steingraber says his years in Arlington Heights were formative, even now in his high profile job as vice president of programming for the Music Center in Los Angeles, one of the largest performing arts centers in the country.
“It's such an exciting opportunity,” Steingraber said in a phone interview. “There's a visionary quality to it.”
The Music Center is home to four performance venues — including the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which hosts the Academy Awards — and increasingly it is playing an important role in the revitalization of downtown Los Angeles.
Among the latest projects is a 12-acre park being developed jointly by the city and county, which stretches from the Music Center to Los Angeles city hall. Its name should be announced this week.
“It's an outdoor park on a scale with Millennium Park,” Steingraber says, “dedicated to public art.”
The difference is, that with Los Angeles's mild weather, the park will be able to showcase live music and dance performances year-round. That's where Steingraber comes in.
As vice president of programming for the Music Center, he has been tapped to schedule the park's entertainment and literally bring its vitality to life, as early as this summer.
“It's so exciting that this will help to anchor downtown L.A.,” Steingraber says. “But the fact that it's been given over to a fine arts organization to enliven and activate, makes it a perfect gateway to the arts.”
The park and its development dovetails into the Music Center's 50th anniversary, and its leaders pointed to Steingraber as the perfect point person to help shape its next 50 years.
“As we approach our 50th anniversary, the Music Center is more committed than ever to advancing its role as an arts leader and vital cultural hub for the County of Los Angeles,” says Executive Vice President and COO Howard Sherman. “Adding Thor to our team is an important step in realizing that goal.”
Steingraber majored in theater at Indiana University and went on to become the stage director for the L.A. Opera for 14 years, which is based at the Music Center. He left in 2008 and got a master's degree in public administration at Harvard University's Kennedy School before taking over as senior vice president of strategy and planning at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia.
Landing his current job at the Music Center brings him full circle, he says, though thoughts of home are never far from his mind. His father is Roger Steingraber, a former teacher and coach with Northwest Suburban High School District 214. The elder Steingraber still lives in Arlington Heights and takes great pride in his son's accomplishments.
“I have incredibly fond memories of Arlington Heights and especially of Arlington High School,” Thor Steingraber says. “My love for the arts started there.”