Guest ArtistsMichael Rafter, piano

Michael Rafter recently appeared on Live from Lincoln Center with Sutton Foster and recorded a third CD with her, Take Me to the World, which was released in June 2018. He was the music director for the Broadway production of Violet and has been touring the world as Sutton Foster’s music director/arranger/pianist over the last several years. Recently, Michael has vocal-coached actors such as Adam Driver and Emily Blunt for upcoming film roles. He conducted Gypsy both on Broadway starring Tyne Daly, as well as the TV movie starring Bette Midler, and he won an Emmy award for his music direction of that film.

Michael has supervised the Broadway and/or national touring companies of Everyday Rapture, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Swing!, Sunset Boulevard, The Sound of Music and The Buddy Holly Story. On Broadway, Michael has served as music director/conductor of Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Sound of Music, The King & I and Gypsy. He was the Associate Music Supervisor for the hit Broadway show, Jersey Boys. Michael did the arrangements for the Broadway productions of Swing! and Sweet Charity, was one of the two-piano duo that played the Broadway revival of The Most Happy Fella, and worked on The Tap Dance Kid and Les Misérables. Off Broadway credits include Merrily We Roll Along and Violet.

Michael was the music director/conductor for The "American Songbook" series at Alice Tully Hall. He was also the music director for Broadway’s Best on Bravo where he worked with such artists as Trisha Yearwood, Kevin Bacon, Joan Osborne, Mandy Moore, Cyndi Lauper, Darius Rucker and Shawn Colvin. As a guest conductor, Michael conducted the Memphis Symphony and the Tulsa Philharmonic for an evening of Jule Styne’s music.

In addition to doing two previous CDs with Sutton Foster, Michael co-produced Norm Lewis’s solo CD, This is the Life, and the recording of Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s Broadway show, Caroline, or Change.

Currently, he is working as music director/arranger for the upcoming revival of The Unsinkable Molly Brown. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College where his major was Music, with a minor in Italian, and is the proud father of his daughter Siena – a junior at Brown University.