Scott Shachter

Since early 2017 Scott Shachter has been onstage as a regular in the show "Chicago." He has played his flutes, clarinets and saxophones on Broadway since 1988, and has performed in over seventy shows, including "Cats" (2016-2017, 1992-2000), "Kinky Boots," "On The Town" (2014-2015 and 1996), "Pippin," "Annie," "Cinderella," "Nice Work If You Can Get It," "Porgy and Bess," "Billy Elliot," "A Chorus Line," "42nd Street," "Assassins," "Gypsy," and "Phantom." His versatility with styles and instruments has enabled him to perform with groups ranging from the "American Symphony" to "Manhattan Transfer." For more about Scott's music, please visit www.scottshachter.com.

Through it all Scott has also maintained a passion for writing--with a comic edge. OUTSIDE IN, his first novel, was inspired by his encounters with gloriously talented performers who couldn't relate to other humans. This jazz fiction/speculative fiction/comedy puts the reader inside the wacky life of a working class musician, and explores the "crazy genius" in us all. OUTSIDE IN was a finalist in the 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, gained Honorable Mention in the 2011 Leapfrog Press Fiction Contest and reached the quarterfinals in the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

I've had the great fortune to have played almost every kind of gig a clarinet/sax/flute person could play--Broadway, symphony orchestras, chamber orchestras, wind bands, jazz and swing bands, cabarets, night clubs, bars, every kind of recording session from jingles to films to big bands. I was even hired and recorded by the NY Yankees to imitate an out-of-tune marching band on “Take Me Out to the Ballpark.” I've worked on deluxe tours and "bus & truck" one-nighters, cruise ships, bar mitzvahs and weddings. In high school in Philadelphia I played a wedding that ended with a rumble between the groom's family and the band. I've played 3am Latin gigs, concerts at Carnegie Hall and Avery Fischer, Catskill hotel gigs, gigs at the Waldorf and the Carlyle, gigs for mobsters who needed to launder their cash through a big band in an empty banquet hall, and gigs for mobsters who didn't like us taking breaks or examining them too closely. I was hired to play solo alto flute in a restaurant elevator. I once worked an office party featuring Indian cuisine, while I sat cross-legged on the floor in my tux, playing bansuri flutes. I even played a marriage proposal--in my tux with my tenor at a footbridge in Central Park.

At the show "Glorious Ones" I wore a troubadour outfit. "At Songs on a Shipwrecked Sofa" I wore a bulbous white turban over my tux while I played tenor, and actually had a line--a joke in an Indian dialect. At "High Society" I had to wear on stage an oversized orange ruffled shirt and a black sombrero with dangling red balls. I've also worked with some of the greats--from headliners to conductors to fellow musicians. The music world is filled with some of the finest people you could ever know. But occasionally the most talented bring with them the most drama. The most foul-mouthed trumpet player was also the sweetest sounding I'd ever heard. I used to know a brilliant conductor who would only wear orange. And every once in a while I'd come upon a genius with an audiographic memory, incapable of relating to other humans.

All this led me to wonder, If you were raised to be truly open and free, unrestrained by society, would you go wild? Would others think you were insane or a genius? What if you fell in love with an artist only to discover their work was repulsive to you? Could you still love them? What if you created a piece of art from the depths of your being, perfecting it all your life, only to discover no one likes it?

OUTSIDE IN is about making art--following your muse wherever it goes, even if that scares away everyone, including the person you love most.