Ed Alstrom

Ed Alstrom grew up in Northern New Jersey. Started playing organ at age 5, guitar and bass as a teenager. Didn't acquire a piano in the Alstrom household until he was 12, at which time his father brought home an old pedal-pump player piano, on which he activated the broken player mechanism by connecting a canister vacuum cleaner and running it in reverse, which caused the piano rolls to play at blinding speed. Young Alstrom found this highly entertaining.

He performed in the requisite rock bands through high school, but also studied church organ and dabbled in every other conceiveable type of music. He attended Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ and escaped with a B.A. in Organ Performance, despite playing in disco lounges nearly every night. He is currently serving as Organist/Choir Director at the Presbyterian Church of West Caldwell (NJ), and can be heard there at Sunday morning services at 10:00.

Alstrom has performed with Bette Midler, Chuck Berry, Leonard Bernstein, Herbie Hancock, Eddie Fisher, Odetta, Dion, Larry Coryell, Lou Rawls, Zubin Mehta, Donald Fagan, Uncle Floyd, Al Kooper, Stanley Jordan, Steven Van Zandt, Ben E. King, Cissy Houston, John Lloyd Young (star of 'Jersey Boys' on Broadway), and many other notables. He is currently the Musical Director for Darlene Love.

His Broadway experience includes a 2-month stint as Interim Associate Conductor on 'Hairspray' (where he continues to sub the Key 2 chair regularly), as well as 'Leader Of The Pack (The Ellie Greenwich Musical'), 'Smokey Joe's Cafe', 'Taboo', 'Brooklyn', and 'Hot Feet'. Off-Broadway, he has been Musical Director for 'Dream A Little Dream (The Mamas & Papas Musical)', which ran from May-August 2003; and played the Piano/Keyboard chair for 'Caroline, or Change', the Tony Kushner-Jeanine Tesori musical that ran at the Public Theater in NYC from Oct '03-Feb '04.

Alstrom realized a childhood dream in 2004 when he was asked to be the weekend (Sat/Sun) Organist at YANKEE STADIUM, where he filled the seat at the mighty Hammond Colonnade formerly occupied by the great Eddie Layton, who retired after a 37-yeat stint. From the time he was 9 years old and his father took him to his first Yankee game against the Washington Senators (in which Frank Howard hit a galvanic 500+ ft. home run to cavernous left center off Dooley Womack, if I recall), young Alstrom heard that organ at the Stadium and said, "I wanna do THAT". He never dreamed he'd actually get to do it!!

The "day job they tell you not to quit" is now at FOSTEX in Montville, NJ, where Ed is National Sales Manager for the Pro/AV line of products. Prior to that, he was at Casio Inc. in Dover, NJ where Alstrom was the Product Manager for the Keyboard Division for the better part of 16 years. He had design input with Casio's R&D in Japan with the musical instruments, and composed and arranged a lot of the music that went into them for many years. That Trine Door Chime you have may have also been programmed by Alstrom. He has also done product demonstrations on QVC and HSN for Yamaha keyboards, and Ion and Silvertone guitars; and has done reviews for Keyboard Magazine.

He is also performing in some other very diverse contexts, outlined in the Events area of this site.