JULY 21 • 2022 | 45

ESTHER ALLWEISS INGBER

Recalling the audience response to Becker’s music, Berkley 
Coffee owner Kenny Showler said, “It turned the heads of visi-
tors not expecting to hear that, and they weren’t even aware that 
they were originals. It’s out of the ordinary for someone to be 
producing original, complex classical piano compositions these 
days, so I wanted to get him set up for a show from the first time 
he visited my coffee shop.”
A scrapbook Becker keeps in his home overflows with flyers 
and newsletters announcing his performances. The venues have 
included the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit, 
Birmingham Community House, Oak Park Library, the former 
Hammell Music store in Redford and 
more. He’s saved biographical materials 
and press clippings. Online, Becker’s 
compositions are available to hear on 
YouTube. Many of them come from a CD 
he released more than a decade ago, but 
Becker said he never stops composing. 
“The music I’m producing now is 
better than it’s ever been,” Becker said, 
before launching into several composi-
tions on his Nordiska piano in the liv-
ing room. Becker’s robust playing adds 
drama to his beautiful and satisfying 
melodies. His joy shines through.
“Music has always been part of me,” he 
said.”
Becker’s style of music is inspired by the 
composers he most admires. No. 1 for him 
is Franz Liszt — “a rock star in his era, and 
a great showman, like Liberace.
” Others he 
likes include Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sergei 
Rachmaninoff, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach and, 
from the 20th century, George Gershwin.

GROWING UP 
Becker and his older sister, Marcy, now married to Stuart Feldman, 
were born in Detroit to Jean and David Becker. “My dad was a 
remarkable social dancer,
” said Becker. His mother is 102 and 
a resident of the Meer Jewish Senior Life Apartments in West 
Bloomfield. “She is so sharp to this day and a very funny person,
” 
Becker said. David died from cancer at age 62 on Steve’s 21st birth-
day. His late stepfather was Mitch Newman.
In an era focused on rock music, guitar was Becker’s first instru-
ment. He took lessons in a music store until he got bored and 
switched to piano. 
“I was more of a Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff guy, and the great-
est composers played piano,
” he said. 
Becker’s first teacher for about four years was Mischa Kottler, 
musical director of WWJ-TV in Detroit for 33 years and official 
pianist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for a generation. DSO 
pianist Mildred Kilby taught Becker for the next four years.
Always focused on his primary interest, Becker sometimes cut 
classes in high school to study music at the main branch of the 
Detroit Public Library. Becker said he wanted to “absorb every-
thing about the classics” and ultimately did become “something of 
a music historian,
” able to speak authoritatively about the life and 
works of classical composers.

Following his 1971 graduation from Henry Ford High School in 
Detroit, Becker took a memorable hitchhiking trip with his friend 
Ken Emmer. Becker showed up at the New York Times building 
without an appointment and got to meet Harold Schonberg, then 
the paper’s main music critic. Schonberg, apparently charmed by 
the ambitious young composer, introduced him to pianist Vladimir 
Horowitz. “We discussed music at his penthouse in New York,
” 
Becker recalled. Andre Watts is another famous classical pianist he 
is also proud to have met several times.
Becker studied piano at Wayne State University but did not com-
plete a degree. More meaningful for him later, he said, was earning a 
certificate in piano composition from his pri-
vate teacher, Dr. Phil Moore. As an instructor 
himself, Becker has had as many as 50 piano 
students on his schedule, and he formerly 
taught music history to students at Berkley 
High School. The pandemic ended some of 
his opportunities, such as playing piano in 
the lobby at three suburban Emagine movie 
theaters and at numerous private parties.
For a time, Becker had hopes of pub-
lishing his compositions. After a willing 
connection in Detroit passed away unex-
pectedly in the 1970s, the man’s brother 
gave Becker the opportunity to meet with 
a partner at New York-based G. Schirmer 
Music Publishers. Becker recalled bringing 
5,000 sheets of his works in a suitcase to 
the oldest active music publisher in the 
United States. But the unnamed Schirmer 
executive inexplicably “decided he wanted 
nothing to do with my music.” 
Becker turned to sales in the auto parts industry to support 
his family. On March 17, he observed his 26th anniversary with 
Southfield Chrysler Jeep Dodge; he worked almost 12 years earlier 
at Village Jeep in Birmingham. Becker’s close-knit family includes 
his wife, Barbara (Slifkin) Becker (they were married at Temple 
Israel), a part-time sales adviser at Warby Parker, an eyeware retailer 
in Troy’s Somerset Collection. They met on a blind date and will 
be married 42 years on Aug. 2. The Becker children, Julie, 41, and 
Ryan, 40, live locally.
Music runs in Becker’s family, including his distant cousin 
Michael Feinstein, the pianist and Great American Songbook singer 
and archivist. Uncle Leo Dworkin in Columbus, Ohio, was a profes-
sional trombonist. 
For himself, Becker seems OK with how things turned out, say-
ing: “If music had become a vocation instead of an avocation, I 
wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much.
”
He intends to play some of “my finest tone poems” at his 
weekend engagement. 
Tone poems are literary works Becker sets to music, such as his 
Resurrection of Juliet. “I brought Juliet back to life. Richard Strauss 
wrote the poem, and I did the score.
”
For Becker, “there is nothing like a live performance on an acous-
tic piano. 
Showler of Berkley Coffee agrees: “I’m looking forward to the 
show, and to my grandfather’s Yamaha piano getting some more 
proper exercise.
” 

Stephan Becker 
at the piano in his 
Oak Park home. 

A flyer from years past advertising a 
performance by Becker in Birmingham

