Jack Allocco is an 11-time Emmy® Award-winning composer, conductor, and songwriter whose career spans television, film, and theater. He is the composer for Sony Pictures Television’s The Young and the Restlessand CBS Television’s The Bold and the Beautiful— the most watched daytime drama in the world, with a daily audience of 26.2 million viewers in 98 countries. For those two programs alone, it has been estimated that Allocco has scored more than 12,000 hours of network TV.
Allocco has won 13 consecutive ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards in the category of “Most Performed Themes and Underscore on Television,” and also has worked as a composer and producer for established music artists. He has toured as music director and conductor with numerous theatrical productions and symphonies, as well as performers Robert Goulet and Peter Allen, and has performed in concerts at Carnegie Hall, Buckingham Palace, The Grand Ole Opry, and The White House (including both inaugurations of Ronald Reagan). Among his compositions is a classical ballet for children titled “Animal Crackers.”
As a current trustee of Nazareth College and a proud alumnus (1972) — one of the first to receive Nazareth’s then-newly established music theory degree — Allocco was commissioned to compose and perform a piece for the inaugural concert at The Jane and Laurence Glazer Music Performance Center at Nazareth College in September 2018. “The education I received (at Nazareth) was in no small way the reason for why I have been a successful composer,” Allocco said.
Born and raised in Rochester, he began guitar lessons at age four and was pretty much self-taught until he met teacher Ray Shahin while at Bishop Kearney High School. “He taught me to sight-read all styles of music,” Allocco said. His mother was a Big Band singer and exposed him and his sister to all kinds of music at a young age. “Because of the weather in Rochester, I spent a lot of time indoors watching television and loved the music,” Allocco said. “I knew every main title and the names of all the composers.” He resides in Nashville with his wife, Stacie, and children Catherine and Nicholas. He also holds a bachelor’s degree from St. John Fisher College and has been granted Honorary Doctorate degrees from Nazareth College as well as Marymount University in Los Angeles.
Performance at the ceremony: Jack Allocco and Prime Time Funk will accompany musician Gary Wright, who will perform his 1970s hits “Dream Weaver” and “Love Is Alive” — for which Allocco has written the current arrangements. They will be joined by a strings section comprised of Nazareth College music students.