INTERVIEW: The Many Artistic Lives of Gabe Klingler-Horn
Photo provided by theREP
“I don’t think that having a timeline helps the artistic process, unless it is a deadline.”
On a given night in the Capital Region, there is a decent chance Gabe Klingler-Horn is somewhere near a stage. Maybe he has a guitar strapped over his shoulder, coaxing shimmering lines out of it as the lead guitarist for Stella and the Reptilians. Maybe he is under theatrical lights, inhabiting a character at theRep. Either way, he shows up with the same open energy and philosophy that art is something that lives inside of you. Not something to be rushed through.
Klingler-Horn speaks the way he plays – animated, thoughtful, a little self-deprecating, and clearly in love with the process. Now in his late twenties, he already has an artistic career that zigzags in the best possible way. Music pulled him in early, but theater has always been there, quietly shaping how he thinks about performance and presence.
“I really like theater,” he says, reflecting on his sabbatical right out of high school, when he dove into acting programs with Shakespeare and Company in Lenox. “I really like the ethos that was being placed upon the acting profession.”
That gap year turned into several formative experiences on stage, and even a brief stint as an extra on a film set, which he remembers as intense and eye opening. “The assistant director was barking orders,” he recalls. “I was like, okay, this other music thing that I have going on is way more chill than this.”
So music became his prime focus. For nearly eight years, Klingler-Horn immersed himself in bands, songwriting, recording, and studying music at Saint Rose. With Stella and the Reptilians, he helped shape a sound that feels both expansive and grounded, especially for the Capital Region. The band is unafraid to blur lines between indie pop and grunge textures. His guitar became more like a companion, something he keeps returning to, in order to understand himself better.
That grounding is what made his recent return to theater feel less like a pivot and more like a reunion. When Jean-Remy Monnay, founder and Producing Artistic Director of the Black Theatre Troupe of Upstate New York, called him about a role at theRep in I Just Stopped By to See The Man, Klingler-Horn did not overthink it. “He said, ‘I need a white guy that plays the guitar,’” he laughs. “And I was like, okay, I can do that.”
What followed surprised him. Being back in rehearsal rooms and onstage unlocked something new. “I felt like I learned maybe an entire semester’s worth of acting experience,” he says. “Everybody who was part of the cast and crew was incredibly supportive and reassuring.”
Rather than seeing music and theater as competing lanes, Klingler-Horn talks about them as practices that inform each other. For his role, he leaned heavily into the guitar, not as a performance trick, but as a way into the character. Before shows, while others ran lines, he sat quietly with his instrument. “I just wanted to actually be in the character,” he explains. “Music helped me find the words.” That instinct speaks volumes about how he approaches art. He is less interested in polish than in truth, less concerned with timelines than with growth.
Timelines, in fact, are something he openly pushes against. “I think social media has pinned this idea that so many people are 22 and getting this role or touring the world,” he says. “I don’t think that having a timeline helps the artistic process, unless it is a deadline.” He values stepping away as much as diving in, noting how time off from music often brings clarity and ease when he returns. That philosophy extends beyond performance. For the past three years, he has supported himself as a woodworker, a craft that satisfies his need to build something tangible while keeping his creative life balanced. Art has no bounds. A mantra that Klingler-Horn holds dear to his heart.
In the Capital Region, that balance resonates. Klingler-Horn is not chasing a distant scene or measuring success by virality. He is present, collaborating in a local ecosystem that thrives on people who show up fully. Whether he is on a small club stage with Stella and the Reptilians or under theatrical lights at theRep, there is a sense that he is part of a larger conversation about what art can look like for our community.
What is next feels less like a question mark and more like a continuation. Stella and the Reptilians have a new album recorded and ready, a project Klingler-Horn talks about with unmistakable kinetic energy. “This is by far the one that holds the most pride,” he says. “It is the closest I have gotten to making a sound that I completely love.” He describes it as a collision of influences that somehow fit together naturally then appear separately.
At the same time, the door to acting is wide open again. He talks about film with the same excitement he once reserved for records, drawn to the idea of making something that lasts. “When you make something, you want to make a piece of art that is forever.” That belief, that art outlives and unities us all, sits at the heart of everything he believes in.
For audiences in the Capital Region, Gabe Klingler-Horn represents a kind of creative optimism. He is proof that you do not have to choose one identity, one medium, or even one timeline. You can grow, wander, return, and still move forward. You just have to keep listening to the room, to the music, and immerse yourself in life’s journey.