Jeff Marx | |
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 Marx at the 58th Tony Awards | |
| Background information | |
| Born | September 10, 1970 United States |
| Genres | Musical |
| Occupations | Composer |
Jeff Marx (born September 10, 1970) is an American composer and lyricist of musicals. He is best known for creating the Broadway musical Avenue Q with collaborator Robert Lopez.
Marx grew up in Hollywood, Florida. He attended Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Following graduation, he attended the University of Michigan, where he was a member of the Men's Glee Club. He also holds a juris doctor degree from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and is a member of the New York State Bar Association, but he does not practice law.
After passing the New York State Bar examination Marx enrolled at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop in order to meet potential clients in the entertainment industry. Here, he met Robert Lopez who was also in the course.
Their first major project together, a spec Muppet movie, Kermit, Prince of Denmark, which was very loosely based on Hamlet, won them (as part of a tie) part of the $150,000 Kleban Award.
Together, they created the original concept for Avenue Q and wrote all the show's 21 songs. Avenue Q ran over six years on Broadway and then moved Off-Broadway where it ran another nine years before closing on April 28, 2019. [1] It continues to have various international productions.
Avenue Q won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Musical. Lopez/Marx's musical score earned them a 2004 Tony Award, and another Tony Award was awarded to Avenue Q bookwriter, Jeff Whitty. The musical's Original Cast Album, on the RCA/Victor label, was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Marx (and his parents) can be seen in the documentary film ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway , which followed the trajectories of four Tony-nominated musicals from 2004, Avenue Q , Wicked , Taboo and Caroline, or Change . Marx, along with filmmaker Dori Berinstein and actor Alan Cumming, provided the audio commentary for the documentary's DVD.
Lopez and Marx wrote (with Debra Fordham) four songs for a musical episode of the NBC sitcom Scrubs which aired on January 18, 2007. Their song "Everything Comes Down to Poo" was nominated for an Emmy Award. [2] Marx appeared in the episode as a pharmacist, dancing in the background during the song "We're Gonna Miss You Carla". The New York Times reported that the episode "energized a cast and crew that, at a point when most situation comedies are sputtering along or dead, have recently been doing some of their best work." [3] In comparing it to his work on Avenue Q, Marx said: "It took us five years to write Avenue Q ... There were a million readings and previews and staged readings. With this thing, we wrote the songs in a week. They rehearsed for a week. They filmed it in a week, and it was done. It was liberating, and a collaborative effort that created a much more feel-good way of working." [3]
Marx co-wrote the theme song for the Logo Network's animated series Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World and contributed additional songs for the show.
Lopez and Marx have written songs for the Disney Channel TV series Bear in the Big Blue House and The Book of Pooh , as well as touring stage musicals for the children's theater company Theaterworks/USA.
On December 13, 2008, Marx premiered a new song he wrote, "White Kwanzaa", on the CNN show D.L. Hughley Breaks the News . [4]
Marx was an original collaborator with Lopez and South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone on the 2011 Broadway musical The Book of Mormon . However, Marx departed the show before its premiere. “I worked with them on it and then we split up and made a deal,” Marx told Broadway Journal in 2016. “I don’t want to say more than that except that I’m extremely happy the show has been so successful!” [5]
Marx collaborated with Mervyn Warren on a song called "You Have More Friends Than You Know" for the It Gets Better organization. The song was featured on the television program Glee on April 18, 2013. Marx recorded his version of the song and made it available for download with a portion of the proceeds going to support The Trevor Project. Marx has also made a karaoke version of the song available for those who want to perform their own version and help spread the song's message, and has featured other versions on the song's website.
In 2015, a stage musical titled Home Street Home premiered in San Francisco. It was co-written by Marx with Fat Mike of punk band NOFX, and activist and dominatrix Soma Snakeoil. [6]
Marx has also written the book How To Win A High School Election.
George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theater director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals for the Marx Brothers and others. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the musical Of Thee I Sing in 1932, and won again in 1937 for the play You Can't Take It with You. He also won the Tony Award for Best Director in 1951 for the musical Guys and Dolls.
Alan Irwin Menken is an American composer, pianist, music director, and record producer, best known for his scores and songs for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and Skydance Animation. Menken's music for The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995) has each won him two Academy Awards. He also composed the scores and songs for Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Newsies (1992), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Home on the Range (2004), Enchanted (2007), Tangled (2010), and Disenchanted (2022), among others. His accolades include winning eight Academy Awards — becoming the second most prolific Oscar winner in the music categories after Alfred Newman, a Tony Award, eleven Grammy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and a Daytime Emmy Award. Menken is one of nineteen people to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.
Avenue Q is a musical comedy featuring puppets and human actors with music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx and book by Jeff Whitty. It won Best Musical, Book, and Score at the 2004 Tony Awards. The show's format is a parody of Sesame Street, but its content involves adult-oriented themes. It has been praised for its approach to themes of racism, homosexuality and internet pornography.
Stephen Flaherty is an American composer of musical theatre and film. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/book writer Lynn Ahrens. They are best known for writing the Broadway musicals Ragtime, which was nominated for thirteen Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and won the Tony for Best Original Score; Once on This Island, which won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, the Olivier Award for London's Best Musical, and was nominated for a Grammy Award and eight Tony Awards; and Seussical, which was nominated for the Grammy Award. Flaherty was also nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for his songs and song score for the animated film musical Anastasia.
Jeffrey Daniel Whitty is an American playwright, actor, and screenwriter.
Robert Lopez is an American songwriter for musicals and playwright, best known for co-creating The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q, and for co-writing the songs featured in the Disney computer-animated films Frozen, its sequel Frozen II, and Coco, with his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez. He is one of only nineteen people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award, nicknamed by Philip Michael Thomas in 1984 as the "EGOT". He additionally holds the distinctions of being the youngest person to win an EGOT, and winning the awards across the shortest period of time: he won all four in the span of ten years and completed the set at the age of 39. He is also the only person to have won all four awards more than once, having won two Oscars, three Tonys, three Grammys, and four Emmys. With a second set of competitive wins beginning with his June 27, 2010 Emmy and concluding with his March 4, 2018 Academy Award, he has broken his own 'fastest to complete' record, establishing a new fastest EGOT interval at 7 years and 8 months.
Glenn Slater is an American lyricist for musical theatre. He has collaborated with Alan Menken, Christopher Lennertz, Andrew Lloyd Webber, among other composers. He was nominated for three Tony Awards for Best Original Score for the Broadway version of The Little Mermaid at the 62nd Tony Awards in 2008, Sister Act at the 65th Tony Awards in 2011, and School of Rock at the 70th Tony Awards in 2016.
Andrew Scott Rannells is an American actor. He is best known for originating the role of Elder Kevin Price in the 2011 Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical and won the 2012 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. He received his second Tony nomination in 2017 for his performance as Whizzer in the 2016 Broadway revival of Falsettos. Other Broadway credits include Hairspray (2005), Jersey Boys (2009), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2014), Hamilton (2015), The Boys in the Band (2018), and Gutenberg! The Musical! (2023). For his performance in the Off West End production of Tammy Faye, he was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award.
Scott Wittman is an American director, lyricist, composer and writer for Broadway, concerts, and television.
The Magic Show is a one-act musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Bob Randall. It starred magician Doug Henning. Produced by Edgar Lansbury, Joseph Beruh, and Ivan Reitman, it opened on Broadway on May 28, 1974 at the Cort Theatre in Manhattan, and ran for 1,920 performances, closing on December 31, 1978. Henning was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical and director Grover Dale was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical.
TheatreWorksUSA is a professional, not-for-profit theatre for young and family audiences founded in 1961. The company is based out of New York City, but has touring productions that run through forty-nine states as well as parts of Canada. Plays and musicals produced by Theatreworks have reached over 90 million children, teachers and families since the company's founding.
"My Musical" is a musical episode of the American comedy-drama television series Scrubs. It is the 123rd episode of the show, and was originally aired as the sixth episode of the sixth season on January 18, 2007 on NBC.
Henry Krieger is an American musical theatre composer. He most notably wrote the music for the Broadway shows Dreamgirls, The Tap Dance Kid (1983), and Side Show (1997).
The Book of Mormon is a musical comedy with music, lyrics, and book by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone. The story follows two missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as they attempt to preach the faith to the inhabitants of a remote Ugandan village. The earnest young men are challenged by the lack of interest from the locals, who are distracted by more pressing issues such as HIV/AIDS, famine, female genital mutilation, child molestation, and oppression by the local warlord.
The 65th Annual Tony Awards was held on June 12, 2011 to recognize achievement in Broadway productions during the 2010–2011 season. They were held at the Beacon Theatre, ending a fourteen-year tradition of holding the ceremony at Radio City Music Hall. The Awards ceremony was broadcast live on CBS and was hosted by Neil Patrick Harris. The award nominations were announced on May 3, 2011.
Larry Hochman is an American orchestrator and composer. He has won four Emmy Awards for his original music on the TV series Wonder Pets! and a Tony Award for his orchestrations for The Book of Mormon.
Douglas Besterman is an American orchestrator, musical arranger and music producer. He is the recipient of three Tony Awards out of six total nominations and two Drama Desk Awards out of six total nominations, and was a 2009 Grammy Award nominee.
Anna Louizos is an American scenic designer and art director. She is known for her Tony Award-nominated sets for the musicals In the Heights,High Fidelityand The Mystery of Edwin Drood as well as the London, Broadway, Las Vegas, and touring productions of Avenue Q. Louizos was represented on Broadway with School of Rockat The Wintergarden Theatre,Holiday Inn (2016),Honeymoon in Vegas,Dames at Sea (2015),Cinderella at the Broadway Theatre in 2013–15.Other Broadway designs include Curtains (2007),,It Shoulda Been You,White Christmas on Broadway at the Marquis Theatre,The Performers,Steel Magnoliasand Golda's Balcony
The Book of Mormon: Original Broadway Cast Recording contains the songs from the American musical The Book of Mormon, with music, lyrics, and book by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone. It was recorded by the musical's original Broadway cast and released on May 17, 2011 to digital outlets. The album saw a physical release on June 7, 2011, in a deluxe package with liner notes provided by former The New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich, as well as full lyrics and a synopsis of the musical. The Book of Mormon was named best musical theater album at the 2012 Grammy Awards.
Kristen Anderson-Lopez is an American songwriter known for co-writing the songs for the 2013 animated musical film Frozen and its 2019 sequel Frozen II with her husband Robert Lopez. The couple won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Let It Go" from Frozen and "Remember Me" from Coco (2017) at the 86th and 90th awards respectively. She also won two Grammy Awards at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards.
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