Jeff Blumenkrantz (born June 3, 1965) is an American actor, composer and lyricist.
Born in Long Branch, New Jersey, Blumenkrantz is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Communication. [1] His stage credits include roles in the Broadway productions Into the Woods (1987), The Threepenny Opera (1989), Damn Yankees (1994), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1995), A Class Act (2001), and Bright Star (2016), and Off Broadway in Murder for Two , [2] the City Center Encores productions of Anyone Can Whistle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and The Golden Apple, and the New York Philharmonic productions of Candide (as Maximillian) and Sweeney Todd (as The Beadle), both filmed for PBS. He has also appeared in such television shows as Succession (TV series) , Pose (TV series) , Mr. Robot , The Blacklist (TV series) , Fosse/Verdon , The Detour, Will & Grace , 30 Rock , The Good Wife , Ugly Betty , Just Shoot Me! , and Law & Order, and the films The Big Sick and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
In 2000, noted Broadway actress and recording artist Audra McDonald included Blumenkrantz's song "I Won't Mind" on her CD, How Glory Goes . This lullaby (with lyrics by Annie Kessler and Libby Saines) has become a staple of McDonald's repertoire. Blumenkrantz also contributed a piece to The Seven Deadly Sins, a song cycle commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the singer. His comic song, "My Book," addressed the sin of sloth.
In 2003, Blumenkrantz was nominated for a Best Original Score Tony Award for his work on Urban Cowboy , a nomination he shared with Jason Robert Brown and others. He wrote the book, music, and lyrics for Scaffolding as part of the 2018 Inner Voices series. Scaffolding was directed by Victoria Clark and starred Rebecca Luker. His song "Ovid" was featured in the Prospect Theatre Company's production of Notes from Now at 59E59 Theaters.
In 2005–2006, he created and hosted The Jeff Blumenkrantz Songbook Podcast, a weekly podcast featuring the songs from his songbook, occasional additional episodes of which were released until at least February 2010. This project was succeeded in 2008 by the BMI Workshop Songbook Podcast, which Blumenkrantz hosted, showcasing the eponymous songbook, which features the work of members of the BMI Songwriters' Workshop.
Blumenkrantz is the recipient of the 2011 Fred Ebb Award for excellence in musical theatre songwriting. [3]
Kander and Ebb were a highly successful American songwriting team consisting of composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb. Known primarily for their stage musicals, which include Cabaret and Chicago, Kander and Ebb also scored several movies, including Martin Scorsese's New York, New York. Their most famous song is the theme song of that movie. Recorded by many artists, "New York, New York" became a signature song for Frank Sinatra. The team also became associated with two actresses, Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera, for whom they wrote a considerable amount of material for the stage, concerts and television.
John Harold Kander is an American composer, known largely for his work in the musical theater. As part of the songwriting team Kander and Ebb, Kander wrote the scores for 15 musicals, including Cabaret (1966) and Chicago (1975), both of which were later adapted into acclaimed films. He and Ebb also wrote the standard "New York, New York". The team also received numerous nominations, which include five additional Tony Awards, two Academy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards.
Fred Ebb was an American musical theatre lyricist who had many successful collaborations with composer John Kander. The Kander and Ebb team frequently wrote for such performers as Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera.
Maury Yeston is an American composer, lyricist and music theorist.
Alan Irwin Menken is an American composer and conductor, best known for his scores and songs for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and Skydance Animation. Menken's contributions to The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995) won him two Academy Awards for each film. 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 twenty-one people to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.
Lynn Ahrens is an American writer and lyricist for the musical theatre, television and film. She has collaborated with Stephen Flaherty for many years. She won the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award for the Broadway musical Ragtime. Together with Flaherty, she has written many musicals, including Lucky Stiff, My Favorite Year, Ragtime, Seussical, A Man of No Importance, Dessa Rose, The Glorious Ones, Rocky, Little Dancer and, recently on Broadway, Anastasia and Once on This Island.
Brian Stokes Mitchell is an American actor and singer. A powerful baritone, he has been one of the central leading men of the Broadway theater since the 1990s. He has received numerous accolades including a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award and a nomination for a Grammy Award. In 2016 he received the Isabelle Stevenson Award.
Michael John LaChiusa is an American musical theatre and opera composer, lyricist, and librettist. He is best known for musically esoteric shows such as Hello Again, Marie Christine, The Wild Party, and See What I Wanna See. He was nominated for four Tony Awards in 2000 for his score and book for both Marie Christine and The Wild Party and received another nomination in 1996 for his work on the libretto for Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
Jeff Marx is an American composer and lyricist of musicals. He is best known for creating the Broadway musical Avenue Q with collaborator Robert Lopez.
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 animated films Frozen, its sequel Frozen II, and Coco, with his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez. He is signed to Disney Music Publishing.
A. Lehman Engel was an American composer for television, film, and operas and a conductor of Broadway musicals and operas.
A Class Act is a quasi-autobiographical musical loosely based on the life of composer-lyricist Edward Kleban, who died at the age of 48 in 1987. Featuring a book by Linda Kline and Lonny Price along with music and lyrics by Kleban himself, the musical uses flashbacks and the device of time running backwards to retrace the high and low points of the composer's personal and professional life.
Matthew Strachan was an English composer and singer-songwriter.
Jessica Molaskey is an American professional actress and singer. Jessica most recently appeared in the Off Broadway production of The Connector at the MCC Theater Company for which she was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award and Outer Critics Circle Award. She has appeared in almost a dozen Broadway shows, including Sunday in the Park with George, Parade, Dream, Tommy, Les Miserables, Crazy for You, Chess, Oklahoma!, Cats, City of Angels, and the first national tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Songbook is a musical with music by Monty Norman and book and lyrics by Monty Norman and Julian More. The musical tells the improbable life story of a fictional songwriter, born in Liverpool in 1908, who has a colourful career with extraordinary successes and setbacks, loves and losses, and brushes with celebrities and historic events; he dies celebrated.
Kim Oler is an American television and theatrical composer. He is a member of the BMI and Dramatists Guild.
Michael Kooman is an Emmy nominated composer writing for the stage and screen. His television work includes songs on the Disney Junior animated series, Vampirina and the Netflix series Ridley Jones.* He is most known for his musical Romantics Anonymous, which premiered in 2017 at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. He is half of the writing team of Kooman and Dimond.
Walter Marks is an American songwriter, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. He is probably best known for his song "I've Gotta Be Me", recorded by Sammy Davis Jr, Tony Bennett, Michael Jackson and many others. He has also written songs recorded by Barbra Streisand, The Temptations, Della Reese, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme, and other artists.
Timothy Huang is a Taiwanese American playwright, actor, composer and lyricist. He is the creator of the award-winning one-man musical, The View from Here, the song cycle LINES, and "American Morning", aka Costs of Living, the latter of which won the 2016 Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater. He is the third Asian American to win the award since its creation and the first to win as a triple threat composer/lyricist/librettist.
Benjamin Velez is an American composer and lyricist.