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Resume (not a verb)
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FIRST A LIL BIO
Dave Malloy is a composer/writer/performer/orchestrator. He has written thirteen musicals, including Octet, a chamber choir musical about internet addiction; Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on a slice of Tolstoy’s War & Peace (12 Tony nominations, including Best Musical, Score, Book, and Orchestrations); Ghost Quartet, a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey; Preludes, a musical fantasia set in the hypnotized mind of Sergei Rachmaninoff; Little Bunny Foo Foo, a forest entertainment for small people; Three Pianos, a drunken romp through Schubert’s “Winterreise”; Black Wizard/Blue Wizard, an escapist RPG fantasy; Beowulf—A Thousand Years of Baggage, an anti-academia rock opera; Beardo, a reinterpretation of the Rasputin myth; Sandwich, a musical about killing animals; and Clown Bible, Genesis to Revelation told through clowns. He has won two Obie Awards, a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, a Theater World Award, the Richard Rodgers Award, an ASCAP New Horizons Award, and a Jonathan Larson Grant, and has been a MacDowell fellow and Composer-in-Residence at Ars Nova and the Signature Theatre. Future projects include an adaptation of Moby-Dick. He lives in Brooklyn.
AND SOME PRESS
NY Times Feature: "The Composer Wears Many Hats"
New Yorker Feature: "Rocking Out to War and Peace"
Radio Boston Interview: "Music, Whiskey, and the Afterlife"
Time Out NY Interview with David Cote
New Music Box interview with Molly Sheridan
Musico e Theatrico
Octet (Composer/Writer) dir. Annie Tippe. Signature Theatre, NYC, 5/19.
A chamber choir musical about internet addiction.
Little Bunny Foo Foo (Composer) w. Anne Washburn, dir. Les Waters. Actors Theater of Louisville, KY, 1/18.
An entertainment for small people.
Ghost Quartet (Composer/Writer/Performer) w/Brent Arnold, Brittain Ashford, and Gelsey Bell, dir. Annie Tippe. The Bushwick Starr, Brooklyn NY, 10/14; The McKittrick Hotel, NYC, 1/15; Mt. Tremper Arts, Mt. Tremper NY, 7/15; American Repertory Theater, Cambridge MA, 09/15; Curran Under Construction, SF CA, 10/15; Paines Plough's Roundabout, Summerhall, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 8/16; Next Door at New York Theater Workshop, NYC, 10/17; Erickson Theater, Seattle Theater Group, Seattle WA, 1/18.
Bourbon and ghosts and love and death and wailing and noise and Thelonious Monk. Scored for four voices, cello, guitars, Celtic harp, erhu, autoharp, piano, keyboards, metallophone and percussion.
*Outstanding Visiting Production, 2016 Elliot Norton Awards*
*Best of 2014: The New Yorker, New York Times, Broadway World, Playbill, The Cast Album Review*
*Nominated for Outstanding Musical, 2015 Drama League Awards*
*Nominated for Outstanding Music, 2015 Drama Desk Awards*
*Nominated for Best Unique Theatrical Experience, 2015 Off-Broadway Alliance Awards*
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 (Composer/Librettist/Orchestrator/Music Director/Pierre) dir. Rachel Chavkin. Ars Nova, NYC, 10/12; Kazino, NYC, 5/13-3/14; American Repertory Theater, Cambridge MA, 12/15; Broadway, 10/16-9/17.
An electropop opera based on Book 8 of Tolstoy's War & Peace. Scored for 16 singers, clarinet/bass clarinet, oboe/English horn, viola, 2 cellos, 2 guitars, accordion, keyboard, piano, bass, percussion and laptop.
*2017 Tony Award, Best Set Design of a Musical (Mimi Lien), Best Lighting Design of a Musical (Bradley King)*
Twelve 2017 Tony nominations: Best Musical, Music, Book, Orchestrations, Direction, Choreography, Set Design, Lighting Design, Costume Design, Lead Actor (Josh Groban), Lead Actress (Denée Benton), Featured Actor (Lucas Steele)*
*2013 OBIE Award, Special Citation to Dave Malloy and Rachel Chavkin*
*2013 Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater*
*Best New Musical, 2013 Off Broadway Alliance Awards*
*Three 2014 Lucille Lortel Awards: Lucas Steele, Outstanding Featured Actor; Mimi Lien, Outstanding Set Design; Paloma Young, Outstanding Costume Design; and Eleven Nominations, including Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Director (Rachel Chavkin), Oustanding Actor/Actress (Phillipa Soo, Brittain Ashford, Shaina Taub, Blake DeLong), and Outstanding Design (Matt Hubbs, Bradley King)*
*Five 2013 Drama Desk Awards Nominations: Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Director of a Musical (Rachel Chavkin), Outstanding Music, Outstanding Lyrics, Outstanding Costume Design (Paloma Young)*
*Two 2013 Drama League Awards Nominations: Outstanding Production of a Musical, Distinguished Performance (Phillipa Soo)*
*2013 Henry Hewes Design Award for Scenic Design, Mimi Lien*
*Best of 2012, Time Out New York*
*Best of 2012, New York Magazine*
*Best of 2012, New York Post*
*2012 Most Galvanizing Moments, New York Times*
*Eight 2016 IRNE Awards: Best New Play, Musical, Director, Set, Costume, Lights, Sound, Actor (Scott Stangland)*
Don't Stop Me (Composer) w. Krista Knight, dir. Jennifer Boesing. Youth Musical Theater Company, Berkeley CA, 6/15.
A dance-a-thon to the death musical for teenagers. With a demon DJ. Scored for sax quartet and rhythm section.
Preludes (Composer/Writer) dir. Rachel Chavkin. Lincoln Center Theater 3, NYC, 5/15.
A musical fantasia set in the hypnotized mind of Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Black Wizard / Blue Wizard (Co-Creator/Composer/Black Wizard) w/Eliza Bent, dir. Dan Safer. Incubator Arts Project, NYC, 12/13; Other Forces Festival, NYC 1/14.
A philosophical muso-medieval spectacle, featuring electrowizard music, trombone and a choir of d12.
Three Pianos (Co-Creator/Performer/Sound & Video Designer) w/Rick Burkhardt & Alec Duffy, dir. Rachel Chavkin. Ontological-Hysteric Theater, NYC, 2/10; New York Theater Workshop, NYC, 12/10; American Repertory Theater, Cambridge MA, 12/11.
Schubert's "Winterreise" given a mayhem treatment, with free wine for all. Yes three pianos on stage.
*OBIE Award, Special Citation to Rick Burkhardt, Alec Duffy, Dave Malloy & Rachel Chavkin*
*Best Schubert Revival, Village Voice Best of NYC 2010*
*Dig Boston Best of 2011*
*2011 Henry Hewes Design Awards, Nominations for Scenic, Lighting, Sound & Video Design*
All Hands (Composer/Music Director) w. Robert Quillen Camp, dir. Alec Duffy. Incubator Arts Project, NYC, 3/12.
Techno-ritual music for an 18 voice secret society.
Beardo (Composer/Music Director) w/Shotgun Players, w. Jason Craig, dir. Patrick Dooley. Ashby Stage, Berkeley CA, 3/11.
Rasputin in three acts. SongPlay for 8 singers, choir, string quartet, guitar, bass and percussion.
*Best Political-Historical Thesis Disguised as a Wildly Funny and Louche "Songplay", 2011 SF Bay Guardian Theater Awards*
*Best Theater Company, SF Weekly Best of 2011*
*Best of 2011, Honorable Mention, The Idiolect, SF Chronicle*
*Finalist, 2012 Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater*
Murder In The Cathedral (Composer) dir. Alec Duffy. Church of St. Joseph, Brooklyn NY, 9/10.
Setting of T. S. Eliot's text, for women's trio and choir, trombone, organ and bass.
The Small (Composer/Music Director/Performer) w/Clubbed Thumb, w. Anne Washburn, dir. Les Waters. Ohio Theater, NYC, 6/10.
Five Days in March (Composer) w/Witness Relocation, w. Toshiki Okada, dir. Dan Safer. La MaMa, NYC, 5/10.
Haarlem Berlin(Composer) w. Talaya Delaney, dir. Rachel Chavkin. Vassar College, 10/09.
Guest Artist at Vassar's Drama Department for an Angels 'n' War Circus Show featuring a 12-piece orchestra including cellos, trombone, saxophones, oboe and harp.
A bunch of shows with Banana Bag & Bodice, including:
Beowulf - A Thousand Years of Baggage (Composer/Music Director/Hrothgar) w/Shotgun Players, w. Jason Craig, dir. Rod Hipskind & Mallory Catlett. World Premiere: Ashby Stage, Berkeley CA, 5/08; NYC Premiere: Abrons Arts Center, 4/09.
An anti-academia SongPlay, scored for 7 singers, viola, clarinet, bass clarinet, 2 trombones, saw, guitar, piano, synthesizer, accordion, bass, percussion and laptop.
*2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe Herald Angel Award*
*2011 Edinburgh Stage Awards for Acting Excellence Nomination, Best Ensemble*
*2008 Glickman Award for Best New Play*
*The New Yorker Best of 2009*
*2009 Innovative Theater Award Nomination, Best Music*
*East Bay Express #1 Play of 2008, Best of The East Bay 2008*
*SF Chronicle, SF Bay Guardian, SF Examiner, Mercury News Best of 2008*LongYarn (Sound Designer) w. Jason Craig, dir Elena Heyman. The Bushwick Starr, Brooklyn NY, 1/16.
Space//Space (Composer/Music Director/Sound Designer) w. Jason Craig, dir. Mallory Catlett. Ohio Theatre Ice Factory, NYC, 8/09; Abrons Arts Center, NYC, 6/11; The Collapsable Hole, Brooklyn NY, 6/12.
A claustrophobic container tale; featuring electro sci-fi music and erhu noise in 9.2 surround.
The Sewers (Composer/Sound Designer) w. Jason Craig, dir. Mallory Catlett. FoolsFury Fury Factory, SF, 11/05; Ontological-Hysteric Theater, NYC, 6/06; Dublin Fringe, 9/06; SF Fringe, 9/07.
An aborted living room drama play. Continuos electronic score for 4 singers and laptop.
*Time Out New York Best of 2007*
*Best of Dublin Fringe 2006*
*Best of SF Fringe 2007*Sandwich (Composer/Music Director/Sound Designer/Writer/Buffalo Knife Man) dir. Meredith Eldred & Mallory Catlett. SF Fringe, 9/03; Exit Theatre, SF CA, 3/04; Ontological-Hysteric Theatre, NYC/The Collapsable Hole, Brooklyn NY, 6/04; as A Very Sandwich Christmas, Abrons Arts Center ,NYC, 12/09.
A musical about killing animals. Live score for prepared piano, accordions, guitar, organ, bass, percussion and whale song.
*Best Musical, SF Fringe 2003*Gulag Ha Ha (Composer/Sound Designer/Old Timer) w. Jason Craig. SF Fringe, 9/02; NYC Fringe, 8/03; Dublin Fringe, 9/03.
A study in prison deformation. Live score for harmonicas, fishbowls, percussion and delay pedal.
*Best of SF Fringe 2002*
Dysphoria (Composer/Sound Designer) w/Hoi Polloi, w./dir. Alec Duffy. Ontological-Hysteric Theater, NYC, 8/07.
Alec Duffy is one of the leading futures of the new theater. This piece explored the interpersonal dynamics of five religious cultists living in a single room in preparation for life on a space station.
Hair (Musical Director/Pianist) dir. Maya Gurantz. Berkeley High School, Berkeley CA, 5/07.
Deconstructed as a piece found in the kids' attic. At one point they were playing 20+ guitars.
Clown Bible (Composer/Lyricist/Music Director/Pianist/Job/Judas) w/Ten Red Hen, dir. Maya Gurantz. Willard Metalshop Theater, Berkeley CA, 3/07.
God grows up, Creation to Resurrection, told through clowns. With ridiculous acrobatics, a clown car birth, eye-gouging and cubitsticks. Scored for gypsy jazz quintet and string quintet. Starring Jane Chen as God and Jesus.
*Best Play, Best Music, East Bay Express, Best of 2007*
(The 99-cent) Miss Saigon (Music Director/Pianist/Chris) w/Ten Red Hen, dir. Maya Gurantz. Willard Metalshop Theater, Berkeley CA, 3/06.
Reimagining the biggest of Broadway musicals as a piece of poor theatre. We had an awesome GI Joe helicopter on a zip line and used a balloon for the kid.
The Invaders (Composer) w/Sean Owens, dir. Kathryn Wood. Spanganga, SF CA, 4/04.
Gogol (Composer/Music Director/Sound Designer/Performer) w. Jason Craig and Sean Owens, dir. Meredith Eldred, The Exit Theater, SF CA, 6/01.
Get Me Rodd Keith! (Keyboard/Ginseng Digger/Sandy) w. Josh Pollock, dir. Meredith Eldred, 6/00.
___________
Guest Professor, Pataphysics Playwrighting Workshop, 4/15.
Taught a course in musical theater history and composition.
Guest Professor, The Princeton Atelier, w/ Dan Safer. Princeton University, 2/12-5/12.
Co-taught a course in devised theater, creating Very Serious (This Is Serious), a piece based on the texts of Nathalie Sarraute and Ridley Scott's Alien.
Curator, The Sufjan Stevens Secret Xmas Song, w/Alec Duffy. Brooklyn NY, 1/09-present.
Music Director/Pianist, Youth Musical Theater Company, Berkeley CA, 6/06-7/09.
Entailing a bunch of workshops and two full scale musicals a year, for students from grade 7-12. We did Guys & Dolls, Cabaret, Man of La Mancha, Into the Woods and Les Miserables. For Woods, I conducted the 15-piece orchestra from the piano, learning a valuable lesson: never conduct Sondheim from the piano.
Pianist, Celebrity Cruises, Alaska, 6/01-9/01, the Caribbean, 9/03-1/04, Bermuda, 6/04-11/04, the Mediterranean, 4/05-7/05.
You can read about this, if you like. I played in the showband, backing up quasivirtuoso violinists playing Lord of the Dance medleys, Scottish tenors performing "Danny Boy" and Motown medleys, impersonators doing Sammy Davis Jr. medleys, dulcimer players doing Fiddler on the Roof medleys. We also got to play on top of prerecorded "click tracks" for the big Broadway medley production shows. Afterward, everyone went to the crew bar and got drunk on dollar Heinekens. It's really strange. I also got to follow beautiful 85 year old women through tempoless multikey versions of "Summertime", etc., for the Guest Talent Show. This helped me come to believe in God.
Non-Musico
Instructor, ManhattanGMAT, NYC, 9/08-10/15.
Counselor, Sunny Hills Children's Garden, Marin County CA, 12/04-11/05.
This is a group of homes and a school for emotionally disturbed children, ages 6-12. Part of the job involved restraining kids who are like 8 years old and physically assaultive. Once a girl urinated on me during a hold. But then at bedtime we sang each other our favorite church songs. It was pretty wild, with these marathon 50 hour shifts, and the emotional drain of the kids alternately loving and hating you, but it was super neat, probably the best job I've ever had.
Instructor, The Princeton Review, San Francisco CA, 7/00-4/05.
Taught courses in SAT, GMAT, GRE and LSAT preparation for high school and college students. I liked to keep the class lively by using experimental teaching techniques, such as standing on chairs.
Teacher, Jewish Community Center Preschool, San Francisco CA, 9/00-9/03.
Taught at preschool in classrooms for 2-5 year olds. The school was based in the philosophy of Reggio Emilia, which meant that we designed the curriculum around what the kids were interested in. Like Greenland. Or spending four months trying to figure out how to open this locked wooden box. The idea being that children have probably a lot more to teach us then we them. I used to get in trouble for doing stuff like letting the kids punch in the security code, or letting them draw flowers on each other's hands in permanent markers. (They're! not! really! permanent!)
Content Editor, Voquette.com, San Mateo CA, 3/00-9/00.
My one startup, writing useless capsule summaries of classical, jazz and country audio content on the internet. I quit one month before the company folded, thus missing my big shot at dotcom unemployment collecting. Rats!
Sales Associate, Amoeba Music, San Francisco CA, 3/99-4/00.
I worked mostly in the jazz/classical department, pricing CDs, stocking CDs, suggesting CDs, occasionally shaking up the customers by playing weird electronic CDs right before closing. I probably spent about half of my paychecks on CDs, ravenously picking up all the things all the other, cooler employees told me to get.
Pizza Cook, Fatty J's, Boulder CO, 8/98-12/98.
This is where I learned to flip pizza dough high in the twirling air like a cloud carousel. We got high in the back room all the time.
Educatio
University of Colorado at Boulder, 9/98-12/98.
I didn't really like being in grad school. It just seemed silly.
Ohio University, Athens OH, 9/94-6/98.
Bachelor of Music in Composition, one class short of a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature (decided to take trapshooting instead), Summa Cum Laude. Applied study in composition with Mark Phillips, piano with Richard Syracuse.
I spent most of the last two years of college drinking wine, watching old movies and playing hearts. But I also got to write groove-noise music for a full symphony orchestra.
Skillos
Composer, writer, lyricist, orchestrator, pianist, accordionist, other weird instrumentsist, singer, sound designer, etc. Excellent sight reader. Experienced working with students of all ages in vocal training, piano pedagogy, and music theory. And standardized tests. Extensive knowledge of music theory and history, with specialization in twentieth-century music, piano literature, jazz and that cool music the kids are talking about. Some computer stuff, including Sibelius and Logic Audio. Functional fluency in German (not really. I just like putting that). Fast and avid reader, have lots of incomplete knowledge of math, science, philosophy, and religion. Can ride a bike all over the place. Good cook. Good at cards, backgammon, Scrabble, Boggle, cryptic crossword puzzles, trapshooting. Really enjoy organizing things (OCD runs in the family). Could probably name all 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone from memory. If pressed.
References available upon request.