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dave malloy

Resume (not a verb)

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FIRST A LIL BIO
Dave Malloy is a composer/performer/sound designer/musical director/pianist/theater slash artist. He is the winner of an OBIE Award, Glickman Award and Jonathan Larson Grant, a recipient of the 2009 NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Theatre Directors and Designers, and the 2011 composer-in-residence at Ars Nova. He is one of the co-creator/performers of Three Pianos, a drunken romp through Schubert’s Winterreise that premiered at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater in 2010; the show went on to win an OBIE award and has since played at New York Theater Workshop and American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA.

He has written the music for six full length musicals, most recently Beardo, a Russian-ballet inspired retelling of the Rasputin myth including a string quintet and a 40-piece choir, written by Jason Craig and presented by the Shotgun Players In Berkeley, CA. He and Craig also collaborated on Beowulf - A Thousand Years of Baggage, a Banana Bag & Bodice SongPlay commissioned/produced by Shotgun, a show which received the 2008 Glickman Award, the East Bay Express "Best of the East Bay" Award, and appeared on The New Yorker’s Best of 2009 list and the Best of 2008 lists of every major Bay Area paper (including two #1 spots). Beowulf has gone to play a number of venues and festivals, including a One Night Gala at Berkeley Repertory’s Roda Theater, ART’s Club Oberon, Joe’s Pub, and a variety of rock clubs in the Lower East Side. The show performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2011, taking home a Herald Angel and a Stage Awards Nomination for Best Ensemble. His next musical, Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812, is an electropop opera adapatation of Tolstoy'sWar & Peace, and will premiere at Ars Nova in Fall 2012.

In 2007 he wrote the music and lyrics for Ten Red Hen’s Clown Bible, a gypsy-jazz infused telling of biblical stories from Genesis to Revelation told through clowns, winning “Best Play of the Year” and “Best Music of the Year” from the East Bay Express. In 2004 he wrote the music for another Banana Bag & Bodice show, Sandwich, a Weillian mishmash about eating animals; the show won Best Musical at the SF Fringe, and has been remounted at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater and as A Very Sandwich Christmas at Abrons Arts Center. He has been a member of BB&B since 2002 and has done eight shows with them, including The Sewers, an apocalyptic Victorian living room play that featured an extensive integrated electronic score and won Time Out New York’s Best of 2006, Best of Dublin Fringe '06 and Best of SF Fringe '07.

Other notable projects include Witness Relocation's English language premiere of Toshiki Okada's Five Days in March, featuring an all electronic score; Alec Duffy's production of T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, scored for women's chorus & trio, organ, trombone and bass; Ten Red Hen’s (The 99-cent) Miss Saigon, a low budget reimagining of the biggest of Broadway musicals for which he was musical director, pianist and Chris; and California Shakespeare Theater’s puppet version of The Merry Wives of Windsor, for which he won a 2006 Bay Area Critic’s Circle Award for Sound Design. He has also worked with Center Theater Group, Hoi Polloi, Clubbed Thumb, Lone Wolf Tribe, ACT, Magic Theater, The Exit Theater and mugwumpin. He lives in Brooklyn.

 

NOW THE RESUME

Musico e Theatrico

Composer/Librettist/Musical Director/Pierre, Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812, w. Dave Malloy, dir. Rachel Chavkin. Ars Nova, NYC, 10/12.

An electropop opera based on Book 8 of Tolstoy's War & Peace.

Composer/Musical Director, All Hands, w. Robert Quillen Camp, dir. Alec Duffy. Incubator Arts Project, NYC, 3/12.

Techno-ritual music for an 18 voice secret society.

Guest Professor, The Princeton Atelier, w/ Dan Safer. Princeton University, 2/12-5/12.

Co-taught a course in devised theater based on the texts of Nathalie Sarraute and Ridley Scott's Alien.

Co-Creator/Performer/Sound & Video Designer, Three Pianos, 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*

Composer/Musical Director/Hrothgar, Beowulf - A Thousand Years of Baggage, w/ Banana Bag & Bodice & Shotgun Players, w. Jason Craig, dir. Rod Hipskind & Mallory Catlett. Various venues, including Kilkenny Arts Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, SummerStage, Joe's Pub, Club Oberon, Lion d'Or, Littlefield, The Living Room, Pianos, Arlene's Grocery, The Slipper Room, Berkeley Rep, Chez Poulet, Prelude Festival, 5/08-present.
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*

Musical Director/Pianist, The Mikado, w/Taylor Mac, Joe's Pub, NYC, 11/11.

Selections from, as 1/24th of Taylor Mac's awesome 24 hour history of popular music project.

Sound Designer/Buddy, "The World's Greatest Piano Player" (for "The Bar"), Perfect Lives Manhattan, w/Varispeed, w. Robert Ashley, Performa 11, NYC, 11/11.

*Time Out New York Best of 2011*

Composer/Musical Director, Beardo, 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*

Curator, The Sufjan Stevens Secret Xmas Song, w/Alec Duffy. Brooklyn NY, 1/09-present.

Composer-in-Residence, Ars Nova, NYC, 2011.

Composer, Murder In The Cathedral, 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.  

Composer/Musical Director/Performer, The Small, w/Clubbed Thumb, w. Anne Washburn, dir. Les Waters. Ohio Theater, NYC, 6/10.

Composer/Musical Director/Performer, Uncharted: Dave Malloy. Ars Nova, NYC, 5/10.

Part of Ars Nova's composer series, this was a very fun evening of "career retrospectiveness", with a motley group of 11 doing tunes from Beowulf, Haarlem Berlin, Clown Bible and more.

Composer, Five Days in March, w/Witness Relocation, w. Toshiki Okada, dir. Dan Safer. La MaMa, NYC, 5/10.

Composer, Haarlem Berlin, 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.

Recipient, *NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Designers*, 2009-2011.

Composer/Musical Director/Sound Designer, Space//Space, w/ Banana Bag & Bodice, w. Jason Craig, dir. Mallory Catlett. Ohio Theatre Ice Factory, 8/09.

Musical 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.

Sound Designer, Punkplay, w/Clubbed Thumb, w. Gregory Moss, dir. Davis McCallum. Ohio Theatre, NYC, 6/09.

Recipient, *American Theatre Wing's Jonathan Larson Grant*, 2009.

A bunch of stuff w/Shotgun Players, Berkeley CA (the first 100% solar powered theatre in the US!), including:

Musical Director, Vera Wilde, w. Chris Jefferies, dir. Maya Gurantz. Ashby Stage, 9/08.
Musical Director, Ubu for President, w. Josh Costello, dir. Patrick Dooley. John Hinkel Park, 8/08;
Sound Designer, Bulrusher, w. Eisa Davis, dir. Ellen Sebastian Chang & Margo Hall. Ashby Stage, 10/07.
Accordionist, Ragnarok: The Doom of the Gods, w/The Independent Eye, dir. Conrad Bishop. John Hinkel Park, 8/06.
Co-Musical Director, Cabaret, dir. Russell Blackwood. Ashby Stage, 12/05.

Sound Designer, You Can't Get There From Here, w. Anne Galjour, dir. Jayne Wenger. Magic Theater, SF CA, 8/08.

Sound Designer, Bride, w/Lone Wolf Tribe. PS122, NYC, 3/08.

*UNIMA Citation of Excellence, 2009*
*Time Out New York Best of 2008*

Pianist, Siddhartha: The Bright Path, w/Marsh Youth Theater, w./dir. Emily Klion and Lisa Quoresimo. The Marsh, SF CA, 12/07-1/08.

Composer/Sound Designer, Dysphoria, 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.

Sound Designer, Killing My Lobster Saves The Day, dir. Sarah Mitchell, Eureka Theater, SF CA, 6/07; Killing My Lobster For The Very First Time, dir. Shaye Troha, ODC, SF CA, 11/07; Killing My Lobster Springs Forward, Falls Back, dir. Andy Alabran, Dance Mission Theater, SF CA, 7/08.

Musical Director/Pianist, Hair, 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.

Composer/Lyricist/Musical Director/Pianist/Job/Judas, Clown Bible, 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, cubitsticks, and a full string quintet. Starring Jane Chen as God and Jesus.

*Best Play, Best Music, East Bay Express, Best of 2007*

Accompanist, San Francisco Academy for the Performing Arts, w/Richard Nickol, voice builder, SF CA, 11/05-2/07.

Performer/Musical Director, 365 Plays/365 Days (Week 4), w/Ten Red Hen, dir. Maya Gurantz. Bay Area, 12/06.

We did our week at private parties. It was really lovely; Napoleon and Wellington facing each other in the rain on the hood of an old Cadillac, oh yes.

Pianist, The Last 5 Years, w/In-Tandem Productions, dir. Holden Sperling. The Playhouse, San Anselmo CA, 10/06.

Composer/Sound Designer/Writer/Taylor Taylor, The Fall & Rise of the Rising Fallen (Pt. 1), w/ Banana Bag & Bodice, w. Jason Craig & Dave Malloy, dir. Maya Gurantz. SF Fringe, 9/06.

Sound Designer, The Merry Wives of Windsor, w/California Shakespeare Theater, dir. Sean Daniels. Bruns Amphitheater, Orinda CA, 6/06.

Wonderful fun puppet Shakespeare, with a brilliant cast and amazing puppets designed by Jon Ludwig of the Center for Puppetry Arts. Done in the style of a Warner Bros. cartoon, thus 250+ sound cues, hee hee.

*Best Sound Design, Bay Area Critic's Circle Awards 2006*

Composer/Musical Director/Performer, The Faith Project, w./dir. Susannah Martin. Mondavi Center, Davis CA, 5/06.

A devised piece investigating faith in America. Featuring a score for prepared piano, bass, cello, oboe, percussion and choir, and an onstage baptism, oh yeah.

Composer/Musical Director/Performer, Frankie Done It 291 Ways, w/mugwumpin. Ashby Stage, Berkeley CA, 4/06.

A devised piece based on the song "Frankie & Johnny" and the real life woman it haunted. With Doppelgängers, slick choreography, and harmonica duels. We chickened out on the blackface though.

Musical Director/Pianist/Chris, (The 99 Cent) Miss Saigon, 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. This is my favorite thing I've ever done ever.

Sound Designer/Musical Director, On The Bum, w/ACT, w. Neal Bell, dir. Sheryl Kaller. Zeum Theater, SF CA, 3/06.

Composer/Sound Designer, The Sewers,w/ Banana Bag & Bodice, 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.

*Time Out New York Best of 2007*
*Best of Dublin Fringe 2006*
*Best of SF Fringe 2007*

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.

Composer/Musical Director/Sound Designer/Performer, a bunch of plays at The Exit Theater, SF CA, including:

Cabaret Rebel, w/Beth Wilmurt, dir. Mark Jackson, a lovely singin' show, 5/04.
A Night Among The Stars, a benefit for The Exit, 3/04.
in3, w/j. ries and Meredith Eldred, 4/03.
Ghostlight, w. Sean Owens, dir. Meredith Eldred, 10/02.
Champion!, w. Thessaly Lerner, dir. Peter Nachtrieb, 5/02.
 The Whistleaires' Big Christmas Special(s), yes, they whistled!, 12/00, 12/01.
Spontaneous Musical Moments, w. Sean Owens, musical numbers performed upon the unsuspecting public in the SF Theater District, 9/01.
Gogol, w. Jason Craig and Sean Owens, dir. Meredith Eldred, 6/01.
Get Me Rodd Keith!, w. Josh Pollock, dir. Meredith Eldred, 6/00.

Composer, The Invaders, w/Sean Owens, dir. Kathryn Wood. Spanganga, SF CA, 4/04.

Sound Designer/Composer, Woods For The Trees, w/Kraft & Purver. Noh Space, SF CA, 4/04.

Composer, The Young War, w/ Banana Bag & Bodice, w. Jason Craig, dir. Mallory Catlett. GAWK II Festival, NYC, 1/ 04; SF Fringe, 9/04; Dublin Fringe, 10/04; Montreal Infringement Festival, 6/05; The Collapsible Hole, Brooklyn, 5/05; Ontological-Hysteric Theater, NYC, 7/05.

*Best of SF Fringe 2004*

Composer/Musical Director/Sound Designer/Writer/Buffalo Knife Man, Sandwich, w/ Banana Bag & Bodice, dir. Meredith Eldred & Mallory Catlett. SF Fringe, 9/03; Exit Theatre 3/04; Ontological-Hysteric Theatre, Collapsible Giraffe, 6/04; as A Very Sandwich Christmas, Abrons Arts Center, 12/09.

*Best Musical, SF Fringe 2003*

Composer/Performer, Gulag Ha Ha, w/ Banana Bag & Bodice, w. Jason Craig. SF Fringe 9/02, NYC Fringe 8/03, Dublin Fringe 9/03.

*Best of SF Fringe 2002*

Musical Director, Coconut Cabaret, w/Teatro Akumal. Akumal, Mexico, 7/02.

A talent show for a beautiful community of super-friendly millionaire expats. Whoa.

Pianist, Erik Satie's "Vexations", w/Kerstin Kussmaul & The Monday Travel Group. ODC, SF CA, 12/01.

This is one of the more interesting things I've been involved in, sharing in the piano playing for an 18 hour dance performance of Satie's "Vexations", a slow, wandering piano melody that is repeated 840 times. People danced, people made sushi, people painted, people had seizures. I think my longest shift was four hours...though it's really all a beautiful blur now.

Pianist, Ohio Valley Summer Theater. Athens OH, 6/96-8/96, 6/97-8/97, 6/98-8/98.

Worked as pianist for musical theatre company in rehearsal and performance. We did Big River, West Side Story and The Music Man. During Tony's death scene at the end of West Side one night, I forgot to set my keyboard back to "Piano" after this spacejam murder freak out section we used to play, and so came in during this really quiet sad, emotional high of the play scene with a full church organ playing the normally plaintive last bars of "Somewhere".

Vocal/Instrumental/Choral/Dance Accompanist, Ohio University, 9/94-6/98.

Accompanied vocal and instrumental students of all ages for lessons, recitals, juries and competitions. Accompanied Ohio University Youth Choir. Accompanied Ballet and Modern dance classes. Learned how to spell accompanist.

Plus a bunch of bands over the years, including:

Non-Musico

Instructor, ManhattanGMAT, NYC, 9/08-present.

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, pianist, accordionist, other weird instrumentsist, singer, accompanist, teacher, conductor, arranger, sound designer, sound engineer, 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. All the 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.