The Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music is an annual award presented by the Drama Desk, a committee comprising New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 theatre critics, writers, and editors. It honors the composers of musicals

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 produced on Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

, off-Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

, off-off-Broadway

Off-Off-Broadway

Off-Off-Broadway theatrical productions in New York City are those in theatres that are smaller than Broadway and Off-Broadway theatres. Off-Off-Broadway theaters are often defined as theaters that have fewer than 100 seats, though the term can be used for any show in the New York City area that...

, and for legitimate not-for-profit theaters.

It initially was called the Drama Desk Award for Best Composer and was presented for the first time in 1968 to Al Carmines

Al Carmines

Reverend Alvin Allison "Al" Carmines, Jr. was a key figure in the expansion of Off-Off-Broadway theatre in the 1960s.Carmines was born in Hampton, Virginia...

 for In Circles and Galt MacDermot

Galt MacDermot

Galt MacDermot is a Canadian composer, pianist and writer of musical theatre. He won a Grammy Award for the song African Waltz in 1960. His most successful musicals have been Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona...

 for Hair

Hair (musical)

Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...

. The following year it was presented as the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music, but since its inception it also has been called the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Score of a Musical, and for two seasons (1975–76 and 1976–77) the awards for music and lyrics were combined.

As of 1971, only one award is presented each year, unless there is a tie vote.

1960s

• 1969: Al Carmines
  Al Carmines
  Reverend Alvin Allison "Al" Carmines, Jr. was a key figure in the expansion of Off-Off-Broadway theatre in the 1960s.Carmines was born in Hampton, Virginia...
  
   – Peace and Burt Bacharach
  Burt Bacharach
  Burt F. Bacharach is an American pianist, composer and music producer. He is known for his popular hit songs and compositions from the mid-1950s through the 1980s, with lyrics written by Hal David. Many of their hits were produced specifically for, and performed by, Dionne Warwick...
  
   – Promises, Promises
  Promises, Promises
  Promises, Promises is a musical based on the 1960 film The Apartment. The music is by Burt Bacharach, lyrics by Hal David, and book by Neil Simon. Musical numbers for the original Broadway production were choreographed by Michael Bennett; Robert Moore directed and David Merrick produced...
  
  
  • No nominees

1970s

• 1970: Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
  
   – Company
  Company (musical)
  Company is a musical with a book by George Furth and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The original production was nominated for a record-setting fourteen Tony Awards and won six....
  
   and Kurt Weill
  Kurt Weill
  Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
  
   – Mahagonny
  Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
  Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is a political-satirical opera composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht. It was first performed in Leipzig on 9 March 1930.-Composition history:...
  
  
  • No nominees

• 1971: Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
  
   – Follies
  Follies
  Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman. The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue , that played in that theatre between the World Wars...
  
  
  • No nominees

• 1972: Galt MacDermot
  Galt MacDermot
  Galt MacDermot is a Canadian composer, pianist and writer of musical theatre. He won a Grammy Award for the song African Waltz in 1960. His most successful musicals have been Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona...
  
   – Two Gentlemen of Verona
  Two Gentlemen of Verona (musical)
  Two Gentlemen of Verona is a rock musical, with a book by John Guare and Mel Shapiro, lyrics by Guare and music by Galt MacDermot, based on the Shakespeare comedy of the same name....
  
  
  • No nominees

• 1973: Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
  
   – A Little Night Music
  A Little Night Music
  A Little Night Music is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. Inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it involves the romantic lives of several couples. Its title is a literal English translation of the German name for Mozart's Serenade...
  
  
  • No nominees

• 1974: Al Carmines
  Al Carmines
  Reverend Alvin Allison "Al" Carmines, Jr. was a key figure in the expansion of Off-Off-Broadway theatre in the 1960s.Carmines was born in Hampton, Virginia...
  
   – The Faggot
  • No nominees

• 1975: Charlie Smalls
  Charlie Smalls
  Charlie Smalls was an African-American composer and songwriter, best known for writing the music for the 1975 Broadway musical The Wiz....
  
   – The Wiz
  The Wiz
  The Wiz: The Super Soul Musical "Wonderful Wizard of Oz" is a musical with music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls and book by William F. Brown. It is a retelling of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in the context of African American culture. It opened on October 21, 1974 at the Morris A...
  
  
  • Gene Curty, Nitra Scharfman and Chuck Strand – The Lieutenant
    The Lieutenant (musical)
    The Lieutenant is a musical with book, music and lyrics by Gene Curty, Nitra Scharfman and Chuck Strand.Directed by William Martin and choreographed by Dennis Dennehy, it opened on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre on March 9, 1975 and closed on March 16, 1975 after 9 performances and 7 previews.The...
    
    
  • Jerry Herman
    Jerry Herman
    Jerry Herman is an American composer and lyricist, known for his work in Broadway musical theater. He composed the scores for the hit Broadway musicals Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles. He has been nominated for the Tony Award five times, and won twice, for Hello, Dolly! and La Cage...
    
     – Mack and Mabel
  • Fred Silver – In Gay Company

• 1976: Edward Kleban
  Edward Kleban
  Edward “Ed” Kleban was an American musical theatre composer and lyricist.Kleban was born in the Bronx, New York in 1939 and graduated from New York's High School of Music & Art and Columbia University, where he attended with future playwright Terrance McNally. Kleban is best known as lyricist of...
  
   and Marvin Hamlisch
  Marvin Hamlisch
  Marvin Frederick Hamlisch is an American composer. He is one of only thirteen people to have been awarded Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and a Tony . He is also one of only two people to EGOT and also win a Pulitzer Prize...
  
   – A Chorus Line
  A Chorus Line
  A Chorus Line is a 1975 musical about Broadway dancers auditioning for spots on a chorus line. The book was authored by James Kirkwood, Jr. and Nicholas Dante, lyrics were written by Edward Kleban, and music was composed by Marvin Hamlisch....
  
  
  • Leonard Bernstein
    Leonard Bernstein
    Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
    
     – 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
    1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (musical)
    1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a 1976 musical with music by Leonard Bernstein and book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. It is considered to be a legendary Broadway flop, running only seven performances...
    
    
  • Bill Heyer and Hank Beebe – Tuscaloosa's Calling Me
  • Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
    
     – Pacific Overtures
    Pacific Overtures
    Pacific Overtures is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, a libretto by John Weidman, and additional material by Hugh Wheeler. The musical is set in 1853 Japan and follows the difficult Westernization of Japan, through the lives of two friends caught in the change...
    
    

• 1977: Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist.-Life and career:He was born Seymour Kaufman on June 14, 1929, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish parents, and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Ida was an apartment landlady and his father was a brickmason...
  
   – I Love My Wife
  I Love My Wife
  I Love My Wife is a musical with a book and lyrics by Michael Stewart and music by Cy Coleman, based on a play by Luis Rego.A satire of the sexual revolution of the 1970s, the musical takes place on Christmas Eve in suburban Trenton, New Jersey, where two married couples who have been close friends...
  
  
  • Charles Strouse
    Charles Strouse
    Charles Strouse is an American composer and lyricist.-Life and career:Strouse was born and raised in New York City, the son of Ira and Ethel Strouse...
    
     – Annie
    Annie (musical)
    Annie is a Broadway musical based upon the popular Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan Annie, with music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin, and the book by Thomas Meehan. The original Broadway production opened in 1977 and ran for nearly six years with a blonde Annie as the poster...
    
    
  • Elizabeth Swados
    Elizabeth Swados
    Elizabeth Swados is an American writer, composer, musician, and theatre director. While some of her subject matter is humorous, such as her satirical look at Ronald Reagan, Rap Master Ronnie, and Doonesbury - both collaborations with Garry Trudeau - much of her work deals with dark issues such as...
    
     – Nightclub Cantata
  • Robert Waldman
    Robert Waldman
    Robert Waldman is an American composer, musical arranger, and orchestrator.Waldman has collaborated with Alfred Uhry twice, on Here's Where I Belong, the disastrous 1968 adaptation of John Steinbeck's East of Eden that closed on opening night, and the considerably more successful The Robber...
    
     – The Robber Bridegroom
    The Robber Bridegroom (musical)
    The Robber Bridegroom is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alfred Uhry and music by Robert Waldman. The story is based on the 1942 novella by Eudora Welty of the same name, with a Robin Hood-like hero; the adaptation placed it in a late 18th century American setting...
    
    

• 1978: Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist.-Life and career:He was born Seymour Kaufman on June 14, 1929, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish parents, and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Ida was an apartment landlady and his father was a brickmason...
  
   – On the Twentieth Century
  On the Twentieth Century
  On the Twentieth Century is a musical with book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Cy Coleman. Part operetta, part farce, part screwball comedy, the story involves the behind-the-scenes relationship of a temperamental actress and a director.-Background:Comden and Green based...
  
   and Carol Hall
  Carol Hall
  Carol Hall is an American composer and lyricist, born in Abilene, Texas.Hall is best known for composing the music and lyrics for the Broadway stage musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas...
  
   – The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
  The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
  The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is a musical with a book by Texas author Larry L. King and Peter Masterson and music and lyrics by Carol Hall...
  
  
  • Elizabeth Swados
    Elizabeth Swados
    Elizabeth Swados is an American writer, composer, musician, and theatre director. While some of her subject matter is humorous, such as her satirical look at Ronald Reagan, Rap Master Ronnie, and Doonesbury - both collaborations with Garry Trudeau - much of her work deals with dark issues such as...
    
     – Runaways
    Runaways (musical)
    Runaways is a musical which was written, composed and directed by Elizabeth Swados, about the lives of children who run away from home and live on the city streets...
    
    

• 1979: Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
  
   – Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
  Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
  Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 1936 British film produced and directed by George King.-Plot:The film features Tod Slaughter in one of his most famous roles as barber Sweeney Todd. Sweeney Todd was wrongly sentenced to life in prison. After his release 15 years later, he begins...
  
  
  • Nancy Ford – I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road
    I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road
    I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road is an Off Broadway musical, with music by Nancy Ford and book and lyrics by Gretchen Cryer. It was produced by Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival at The Public Theater, opening on June 14, 1978 and running for 1165 performances...
    
    
  • Marvin Hamlisch
    Marvin Hamlisch
    Marvin Frederick Hamlisch is an American composer. He is one of only thirteen people to have been awarded Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and a Tony . He is also one of only two people to EGOT and also win a Pulitzer Prize...
    
     and Neil Simon
    Neil Simon
    Neil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that...
    
     – They're Playing Our Song
    They're Playing Our Song
    They're Playing Our Song is a musical with a book by Neil Simon, lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager, and music by Marvin Hamlisch.In a story based on the real-life relationship of Hamlisch and Sager, a wisecracking composer finds a new, offbeat lyricist, but initially the match is not one made in heaven...
    
    
  • Jerome Kass – Ballroom
    Ballroom (musical)
    Ballroom is a musical with a book by Jerome Kass and music by Billy Goldenberg and lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman.Based on Kass' teleplay for the 1975 Emmy Award-winning television drama Queen of the Stardust Ballroom, the plot focuses on lonely widow Bea Asher, who becomes romantically...
    
    
  • Michel Legrand
    Michel Legrand
    Michel Jean Legrand is a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist...
    
     – The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

1980s

• 1980: Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
  
   – Evita
  • Cy Coleman
    Cy Coleman
    Cy Coleman was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist.-Life and career:He was born Seymour Kaufman on June 14, 1929, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish parents, and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Ida was an apartment landlady and his father was a brickmason...
    
     – Barnum
    Barnum (musical)
    Barnum is a musical with a book by Mark Bramble, lyrics by Michael Stewart, and music by Cy Coleman. It is based on the life of showman P. T. Barnum, covering the period from 1835 through 1880 in America and major cities of the world where Barnum took his performing companies. The production...
    
    
  • Elizabeth Swados
    Elizabeth Swados
    Elizabeth Swados is an American writer, composer, musician, and theatre director. While some of her subject matter is humorous, such as her satirical look at Ronald Reagan, Rap Master Ronnie, and Doonesbury - both collaborations with Garry Trudeau - much of her work deals with dark issues such as...
    
     – Runaways
    Runaways (musical)
    Runaways is a musical which was written, composed and directed by Elizabeth Swados, about the lives of children who run away from home and live on the city streets...
    
    

• 1982: Maury Yeston
  Maury Yeston
  Maury Yeston is an American composer, lyricist, educator and musicologist.He is known for writing the music and lyrics to Broadway musicals, including Nine in 1982, and Titanic in 1997, both of which won Tony Awards for best musical and best score. He also won a Drama Desk Award for Nine...
  
   – Nine
  Nine (musical)
  Nine is a musical with a book by Arthur Kopit, music and lyrics by Maury Yeston. The story is based on Federico Fellini's semi-autobiographical film 8½...
  
  
  • Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
    
     – Merrily We Roll Along
    Merrily We Roll Along (musical)
    Merrily We Roll Along is a musical with a book by George Furth and lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim. It is based on the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart....
    
    
  • Jim Wann – Pump Boys and Dinettes
    Pump Boys and Dinettes
    Pump Boys and Dinettes is a musical written by a performance group of the same name. The performance group, "Pump Boys and Dinettes" consists of John Foley, Mark Hardwick, Debra Monk, Cass Morgan, John Schimmel and Jim Wann...
    
    

• 1983: Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
  
   – Cats
  Cats (musical)
  Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot...
  
  
  • Larry Grossman
    Larry Grossman (composer)
    Larry Grossman is a composer of Broadway musicals, as well as scores for film and television, notably the The Muppet Show.-Career:...
    
     – A Doll's Life
    A Doll's Life
    A Doll's Life is a musical with a book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Larry Grossman. It is among the most notorious flops in Broadway theatre history.The musical is set at a rehearsal of Ibsen's A Doll's House in 1982....
    
    
  • Gerald Jay Markee – Charlotte Sweet
  • Des McAnuff
    Des McAnuff
    Desmond McAnuff is the Canadian-American artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and director of musical theatre of such Broadway productions as Big River, The Who's Tommy and Jersey Boys.-Biography:...
    
     – Death of Von Richthofen
  • Alan Menken
    Alan Menken
    Alan Menken is an American musical theatre and film composer and pianist.Menken is best known for his numerous scores for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas have each won him two Academy Awards...
    
     – Little Shop of Horrors
    Little Shop of Horrors (musical)
    Little Shop of Horrors is a rock musical, by composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman, about a hapless florist shop worker who raises a plant that feeds on human blood. The musical is based on the low-budget 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Roger Corman...
    
    

• 1984: Jerry Herman
  Jerry Herman
  Jerry Herman is an American composer and lyricist, known for his work in Broadway musical theater. He composed the scores for the hit Broadway musicals Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles. He has been nominated for the Tony Award five times, and won twice, for Hello, Dolly! and La Cage...
  
   – La Cage aux Folles
  • Galt MacDermot
    Galt MacDermot
    Galt MacDermot is a Canadian composer, pianist and writer of musical theatre. He won a Grammy Award for the song African Waltz in 1960. His most successful musicals have been Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona...
    
     – The Human Comedy
    The Human Comedy (musical)
    The Human Comedy is a musical with a book and lyrics by William Dumaresq and music by Galt MacDermot.William Saroyan's tale originated as a screenplay he had been hired to write and direct for MGM...
    
    
  • David Shire
    David Shire
    David Lee Shire is an American songwriter and the composer of stage musicals, film and television scores. The soundtrack to the movie The Taking of Pelham 123 and parts of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack such as Night on Disco Mountain, an adaptation of Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald...
    
     – Baby
    Baby (musical)
    Baby is a musical with a book by Sybille Pearson, based on a story developed with Susan Yankowitz, music by David Shire, and lyrics by Richard Maltby, Jr.. It concerns the reactions of three couples each expecting a child. The musical first ran on Broadway from 1983 to 1984.-Synopsis:Three...
    
    
  • Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
    
     – Sunday in the Park with George
    Sunday in the Park with George
    Sunday in the Park with George is a 1984 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. The musical was inspired by the painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat...
    
    

• 1985: Larry Grossman
  Larry Grossman
  Lawrence "Larry" Sheldon Grossman was a politician in Ontario, Canada.-Early years:Born in Toronto, Grossman was the son of Allan Grossman, who had represented a downtown Toronto riding in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for twenty years after defeating Ontario's last Communist Member of...
  
   – Grind
  Grind (musical)
  Grind is a musical with a book by Fay Kanin, music by Larry Grossman, and lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh. Grind is a portrait of a largely African-American burlesque house in Chicago in the Thirties.The reviews were mixed at best...
  
  
  • Roger Miller
    Roger Miller
    Roger Dean Miller was an American singer, songwriter, musician and actor, best known for his honky tonk-influenced novelty songs...
    
     – Big River
    Big River (musical)
    Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a musical with a book by William Hauptman and music and lyrics by Roger Miller.Based on Mark Twain's classic 1884 novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it features music in the bluegrass and country styles in keeping with the setting of the novel...
    
    
  • Michael Rupert
    Michael Rupert
    Michael John Rupert is an American actor, singer, director and composer.Rupert made his Broadway debut in 1968 in Kander and Ebb's The Happy Time where he received his first Tony nomination...
    
     – 3 Guys Naked from the Waist Down

• 1986: Rupert Holmes
  Rupert Holmes
  Rupert Holmes is an American-British composer, singer-songwriter, musician and author of plays, novels and stories. He is best known for his number one pop hit "Escape " and the song "Him", which reached the number 6 position on the Hot 100 U.S. pop chart in 1980...
  
   – The Mystery of Edwin Drood
  • Polly Pen – Goblin Market
    Goblin Market
    "Goblin Market" is a narrative poem by Christina Rossetti. In a letter to her publisher, Rossetti claimed that the poem, which features remarkably sexual imagery, was not meant for children. However, in public Rossetti often stated that the poem was intended for children, and went on to write...
    
    
  • Charles Strouse
    Charles Strouse
    Charles Strouse is an American composer and lyricist.-Life and career:Strouse was born and raised in New York City, the son of Ira and Ethel Strouse...
    
     – Mayor
    Mayor (musical)
    Mayor is a musical with a book by Warren Leight and music and lyrics by Charles Strouse. It is based on the best-selling memoir by former New York City Mayor Ed Koch and depicts a single day in the life of the city's leader....
    
    
  • Andrew Lloyd Webber
    Andrew Lloyd Webber
    Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
    
     – Song and Dance
    Song and Dance
    Song and Dance is a musical comprising two acts, one told entirely in "Song" and one entirely in "Dance", tied together by a love story.The first part is Tell Me On A Sunday, with lyrics by Don Black and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, about a young British woman's romantic misadventures in New York...
    
    

• 1987: Stephen Fry
  Stephen Fry
  Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...
  
  , Noel Gay
  Noel Gay
  Noel Gay was born Reginald Moxon Armitage. He also used the name Stanley Hill professionally. He was a successful British composer of popular music of the 1930s and 1940s whose output comprised 45 songs as well as the music for 28 films and 26 London shows...
  
  , Mike Ockrent
  Mike Ockrent
  Mike Ockrent was a British stage director, well-known both for his Broadway musicals and smaller niche plays. He was educated at Highgate School. Through directing Educating Rita and Follies, he became an established figure in London theatre...
  
  , and Douglas Furber
  Douglas Furber
  Douglas Furber was a British lyricist and playwright.Furber is best known for the lyrics to the 1937 song The Lambeth Walk and the libretto to the musical Me and My Girl, composed by Noel Gay, from which it came. This show made broadcasting history when in 1939 it became the first full length...
  
   – Me and My Girl
  Me and My Girl
  Me and My Girl is a musical with book and lyrics by Douglas Furber and L. Arthur Rose and music by Noel Gay. It takes place in the late 1930s in Hampshire, Mayfair, and Lambeth....
  
   and Claude-Michel Schonberg
  Claude-Michel Schönberg
  Claude-Michel Schönberg is a French record producer, actor, singer, songwriter, and musical theatre composer, best known for his collaborations with the lyricist Alain Boublil.These include the musicals:...
  
   – Les Misérables
  Les Misérables (musical)
  Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....
  
  
  • Nick Bicat – The Knife
  • Charles Strouse
    Charles Strouse
    Charles Strouse is an American composer and lyricist.-Life and career:Strouse was born and raised in New York City, the son of Ira and Ethel Strouse...
    
     – Rags
    Rags (musical)
    Rags is a musical with a book by Joseph Stein, lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, and music by Charles Strouse.-Production history:The Broadway production opened on August 21, 1986 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre with little advance sale and to mostly indifferent reviews, and it closed after only four...
    
    
  • Andrew Lloyd Webber
    Andrew Lloyd Webber
    Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
    
     – Starlight Express
    Starlight Express
    Starlight Express is a rock musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber , Richard Stilgoe and Arlene Phillips , with later revisions by Don Black and David Yazbek . The story follows a child's dream in which his toy train set comes to life; famously the actors perform wearing roller skates...
    
    

• 1988: Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
  
   – Phantom of the Opera
  • Benny Andersson
    Benny Andersson
    Göran Bror "Benny" Andersson is a Swedish musician, composer, a former member of the Swedish musical group ABBA , and co-composer of the musicals Chess, Kristina från Duvemåla, and Mamma Mia!...
    
     and Björn Ulvaeus
    Björn Ulvaeus
    Björn Kristian Ulvaeus is a Swedish songwriter, composer, musician, writer, producer, a former member of the Swedish musical group ABBA , and co-composer of the musicals Chess, Kristina från Duvemåla, and Mamma Mia!...
    
     – Chess
    Chess (musical)
    Chess is a musical with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, formerly of ABBA, and with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story involves a romantic triangle between two top players, an American and a Russian, in a world chess championship, and a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other;...
    
    
  • David Evans
    David Evans (composer)
    David Evans was a Welsh musician and composer.Evans was born at Resolven, Glamorgan. He worked in the coal industry as a teenager, but music was always his primary interest. He won a music scholarship and became a pupil of Joseph Parry, which led to his qualifying at University of Wales, Cardiff,...
    
     – Birds of Paradise
    Birds of Paradise (musical)
    Birds of Paradise is a musical with music by David Evans, lyrics by Winnie Holzman, and the book by Evans and Holzman. It had a brief run Off-Broadway in 1987...
    
    
  • Hugh Masekela
    Hugh Masekela
    Hugh Ramopolo Masekela is a South African trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, composer, and singer.-Early life:Masekela was born in Kwa-Guqa Township, Witbank, South Africa. He began singing and playing piano as a child...
    
     and Mbongeni Ngema
    Mbongeni Ngema
    Mbongeni Ngema a South African writer, lyricist, composer and director was born in Verulam, KwaZulu-Natal . He started his career as a theatre backing guitarist.He is married to actress Leleti Khumalo...
    
     – Sarafina!
  • Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
    
     – Into the Woods
    Into the Woods
    Into the Woods is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. It debuted in San Diego at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986, and premiered on Broadway in 1987. Bernadette Peters' performance as the Witch and Joanna Gleason's portrayal of the Baker's Wife brought acclaim...
    
    

1990s

• 1990: Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist.-Life and career:He was born Seymour Kaufman on June 14, 1929, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish parents, and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Ida was an apartment landlady and his father was a brickmason...
  
   – City of Angels
  City of Angels (musical)
  City of Angels is a musical comedy with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by David Zippel, and book by Larry Gelbart. The musical weaves together two plots, the "real" world of a writer trying to turn his book into a screenplay, and the "reel" world of the fictional film.-Productions:City of Angels...
  
  
  • George Forrest
    George Forrest (author)
    George Forrest was a writer of music and lyrics for musical theatre best known for the show Kismet, adapted from the works of Alexander Borodin.-Biography:...
    
    , Maury Yeston
    Maury Yeston
    Maury Yeston is an American composer, lyricist, educator and musicologist.He is known for writing the music and lyrics to Broadway musicals, including Nine in 1982, and Titanic in 1997, both of which won Tony Awards for best musical and best score. He also won a Drama Desk Award for Nine...
    
     and Robert Wright
    Robert Wright (writer)
    Robert [Craig] Wright was an American composer-lyricist for Hollywood and the musical theatre best known for the Broadway musical and musical film Kismet, for which he and his professional partner George Forrest adapted themes by Alexander Borodin and added lyrics...
    
     – Grand Hotel
    Grand Hotel (musical)
    Grand Hotel is a musical with a book by Luther Davis and music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest, with additional lyrics and music by Maury Yeston....
    
    
  • Ástor Piazzolla
    Ástor Piazzolla
    Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla was an Argentine tango composer and bandoneón player. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music...
    
     – Dangerous Games
  • David Shire
    David Shire
    David Lee Shire is an American songwriter and the composer of stage musicals, film and television scores. The soundtrack to the movie The Taking of Pelham 123 and parts of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack such as Night on Disco Mountain, an adaptation of Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald...
    
     – Closer Than Ever
    Closer Than Ever
    Closer Than Ever is a musical revue in two acts, with words by Richard Maltby, Jr. and music by David Shire. The revue contains no dialogue, and Maltby and Shire have described this show as a "bookless book musical"...
    
    
  • Andrew Lloyd Webber
    Andrew Lloyd Webber
    Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
    
     – Aspects of Love
    Aspects of Love
    Aspects of Love is a musical/chamber opera with a book and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Don Black and Charles Hart. It is famous for the song "Love Changes Everything."...
    
    

• 1991: Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist.-Life and career:He was born Seymour Kaufman on June 14, 1929, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish parents, and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Ida was an apartment landlady and his father was a brickmason...
  
   – The Will Rogers Follies
  • David Bucknam – The Waves
  • William Finn
    William Finn
    William Alan Finn is an American composer and lyricist of musicals. His musical Falsettos received the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Music and Lyrics and for Best Book.-Biography:...
    
     – Falsettoland
    Falsettoland
    Falsettoland is a musical with a book by James Lapine and music and lyrics by William Finn.Following In Trousers and March of the Falsettos, it is the third in a trio of one-act musicals centering on Marvin, his wife Trina, his psychiatrist Mendel, his son Jason, and his gay lover Whizzer Brown...
    
    
  • Lucy Simon
    Lucy Simon
    Lucy Simon is an American composer for the theatre and popular songs. She is known for the musical, The Secret Garden.-Biography:...
    
     – The Secret Garden
    The Secret Garden (musical)
    The Secret Garden is a musical based on the 1911 novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The musical's book and lyrics are by Marsha Norman, with music by Lucy Simon...
    
    
  • Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
    
     – Assassins
    Assassins (musical)
    Assassins is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by John Weidman, based on an idea by Charles Gilbert, Jr. It uses the premise of a murderous carnival game to produce a revue-style portrayal of men and women who attempted to assassinate Presidents of the United States...
    
    

• 1992: Erik Frandsen, Michael Garin, Paul Lockheart, and Robert Hipkins – Song of Singapore
  • No nominees

• 1993: Marvin Hamlisch
  Marvin Hamlisch
  Marvin Frederick Hamlisch is an American composer. He is one of only thirteen people to have been awarded Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and a Tony . He is also one of only two people to EGOT and also win a Pulitzer Prize...
  
   – The Goodbye Girl
  The Goodbye Girl (musical)
  The Goodbye Girl is a musical with a book by Neil Simon, lyrics by David Zippel, and music by Marvin Hamlisch, based on Simon's original screenplay for the 1977 film of the same name.-Production history:...
  
  
  • John Kander
    John Kander
    John Harold Kander is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.-Life and career:Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bernice and Harold S. Kander...
    
     – Kiss of the Spider Woman
    Kiss of the Spider Woman (musical)
    Kiss of the Spider Woman is a musical with music by John Kander and Fred Ebb, with the book by Terrence McNally. It is based on the Manuel Puig novel El Beso de la Mujer Araña...
    
    
  • Jeffrey Lunden – Wings

• 1994: Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
  
   – Passion
  Passion (musical)
  Passion is a musical adapted from Ettore Scola's film Passione d'Amore . The book is by James Lapine, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Central subjects include obsession, beauty, power, manipulation, passion, illness, and love...
  
  
  • Alan Menken
    Alan Menken
    Alan Menken is an American musical theatre and film composer and pianist.Menken is best known for his numerous scores for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas have each won him two Academy Awards...
    
     – Beauty and the Beast
    Beauty and the Beast (musical)
    Beauty and the Beast is a musical with music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice and a book by Linda Woolverton, based on the 1991 Disney film of the same name. Seven new songs were written for the stage musical...
    
    
  • Michael John LaChiusa
    Michael John LaChiusa
    Michael John LaChiusa is an American musical theatre and opera composer, lyricist, and librettist. He is best known for complex, musically challenging shows such as Hello Again, Marie Christine, The Wild Party, and See What I Wanna See...
    
     – Hello Again
    Hello Again (musical)
    Hello Again is musical with music, lyrics and book by Michael John LaChiusa. It is based on the 1897 play La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler...
    
    
  • Tom Waits
    Tom Waits
    Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
    
     – The Black Rider
    The Black Rider
    The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets is a self-billed "musical fable" in the avant-garde tradition created through the collaboration of theatre director Robert Wilson, musician Tom Waits, and writer William S. Burroughs. Wilson was largely responsible for the design and direction....
    
    
  • Polly Pen – Christina Alberta's Father

• 1997: Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist.-Life and career:He was born Seymour Kaufman on June 14, 1929, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish parents, and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Ida was an apartment landlady and his father was a brickmason...
  
   – The Life
  The Life (musical)
  The Life is a musical with a book by David Newman, Ira Gasman and Cy Coleman, music by Coleman, and lyrics by Gasman.Based on an original idea by Gasman, the show explores the underbelly of Times Square's 42nd Street, inhabited by pimps and prostitutes, druggies and dealers, and runaways and street...
  
  
  • John Kander
    John Kander
    John Harold Kander is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.-Life and career:Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bernice and Harold S. Kander...
    
     – Steel Pier
    Steel Pier (musical)
    Steel Pier is a musical written by the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb from the original book by David Thompson.-Productions:Directed by Scott Ellis with choreography by Susan Stroman, it opened on Broadway on April 24, 1997 and closed on June 28, 1997, running for 76 performances...
    
    
  • Jeanine Tesori
    Jeanine Tesori
    Jeanine Tesori is an American musical arranger and composer who won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center and the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change.Tesori made her Broadway...
    
     – Violet
    Violet (musical)
    Violet is a musical with music by Jeanine Tesori and libretto by Brian Crawley based on the short story "The Ugliest Pilgrim" by Doris Betts. It tells the story of a young disfigured woman who embarks on a journey by bus from her farm in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, all the way to Tulsa, Oklahoma...
    
    

• 1998: Stephen Flaherty
  Stephen Flaherty
  Stephen Flaherty is an American composer of musical theatre. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/bookwriter Lynn Ahrens...
  
   – Ragtime
  Ragtime (musical)
  Ragtime is a musical with a book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and music by Stephen Flaherty.Based on the 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime tells the story of three groups in America, represented by Coalhouse Walker Jr., a Harlem musician; Mother, the matriarch of a WASP family in...
  
  
  • Paul Simon
    Paul Simon
    Paul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...
    
     – The Capeman
    The Capeman
    The Capeman is a musical play written by Paul Simon and Derek Walcott based on the life of Salvador Agrón. The play opened at the Marquis Theatre in 1998 to poor reviews and had an initial run of only 68 performances....
    
    
  • Stephen Trask
    Stephen Trask
    Stephen Trask is an American musician and composer, who graduated from Wesleyan University.He was the music director and house band member at the New York club Squeezebox, where he performed with stars such as Debbie Harry, Lene Lovich and Joey Ramone.Trask composed the music and lyrics for the...
    
     – Hedwig and the Angry Inch
    Hedwig and the Angry Inch (musical)
    Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a rock musical about a fictional rock and roll band fronted by an East German transgender singer. The text is by John Cameron Mitchell, and the music and lyrics are by Stephen Trask. The musical premiered in 1998 and has been performed throughout the world in hundreds...
    
    
  • Frank Wildhorn
    Frank Wildhorn
    Frank Wildhorn is an American composer known for both his musicals and popular songs. He is most known for his musical Jekyll & Hyde, which ran four years on Broadway, and for writing the #1 International Hit song "Where Do Broken Hearts Go?" for Whitney Houston.-Early years:Wildhorn was born in...
    
     – The Scarlet Pimpernel
    The Scarlet Pimpernel (musical)
    The Scarlet Pimpernel is a musical with music by Frank Wildhorn and lyrics and book by Nan Knighton, based on the novel of the same name by Baroness Orczy. The show is set in England and France during the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution...
    
    

2000s

• 2000: Andrew Lippa
  Andrew Lippa
  Andrew Lippa is an American composer, lyricist, book writer, performer, and producer. He is a resident artist at the Ars Nova Theater in New York City.-Biography:...
  
   – The Wild Party
  The Wild Party (Lippa musical)
  The Wild Party is a musical with book, lyrics, and music by Andrew Lippa. It is based on Joseph Moncure March's 1928 narrative poem of the same name...
  
  
  • Shaun Davey
    Shaun Davey
    - Early years :Shaun Davey was born in Belfast in 1948. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin in the history of Art in 1971. He then took a master's degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. In the late 1970s, he made his first recording, "Davey and Morris," with Donal Lunny and others...
    
     – James Joyce's The Dead
    James Joyce's The Dead
    James Joyce's The Dead is a Broadway musical by Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey based upon James Joyce's short story of the same name.Originally presented Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons with an opening night cast that included Blair Brown, Paddy Croft, Brian Davies, Daisy Eagan, Dashiell...
    
    
  • Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
    
     – Saturday Night
    Saturday Night (musical)
    Saturday Night is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and the book by brothers Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein, based on their play, Front Porch in Flatbush....
    
    

• 2001: David Yazbek
  David Yazbek
  David Yazbek is an American writer, musician, composer, and lyricist. He wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway musicals The Full Monty , Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown ....
  
   – The Full Monty
  The Full Monty (musical)
  The Full Monty is a musical with a book by Terrence McNally and score by David Yazbek.In this Americanized musical stage version adapted from the 1997 British film of the same name, six unemployed Buffalo steelworkers, low on both cash and prospects, decide to present a strip act at a local club...
  
  
  • Kirsten Childs – The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin
  • Stephen Flaherty
    Stephen Flaherty
    Stephen Flaherty is an American composer of musical theatre. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/bookwriter Lynn Ahrens...
    
     – Seussical
    Seussical
    is a musical by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty based on the books of Dr. Seuss that debuted on Broadway in 2000. The play's story is a rather complex amalgamation of many of Seuss's most famous books. After a Broadway run, the production spawned two US national tours and a UK tour...
    
    
  • Mark Hollmann
    Mark Hollmann
    Mark Hollmann is an American composer and lyricist.Hollmann grew up in Fairview Heights Illinois, where he graduated from Belleville Township High School East in 1981. He won a 2002 Tony Award and a 2001 Obie Award for his music and lyrics to Urinetown. He is a former ensemble member of the...
    
     – Urinetown
    Urinetown
    Urinetown: The Musical is a satirical comedy musical, with music by Mark Hollmann, lyrics by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, and book by Kotis. It satirizes the legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, populism, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, and municipal politics...
    
    
  • Ed Kleban – A Class Act
    A Class Act
    A Class Act is a musical with a book by Linda Kline and Lonny Price and music and lyrics by Edward Kleban. The musical is based on the life of composer-lyricist Ed Kleban, who died at the age of 48 in 1987...
    
    
  • Laurence O'Keefe
    Laurence O'Keefe (composer)
    Laurence O'Keefe , also known as Larry, is a composer and lyricist for Broadway musicals, film and television.O'Keefe is a graduate of Harvard College, where he studied anthropology and wrote humor for the Harvard Lampoon and sang with the Harvard Krokodiloes...
    
     – Bat Boy: The Musical
    Bat Boy: The Musical
    Bat Boy: The Musical is a musical with a book by Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming and music and lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe, based on a June 23, 1992 Weekly World News story about a half-boy, half-bat, dubbed "Bat Boy", found living in a cave....
    
    

• 2003: Marc Shaiman
  Marc Shaiman
  Marc Shaiman is an American composer, lyricist, arranger, and performer for films, television, and theatre. He is perhaps best known for writing the music and co-writing the lyrics for the Broadway musical version of the cult John Waters film Hairspray, for which Shaiman won Tony and Grammy...
  
   – Hairspray
  Hairspray (musical)
  Hairspray is a musical with music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Shaiman and a book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, based on the 1988 John Waters film Hairspray. The songs include 1960s-style dance music and "downtown" rhythm and blues...
  
  
  • Tim Acito – Zanna, Don't!
  • Stephen Flaherty
    Stephen Flaherty
    Stephen Flaherty is an American composer of musical theatre. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/bookwriter Lynn Ahrens...
    
     – A Man of No Importance
    A Man of No Importance (musical)
    A Man of No Importance is a musical with music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and a book by Terrence McNally, based on the 1994 Albert Finney film, A Man of No Importance...
    
    
  • Michel Legrand
    Michel Legrand
    Michel Jean Legrand is a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist...
    
     – Amour
    Amour (musical)
    Amour is a musical fantasy with an English book by Jeremy Sams, music by Michel Legrand, and lyrics by Didier Van Cauwelaert, who wrote the original French libretto....
    
    
  • Robert Lopez
    Robert Lopez
    Robert Lopez is an American composer and lyricist of musicals best known for co-writing the Broadway musical Avenue Q and for co-creating the musical The Book of Mormon, receiving Tony Awards for both works....
    
     and Jeff Marx
    Jeff Marx
    Jeff Marx is a composer and lyricist of musicals. He is best known for creating the Broadway musical Avenue Q with collaborator Robert Lopez.- Early life :...
    
     – Avenue Q
    Avenue Q
    Avenue Q is a musical in two acts, conceived by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, who wrote the music and lyrics. The book was written by Jeff Whitty and the show was directed by Jason Moore and produced by Kevin McCollum, Robyn Goodman, and Jeffrey Seller...
    
    
  • Keb' Mo'
    Keb' Mo'
    Keb' Mo is an American blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter, currently living in Nashville, Tennessee, United States.-Early life:From early on he had an appreciation for the blues and gospel music...
    
    , Anderson Edwards and Keith Glover – Thunder Knocking on the Door

• 2004: Jeanine Tesori
  Jeanine Tesori
  Jeanine Tesori is an American musical arranger and composer who won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center and the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change.Tesori made her Broadway...
  
   – Caroline, or Change
  Caroline, or Change
  Caroline, or Change is a through-composed musical with book and lyrics by Tony Kushner and score by Jeanine Tesori that combines spirituals, blues, Motown, classical music, and Jewish klezmer and folk music....
  
  
  • RaRa Avis and Andrew Yeater – Ramayana 2K3
  • Boy George
    Boy George
    Boy George is a British singer-songwriter who was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the early 1980s. He helped give androgyny an international stage with the success of Culture Club during the 1980s. His music is often classified as blue-eyed soul, which is influenced by...
    
     – Taboo
    Taboo (musical)
    Taboo is a stage musical with a book by Mark Davies , lyrics by Boy George, and music by George and Kevan Frost....
    
    
  • Eric Rockwell – The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!)
    The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!)
    The Musical of Musicals is a musical by Joanne Bogart and Eric Rockwell. It is structured into five acts, each of which is a short musical parodying the style of a related group of American or British musical theatre composers, all dealing with roughly the same classic melodrama plot: "I can't...
    
    
  • Stephen Schwartz
    Stephen Schwartz (composer)
    Stephen Lawrence Schwartz is an American musical theatre lyricist and composer. In a career spanning over four decades, Schwartz has written such hit musicals as Godspell , Pippin and Wicked...
    
     – Wicked
    Wicked (musical)
    Wicked is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman. It is based on the Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West , a parallel novel of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and L. Frank Baum's classic story The Wonderful Wizard...
    
    
  • Martin Silvestri and Joel Higgins
    Joel Higgins
    Joel Franklin Higgins is an American actors and singer with a stage career spanning over 30 years.- Life and Career :...
    
     – Johnny Guitar
    Johnny Guitar
    Johnny Guitar is a 1954 Republic Pictures Western film starring Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, and Scott Brady.The screenplay was based upon a novel by Roy Chanslor. Though credited to Philip Yordan, he was merely a front for the actual screenwriter, blacklistee Ben Maddow. ...
    
    

• 2005: Adam Guettel
  Adam Guettel
  Adam Guettel is an American composer-lyricist of musical theater and opera . He is best known for the musical The Light in the Piazza, for which he won two Tony Awards, for Best Score and Best Orchestrations, and two Drama Desk Awards, for Best Music and Best Orchestrations.-Early years:Guettel...
  
   – The Light in the Piazza
  • Gary Adler
    Gary Adler
    Gary Adler is an American composer and musical director based in New York. He received two 2005 Drama Desk nominations for his music and lyrics for the off-Broadway show Altar Boyz, which had its premiere in the New York Musical Theatre Festival the year before...
    
     and Michael Patrick Walker
    Michael Patrick Walker
    Michael Patrick Walker is a composer/lyricist and musician as well as an arranger and orchestrator. He is best known for co-writing the musical, Altar Boyz with fellow composer/lyricist Gary Adler and book writer Kevin Del Aguila...
    
     – Altar Boyz
    Altar Boyz
    Altar Boyz is a musical comedy with music and lyrics by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker and book by Kevin Del Aguila . Centering on a fictitious Christian boy band from Ohio, the show satirizes, among other things, the phenomenon of boy bands and the popularity of Christian-themed music in...
    
    
  • Terry Davies – Play Without Words
    Play Without Words
    Play Without Words is a 2002 ballet by English choreographer Matthew Bourne with music by Terry Davies. The work is an adaptation of the Joseph Losey film, The Servant after the Robin Maugham novel of the same title.-External links:...
    
    
  • William Finn
    William Finn
    William Alan Finn is an American composer and lyricist of musicals. His musical Falsettos received the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Music and Lyrics and for Best Book.-Biography:...
    
     – The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
    The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
    The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a one act musical comedy conceived by Rebecca Feldman with music and lyrics by William Finn, a book by Rachel Sheinkin and additional material by Jay Reiss. The show centers on a fictional spelling bee set in a geographically ambiguous Putnam Valley...
    
    
  • Stephen Flaherty
    Stephen Flaherty
    Stephen Flaherty is an American composer of musical theatre. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/bookwriter Lynn Ahrens...
    
     – Dessa Rose
    Dessa Rose (musical)
    Dessa Rose is a musical based on the book by Sherley Anne Williams with book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty. It tells the story of a young black woman and a young white woman and their journey to acceptance in 1847 in the ante-bellum South, as they tell their story to their...
    
    
  • David Yazbek
    David Yazbek
    David Yazbek is an American writer, musician, composer, and lyricist. He wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway musicals The Full Monty , Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown ....
    
     – Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
    Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (musical)
    Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a Broadway musical, with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and a book by Jeffrey Lane; it is based on the film of the same name...
    
    

• 2006: Lisa Lambert
  Lisa Lambert
  Lisa Lambert is an actress, comedy writer, and Tony Award winning composer, best known for writing the lyrics and music to The Drowsy Chaperone.-Career:...
  
   and Greg Morrison
  Greg Morrison
  Greg Morrison is an Tony Award–winning and Drama Desk Award–winning Canadian writer and composer best known for his work on the music and lyrics of The Drowsy Chaperone, which he wrote with Lisa Lambert. He also has extensive credits directing and musical directing shows across the United States,...
  
   – The Drowsy Chaperone
  The Drowsy Chaperone
  The Drowsy Chaperone is a musical with book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar and music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison. It debuted in 1998 at The Rivoli in Toronto and opened on Broadway on 1 May 2006. The show won the Tony Award for Best Book and Best Score. It started as a spoof of old...
  
  
  • Stephen Dolginoff
    Stephen Dolginoff
    Stephen Dolginoff is an award-winning, New York City based playwright-composer. His most notable work is Thrill Me, the musical version of the true story of Leopold and Loeb, which opened Off-Broadway at the York Theatre in 2005. Subsequently it was published by Dramatists Play Service...
    
     – Thrill Me
    Thrill Me
    Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story is a musical with a book, music, and lyrics by Stephen Dolginoff. It is based on the true story of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the so-called "thrill killers" who murdered a young boy in 1924 in order to commit "the perfect crime." The story is told in...
    
    
  • Scott Frankel
    Scott Frankel
    Scott David Frankel is an American composer and musical director.-Career:He attended Interlochen Arts Camp majoring in piano.He graduated from Yale University in 1985, when he was also inducted into the Skull and Bones secret society...
    
     – Grey Gardens
    Grey Gardens (musical)
    Grey Gardens is an American musical with book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel, and lyrics by Michael Korie, based on the 1975 documentary of the same title about the lives of Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale by Albert and David Maysles. The Beales were...
    
    
  • Michael John LaChiusa
    Michael John LaChiusa
    Michael John LaChiusa is an American musical theatre and opera composer, lyricist, and librettist. He is best known for complex, musically challenging shows such as Hello Again, Marie Christine, The Wild Party, and See What I Wanna See...
    
     – See What I Wanna See
    See What I Wanna See
    See What I Wanna See is a musical by Michael John LaChiusa based on three short stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa: "Kesa and Morito", "In a Grove" and "The Dragon". The story is told in two parts with two prologues. Each prologue involves the medieval lovers/killers Kesa and Morito...
    
    
  • Peter Mills
    Peter Mills
    Peter Mills is a Maine politician. A Republican, Mills serves in the Maine Senate, representing the 26th district. He ran for Governor of Maine in 2006 and 2010 and lost both times in the Republican primary.-Early Life and Family:...
    
     – The Pursuit of Persephone
  • Matthew Sklar
    Matthew Sklar
    Matthew Sklar is a Broadway composer. He was nominated for the 2006 Tony Award for Best Original Score for the musical The Wedding Singer for which he wrote the music and Chad Beguelin wrote the lyrics...
    
     – The Wedding Singer
    The Wedding Singer (musical)
    The Wedding Singer is a musical with music by Matthew Sklar, lyrics by Chad Beguelin, and a book by Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy. It is based on the 1998 film The Wedding Singer.-Synopsis:Act 1...
    
    

• 2007: Duncan Sheik
  Duncan Sheik
  Duncan Scott Sheik is an American singer-songwriter and composer. Sheik initially found success as a singer, most notably for his 1996 debut single "Barely Breathing". He later expanded his work to include compositions for motion pictures and the Broadway stage, leading him to involvement in the...
  
   – Spring Awakening
  Spring Awakening
  Spring Awakening is a rock musical adaptation of the controversial 1892 German play of the same title by Frank Wedekind. It features music by Duncan Sheik and a book and lyrics by Steven Sater. Set in late-19th century Germany, it concerns teenagers who are discovering the inner and outer tumult of...
  
  
  • John Kander
    John Kander
    John Harold Kander is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.-Life and career:Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bernice and Harold S. Kander...
    
     – Curtains
    Curtains (musical)
    Curtains is a musical with a book by Rupert Holmes, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and music by John Kander, with additional lyrics by Kander and Holmes....
    
    
  • Paul Leschen and Gila Sand – Twist: Please, Sir, May I Have Some More?
  • Peter Rodgers Melnick
    Peter Rodgers Melnick
    Peter Rodgers Melnick is a composer for film, television and musical theatre.-Biography:Melnick is the son of Daniel Melnick and Linda Rodgers, and grandson of Richard Rodgers.Melnick grew up in New York City...
    
     – Adrift in Macao
  • Lin-Manuel Miranda – In the Heights
    In the Heights
    In the Heights is a musical with music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and a book by Quiara Alegría Hudes. The story explores three days in the characters' lives in the New York City Dominican-American neighborhood of Washington Heights....
    
    
  • Laurence O'Keefe
    Laurence O'Keefe (composer)
    Laurence O'Keefe , also known as Larry, is a composer and lyricist for Broadway musicals, film and television.O'Keefe is a graduate of Harvard College, where he studied anthropology and wrote humor for the Harvard Lampoon and sang with the Harvard Krokodiloes...
    
     and Nell Benjamin – Legally Blonde
    Legally Blonde (musical)
    Legally Blonde is a musical with music and lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin and book by Heather Hach. The story is based on the novel Legally Blonde by Amanda Brown and the 2001 film of the same name. It tells the story of Elle Woods, a sorority girl who enrolls at Harvard Law School to...
    
    

• 2008: Stew
  Stew (musician)
  Mark Stewart , known by his stage name Stew, is a singer/songwriter/playwright from Los Angeles. In the early 1990s, he formed a band called The Negro Problem and later went on to release albums under his own name...
  
   and Heidi Rodewald – Passing Strange
  Passing Strange
  Passing Strange is a rock musical about a young African American's artistic journey of self-discovery in Europe, drawing on heavy elements of existentialism, metafictional comedy, and the Künstlerroman. The musical's lyrics and book are by Stew with music and orchestrations by Heidi Rodewald and Stew...
  
  
  • John Bucchino
    John Bucchino
    John Bucchino is an American composer. His hometown is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.He has done work for several off-Broadway shows and highly acclaimed concerts...
    
     – A Catered Affair
    A Catered Affair
    A Catered Affair is a musical with a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by John Bucchino. It is based on both the 1956 film The Catered Affair written by Gore Vidal and the original 1955 teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky, set in 1953 in the Bronx...
    
    
  • Stephen Flaherty
    Stephen Flaherty
    Stephen Flaherty is an American composer of musical theatre. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/bookwriter Lynn Ahrens...
    
     – The Glorious Ones
    The Glorious Ones
    The Glorious Ones is a musical with book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty. Set in 17th-century Italy, it concerns a theatre group in the world of commedia dell'arte and theatre of the Italian Renaissance....
    
    
  • Tom Kitt
    Tom Kitt (musician)
    Tom Kitt is an American composer, conductor, orchestrator and musician. For his score for the musical Next to Normal, he shared the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Brian Yorkey...
    
     – Next to Normal
  • Mark Mulcahy
    Mark Mulcahy
    Mark Mulcahy is an American musician and former front-man for the New Haven, Connecticut-based band Miracle Legion in the 1980s to mid 1990s. The band earned modest renown, especially in their native New England region, but disbanded after a sad turn of events with their record label, Morgan Creek...
    
     – The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island
  • Joshua Schmidt – Adding Machine
    Adding Machine (musical)
    Adding Machine is a musical adaptation of Elmer Rice's 1923 play The Adding Machine, with music by Joshua Schmidt, and book and lyrics by Jason Loewith and Joshua Schmidt. The show opened in 2007 in Illinois before moving Off-Broadway in 2008...
    
    

• 2009: Elton John
  Elton John
  Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...
  
   – Billy Elliot the Musical
  Billy Elliot the Musical
  Billy Elliot the Musical is a musical based on the 2000 film Billy Elliot. The music is by Sir Elton John, and book and lyrics are by Lee Hall, who wrote the film's screenplay. The plot revolves around motherless Billy, who trades boxing gloves for ballet shoes...
  
  
  • Neil Bartram
    Neil Bartram
    Neil Bartram is a composer/lyricist and the recipient of a Dramatists Guild Jonathan Larson Fellowship, a 2005 Jonathan Larson Foundation Award, and was a finalist for the 2007 Fred Ebb Award....
    
     – The Story of My Life
    The Story of My Life (musical)
    The Story of My Life is a musical with music and lyrics by Neil Bartram, and a book by Brian Hill. The show follows two childhood friends from age six to 35 and has only two characters....
    
    
  • Zina Goldrich
    Zina Goldrich
    Zina Goldrich is a musical theater composer. She is most known for her work with lyricist Marcy Heisler.Goldrich and Heisler are currently working on the musical adaptation of Ever After, which was scheduled to have its world premiere at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco in November 2009, but...
    
     – Dear Edwina
    Dear Edwina
    Dear Edwina is a musical by Zina Goldrich and Marcy Heisler . A children's one-hour musical, it concerns a young girl who gives her neighborhood friends and family advice through singing in a musical show...
    
    
  • Dolly Parton
    Dolly Parton
    Dolly Rebecca Parton is an American singer-songwriter, author, multi-instrumentalist, actress and philanthropist, best known for her work in country music. Dolly Parton has appeared in movies like 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Steel Magnolias and Straight Talk...
    
     – 9 to 5
    9 to 5 (musical)
    9 to 5: The Musical is a stage musical with music and lyrics by Dolly Parton and a book by Patricia Resnick, based on the 1980 movie Nine to Five...
    
    
  • Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
    
     – Road Show
  • Jeanine Tesori
    Jeanine Tesori
    Jeanine Tesori is an American musical arranger and composer who won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center and the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change.Tesori made her Broadway...
    
     – Shrek the Musical

2010s

• 2010: David Bryan
  David Bryan
  David Bryan is the keyboard player of the band rock classic, Bon Jovi. Bryan also sings backing vocals and often at live shows sings part of or the whole of the song "In These Arms", one of a handful of Bon Jovi songs credited to him as songwriter...
  
   – Memphis
  Memphis (Musical)
  Memphis is a musical by David Bryan and Joe DiPietro . It is loosely based on Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips, one of the first white DJs to play black music in the 1950s...
  
  
  • Michael Friedman
    Michael Friedman (composer)
    Michael Friedman is an American composer and lyricist. He is a founding Associate Artist of The Civilians and an Artistic Associate at New York Theatre Workshop. He received a 2007 Obie award for sustained excellence. His musical Saved earned him a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Best Musical...
    
     – Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
    Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
    Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is a rock musical with music and lyrics written by Michael Friedman, and a book by its director Alex Timbers.The show is a comedic Wild West rock musical about the founding of the Democratic Party...
    
    
  • Joe Iconis
    Joe Iconis
    Joseph Peter Philip Iconis is an American musical theatre writer. He is a graduate of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. He is a recipient of the 2006 Jonathan Larson Award, the 2007 Ed Kleban Award, and a Backstage Bistro Award. His innovative rock musical...
    
     – Bloodsong of Love
  • John Kander
    John Kander
    John Harold Kander is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.-Life and career:Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bernice and Harold S. Kander...
    
     and Fred Ebb
    Fred Ebb
    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....
    
     – The Scottsboro Boys
    The Scottsboro Boys (musical)
    The Scottsboro Boys is a musical with a book by David Thompson, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. Based on the Scottsboro Boys trial, the musical is one of the last collaborations between Kander and Ebb prior to the latter's death...
    
    
  • Andrew Lippa
    Andrew Lippa
    Andrew Lippa is an American composer, lyricist, book writer, performer, and producer. He is a resident artist at the Ars Nova Theater in New York City.-Biography:...
    
     – The Addams Family
    The Addams Family (musical)
    The Addams Family is a musical comedy with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa and a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. The show is based upon The Addams Family characters created by Charles Addams in his single-panel gag cartoons, which depict a ghoulish American family with an affinity for...
    
    
  • Joseph Zellnik – Yank!

• 2011: Trey Parker
  Trey Parker
  Trey Parker is an American animator, screenwriter, director, producer, voice artist, musician and actor, best known for being the co-creator of the television series South Park along with his creative partner and best friend Matt Stone.Parker started his film career in 1992, making a holiday short...
  
  , Robert Lopez
  Robert Lopez
  Robert Lopez is an American composer and lyricist of musicals best known for co-writing the Broadway musical Avenue Q and for co-creating the musical The Book of Mormon, receiving Tony Awards for both works....
  
   and Matt Stone
  Matt Stone
  Matthew Richard "Matt" Stone is an American screenwriter, producer, voice artist, musician and actor, best known for being the co-creator of South Park along with creative partner and best friend, Trey Parker....
  
   – The Book of Mormon
  • Brad Alexander – See Rock City & Other Destinations
  • Alan Menken
    Alan Menken
    Alan Menken is an American musical theatre and film composer and pianist.Menken is best known for his numerous scores for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas have each won him two Academy Awards...
    
     – Sister Act
  • Marc Shaiman
    Marc Shaiman
    Marc Shaiman is an American composer, lyricist, arranger, and performer for films, television, and theatre. He is perhaps best known for writing the music and co-writing the lyrics for the Broadway musical version of the cult John Waters film Hairspray, for which Shaiman won Tony and Grammy...
    
     – Catch Me if You Can
    Catch Me if You Can (musical)
    Catch Me If You Can is a musical with a libretto by Terrence McNally and a theatrical score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. It follows the story of con artist Frank Abagnale, Jr...
    
    
  • Mike Stoller and Artie Butler – The People in the Picture
    The People in the Picture
    The People in the Picture is a musical with book and lyrics by Iris Rainer Dart and music by Mike Stoller and Artie Butler. The musical is about a grandmother recalling her life in the Yiddish theater and the Holocaust.-Production:...
    
    
  • David Yazbek
    David Yazbek
    David Yazbek is an American writer, musician, composer, and lyricist. He wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway musicals The Full Monty , Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown ....
    
     – Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
    Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (musical)
    Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a musical with a book by Jeffrey Lane and music and lyrics by David Yazbek. The musical tells the tale of a group of women in late 20th-century Madrid whose relationships with men lead to a tumultuous 48 hours of love, confusion and passion...
    
    

Multiple Wins

5 wins

• Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist.-Life and career:He was born Seymour Kaufman on June 14, 1929, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish parents, and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Ida was an apartment landlady and his father was a brickmason...
  
  
• Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
  
  

3 wins

• Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
  
  

2 wins

• Al Carmines
  Al Carmines
  Reverend Alvin Allison "Al" Carmines, Jr. was a key figure in the expansion of Off-Off-Broadway theatre in the 1960s.Carmines was born in Hampton, Virginia...
  
  
• Marvin Hamlisch
  Marvin Hamlisch
  Marvin Frederick Hamlisch is an American composer. He is one of only thirteen people to have been awarded Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and a Tony . He is also one of only two people to EGOT and also win a Pulitzer Prize...
  
  

Multiple Nominations

12 nominations

• Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
  
  

6 nominations

• Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist.-Life and career:He was born Seymour Kaufman on June 14, 1929, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish parents, and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Ida was an apartment landlady and his father was a brickmason...
  
  
• Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
  
  

5 nominations

• Stephen Flaherty
  Stephen Flaherty
  Stephen Flaherty is an American composer of musical theatre. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/bookwriter Lynn Ahrens...
  
  

4 nominations

• John Kander
  John Kander
  John Harold Kander is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.-Life and career:Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bernice and Harold S. Kander...
  
  

3 nominations

• Marvin Hamlisch
  Marvin Hamlisch
  Marvin Frederick Hamlisch is an American composer. He is one of only thirteen people to have been awarded Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and a Tony . He is also one of only two people to EGOT and also win a Pulitzer Prize...
  
  
• Alan Menken
  Alan Menken
  Alan Menken is an American musical theatre and film composer and pianist.Menken is best known for his numerous scores for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas have each won him two Academy Awards...
  
  
• Charles Strouse
  Charles Strouse
  Charles Strouse is an American composer and lyricist.-Life and career:Strouse was born and raised in New York City, the son of Ira and Ethel Strouse...
  
  
• Elizabeth Swados
  Elizabeth Swados
  Elizabeth Swados is an American writer, composer, musician, and theatre director. While some of her subject matter is humorous, such as her satirical look at Ronald Reagan, Rap Master Ronnie, and Doonesbury - both collaborations with Garry Trudeau - much of her work deals with dark issues such as...
  
  
• Jeanine Tesori
  Jeanine Tesori
  Jeanine Tesori is an American musical arranger and composer who won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center and the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change.Tesori made her Broadway...
  
  
• David Yazbek
  David Yazbek
  David Yazbek is an American writer, musician, composer, and lyricist. He wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway musicals The Full Monty , Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown ....
  
  

2 nominations

• Al Carmines
  Al Carmines
  Reverend Alvin Allison "Al" Carmines, Jr. was a key figure in the expansion of Off-Off-Broadway theatre in the 1960s.Carmines was born in Hampton, Virginia...
  
  
• William Finn
  William Finn
  William Alan Finn is an American composer and lyricist of musicals. His musical Falsettos received the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Music and Lyrics and for Best Book.-Biography:...
  
  
• Larry Grossman
  Larry Grossman (composer)
  Larry Grossman is a composer of Broadway musicals, as well as scores for film and television, notably the The Muppet Show.-Career:...
  
  
• Jerry Herman
  Jerry Herman
  Jerry Herman is an American composer and lyricist, known for his work in Broadway musical theater. He composed the scores for the hit Broadway musicals Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles. He has been nominated for the Tony Award five times, and won twice, for Hello, Dolly! and La Cage...
  
  
• Michael John LaChiusa
  Michael John LaChiusa
  Michael John LaChiusa is an American musical theatre and opera composer, lyricist, and librettist. He is best known for complex, musically challenging shows such as Hello Again, Marie Christine, The Wild Party, and See What I Wanna See...
  
  
• Michel Legrand
  Michel Legrand
  Michel Jean Legrand is a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist...
  
  
• Andrew Lippa
  Andrew Lippa
  Andrew Lippa is an American composer, lyricist, book writer, performer, and producer. He is a resident artist at the Ars Nova Theater in New York City.-Biography:...
  
  
• Robert Lopez
  Robert Lopez
  Robert Lopez is an American composer and lyricist of musicals best known for co-writing the Broadway musical Avenue Q and for co-creating the musical The Book of Mormon, receiving Tony Awards for both works....
  
  
• Galt MacDermot
  Galt MacDermot
  Galt MacDermot is a Canadian composer, pianist and writer of musical theatre. He won a Grammy Award for the song African Waltz in 1960. His most successful musicals have been Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona...
  
  
• Laurence O'Keefe
  Laurence O'Keefe (composer)
  Laurence O'Keefe , also known as Larry, is a composer and lyricist for Broadway musicals, film and television.O'Keefe is a graduate of Harvard College, where he studied anthropology and wrote humor for the Harvard Lampoon and sang with the Harvard Krokodiloes...
  
  
• Polly Pen
• Marc Shaiman
  Marc Shaiman
  Marc Shaiman is an American composer, lyricist, arranger, and performer for films, television, and theatre. He is perhaps best known for writing the music and co-writing the lyrics for the Broadway musical version of the cult John Waters film Hairspray, for which Shaiman won Tony and Grammy...
  
  
• David Shire
  David Shire
  David Lee Shire is an American songwriter and the composer of stage musicals, film and television scores. The soundtrack to the movie The Taking of Pelham 123 and parts of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack such as Night on Disco Mountain, an adaptation of Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald...
  
  
• Maury Yeston
  Maury Yeston
  Maury Yeston is an American composer, lyricist, educator and musicologist.He is known for writing the music and lyrics to Broadway musicals, including Nine in 1982, and Titanic in 1997, both of which won Tony Awards for best musical and best score. He also won a Drama Desk Award for Nine...
  
  

External links

• Drama Desk Awards official website