Growing up in Las Vegas, Ilana Atkins started studying piano at six but eventually hit a wall with classical music.
“The music didn’t speak to me,” she said. “As I got older, the most consistent response I got was, ‘Oh girl, you’re light skinned and you play the piano, you could be the next Alicia Keys.'”Continue Reading
For female musical theater composers, this season has been a mixed bag. Of eight original Broadway scores, just one, Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown, was written by a woman. Yet with its standing-room-only audiences and 14 Tony Award nominations, the folk opera appears to be a hit, a sign that non-traditional work — by a man or woman — can defy conventional wisdom of what belongs on Broadway.
Amazingly, Hadestown is only the 38th Broadway musical composed by a woman since 1930, according to a new interactive timeline by Maestra Music Inc.Continue Reading
Jason Robert Brown said a tweet from a fan inspired the Sept. 12 benefit concert of his two-character musical The Last Five Years.
The composer, lyricist and performer has worked independently with Joshua Henry (Aaron Burr in Hamilton in Chicago) and Cynthia Erivo, a Tony Award winner for The Color Purple on Broadway. About a year ago, “Somebody tweeted, ‘Oh my god, you have to do The Last Five Years with Cynthia and Joshua,” Brown, 46, recalled in an interview. Continue Reading
