David Kirshenbaum

When an evening of David Kirshenbaum’s music was presented at Joe’s Pub in New York City last November, in a star-studded event entitled Places You’ve Never Been Before, TheaterMania.com called him “one of the most prolific and exciting composer/lyricists writing today.” David penned the music and lyrics for the Off-Broadway musical Summer of ’42 (book by Hunter Foster), which has just been released as a two-CD set on JAY Records. His new show Party Come Here (book by Daniel Goldfarb) was an invited selection in the 2006 New York Musical Theatre Festival and is having its world premiere production at the Williamstown Theatre Festival this summer. Vanities – A New Musical, his adaptation of the long-running hit play (book by its original writer, Jack Heifner), will be appearing on a New York stage next season after winning the 2006 San Francisco Theatre Critics Circle Awards for Best Musical and Best Score in its first production at TheatreWorks in California.

Other shows include Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus (book by Myles McDonnell), which was first seen at Mill Mountain Theatre, and has been performed regionally since then at the holiday season. David’s work has been produced at many other theatres nationwide, among them Goodspeed Musicals, Round House Theatre, The York Theatre Company, Casa Manana, Seacoast Rep, and Dayton’s Victoria Theatre. He has received grants from the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s Producer-Writer Initiative (establishing a residency for him at the Goodspeed Opera House), and the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation. David is also a contributing songwriter to the childrens’ TV series Johnny and the Sprites (currently airing on The Disney Channel).

Upcoming projects include Sing Me a Happy Song, a revue co-written with songwriter Georgia Stitt, which will be featured as part of the first-ever Festival of New American Musicals, in Los Angeles in 2008; If You Give a Pig a Pancake (and other stories), a family show for TheatreworksUSA; Love In The Afternoon (book by Daniel Goldfarb), based on the Billy Wilder movie starring Audrey Hepburn; and an original musical with book by Joe DiPietro (co-author of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change). A native of New York City, David has a Bachelor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Michigan.