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. He also won the Tony Award and 2008 Outer Critics Circle Award, and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for American Idiot and Everyday Rapture.
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Kitt attended Byram Hills High School in Armonk, NY, where he participated in various theatrical productions.[1] He graduated in 1992. He then attended Columbia College, New York City, graduating with a degree in economics in 1996. During his time at Columbia, Kitt was also a member of the Columbia Kingsmen. [2]
Kitt composed the music for the musicals High Fidelity and Next to Normal and the play From Up Here.[3]
He met Brian Yorkey while they were both students at Columbia University, and they attended the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop as a team.[1] He won the 2008 Outer Critics Circle Award, Outstanding New Score,[4] and was nominated for the Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Music; and Tony Awards for Best Original Score Written for the Theatre and Best Orchestrations, all for his rock score to Next to Normal.[5] He also shared the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Brian Yorkey for Next to Normal. The Pulitzer Board called it "a powerful rock musical that grapples with mental illness in a suburban family and expands the scope of subject matter for musicals."[6]
Kitt has also been a music director and conductor on Broadway since 2002, beginning with the musical Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical. He was the music supervisor for the Sherie Rene Scott musical Everyday Rapture, which ran at Second Stage Theatre in 2009.[7] He is the music supervisor, orchestrator and music arranger for the musical American Idiot, which opened on Broadway in March 2010.[8]
He composed the score for the Public Theatre Shakespeare in the Park (New York City) production of The Winter's Tale, which ran in July 2010. The New York Times reviewer wrote that "His score is a triumph of the less-is-more approach to incidental music."[9]
He is working on a new musical, Bring It On, a musical adaption of the film, with Jeff Whitty, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Amanda Green. The musical premiered at the Alliance Theatre, Atlanta, running from January 15, 2011 to February 20, 2011.[10][11]
Kitt has performed his own songs in a one-man show at various venues such as the Bitter End in New York.[12] He is the founder of The Tom Kitt Band, in which he plays piano. The band's first album is Find Me. [13] Kitt also contributed in 2006 to Julia Murney's self titled debut album, I'm Not Waiting, for which he co-wrote the song Perfect.
Kitt received the 2009 Frederick Loewe Award for Dramatic Composition for Next to Normal from the Dramatists Guild of America.[14]
In August 2010, Brian Yorkey and Kitt's musical In Your Eyes was workshopped at the Village Theatre's Festival of New Musicals in Issaquah, Washington (they also workshopped Feeling Electric there as well). The show is about "The students of Lakeshore High School are sent into a full-blown lock down (not to mention a flood of animosity, fear, and insecurity) when a plot of gun violence is suspected. As a group of unsupervised students attempts to make sense of the chaos, they end up learning more about themselves and their classmates—from the troubled rocker spitting lyrics, to the sarcastic fashionista pointing fingers from her pedestal."[15]
He married Rita Pietropinto in 2000.[2] They have two children.[16]
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