ABOUT

David Mallamud (music) and Nathan Christensen (words) have been writing together since 2017, when their first show, Spittoonia on the Erie, was performed on a barge in the Erie Canal by the Albany Symphony Orchestra. Explore all of their collaborations in the “Works” tab.

Nathan Christensen is a bookwriter/lyricst who creates unique experiences, from unlikely musicals to immersive events. His work has been honored with a Jonathan Larson Award, a Richard Rodgers Award, and a Daryl Roth Award, and he was named to the Dramatists Guild’s “50 to Watch” list. His adaptation of Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver, written with composer Scott Murphy, began as a commission by TheatreWorksUSA. It was featured in the NAMT Festival of New Musicals in 2010, as well as new musical showcases at Penn State, Village Theatre (Issaquah, WA), and TheatreWorks (Palo Alto, CA), and the New American Musical Festival (Santa Clarita, CA). Broadcast, a musical about the history of radio also written with Scott Murphy, performed as a reading at Playwrights Horizons with an all-star cast, including Will Chase, Julia Murney, Christopher Hanke, Lisa Howard, Manoel Felciano, and Connor Paolo. Broadcast went on for further development at the first Rhinebeck Writers’ Retreat and the National Music Theatre Conference at the O’Neill Theatre Center, where it was directed by Joe Calarco with a cast that included Wesley Taylor and Theresa McCarthy. Broadcast has been produced at University of Nebraska (Lincoln), Wesleyan University (CT), and University of Wisconsin (Madison).

Nathan’s other works include The Battle Creek Cure (an immersive play about the Kellogg brothers), Small Courage (about the life of J. M. Barrie), The Ibsen Game (an interactive play combining A Doll’s House with Dungeons & Dragons), The Februarians (an immersive theatrical game event), and The Main Street Radio Players (a series of original, comic radio plays).

Nathan has been a blogger for NewMusicalTheatre.com, and a theatre critic for Tucson Weekly. He has an MFA in musical theatre writing from New York University, and a Graduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship from the University of Arizona. He has co-founded an exotic fruit growing company, played drums for hula dancers on Korean television, written greeting cards professionally, performed as a concert violinist, conducted experiments in sonoluminescence, written several children’s books, and led a brand management team for an online retailer. He currently lives in rural Oklahoma with his wife and six adopted children.

David Mallamud is a MacDowell Fellow, a Dramatist Guild Fellow, A Leonard Bernstein Fellow (Tanglewood), A Fred Ebb, Jonathan Larson Award, and Richard Rodgers Award finalist, a recipient of a Broadway World Album Award, two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, and a Charles Ives Scholarship from The American Academy of Arts and Letters.  He has composed for venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to Off-Broadway, where his music for the recent production of Flight School: The Musical was lauded by Laurel Graeber of the New York Times as the show’s “biggest boon . . . worthy of bigger stages, variously embracing classical lyricism, pulsing pop, the poignant ballad and at least one all-out, Alice Cooper–style rock rant.”

Recently Mallamud was thrilled to work with Mike Mills (of R.E.M. fame), arranging and composing additional music for his Concerto for Rock Band and Violin, written for violinist Robert McDuffie, who premiered it with Mills and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. It toured the US and has been performed by The Buffalo Philharmonic, The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestras as well as a second tour in the fall of 2019 where Chuck Leavell of the Rolling Stones joined the band on the first half with new arrangements by Mills and Mallamud of your favorite Georgia-themed songs.

Mallamud’s other recent and current projects include Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches The Musical, in collaboration with playwright Philip Dawkins, which premiered at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis; Flight School The Musical (written with Joshua Cohen and Cara Lustik; based on the book by Lita Judge) which had several off-broadway runs, toured China for two years, and had two US tours, Kid Frankenstein (written with Peter Charles Morris) which ran Off-Broadway in the Fall of 2017; nine song cycles for Dogs of Desire, the Albany Symphony’s rock-inspired new music ensemble - including Spittoonia on the Erie (written with Nathan Christensen), which was also performed by The Albany Symphony on a barge in the Erie Canal as part of their Water Music New York project - announced by Governor Andrew Cuomo; a ballet Elegy for the Metropolitan Ballet (Twin Cities) with the Kenwood Symphony; a solo classical guitar piece, Spatula, published by Les Productions D'Oz; and projects with Tony-nominated Bookwriter-lyricist Peter Kellogg, Emmy-nominated lyricist Alisa Hauser (A Christmas Carol on PBS), Trav S.D., Nathan Christensen, Michael Cooper (It Shoulda Been You), and Joshua H. Cohen (Tamar of the River).