2023-2024 Marvin Hamlisch International Music Awards
Nominees, MUSICAL THEATRE Composition (Emerging Division)
Josh Cleveland, LONG ISLAND CITY, NEW YORK, United States
Josh is a Long Island City-based songwriter, educator, music director, and pianist, and a composer in the BMI Lehman Engel musical theatre songwriting workshop. He wrote music and lyrics for an adaptation of "The Great Gatsby," which premiered this past summer. Recent music direction credits include "Elegies" (Keegan Theatre), "Annie" (Little Theatre of Alexandria), and "Pippin" (Catholic University). His stand-alone song “Maple Trees” was recognized and studio-recorded by the DC-area songwriting collective Emergent Seed.
john Coyne, Brooklyn, New York, United States
John Coyne is a composer and lyricist for musical theatre. Recent: a cabaret of comedy songs called Center of The Universe (Chelsea Table + Stage), and a TYA piece written for Musical Theatre West that toured LA. He is currently working on an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. He has written other TYA with Rachel Lampert (Kitchen Theatre Company). He often improvises scores for clown, commedia dell'arte, and other physical theatre. He works as an accompanist, teaching artist, and music director throughout NYC. During the pandemic, he arranged and music supervised two EPs with Ben Crawford (Phantom of the Opera). John produces and curates Up Next, a variety show for adventurous musical theatre, presented by the Off-Broadway company BEDLAM, where he is a Company Member. He aims to help carve out space for strange musical theatre to thrive. BFA: Pace (Acting).
Veronica Leahy and Andrew Van Camp, New York, New York, United States
Veronica Leahy is a composer, multi-woodwindist, pianist, and music director across a range of genres. She recently graduated from Harvard summa cum laude with a B.A. in Music and a secondary in Theater, Dance and Media. Her senior thesis American Tonic, an original song cycle exploring invisible disability, was awarded high honors. Recently, she composed and music directed Queen of Magic, which had its first production in the Loeb Ex theater in December 2022. Veronica got involved in theater through composing for the First-Year Musical, Fake Moos. She has gone on to compose for Harvard’s iconic Hasty Pudding Theatricals, scoring two of their musicals. In 2021, she served as the music assistant for MacBeth in Stride at the American Repertory Theater, and she music directed for two Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players productions. Veronica also founded the Harvard Student Composer’s Festival, bringing together student and world-renowned composers alike to share original pieces. As a saxophonist, Veronica has appeared with artists such as Jon Batiste, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and Terri Lyne Carrington. She participated in Berklee’s Jazz and Gender Justice institute and served as the lead alto player in Berklee’s premiere big band. She has performed at venues such as Lincoln Center, Birdland, Dizzy’s Club, and 54 Below, and recently appeared on the GRAMMY Award-winning jazz album New Standards, Vol. 1. Veronica was awarded the Radcliffe Doris Cohen Levi Prize, which recognizes one Harvard student per year for achievement in musical theater.
Andrew Van Camp is a playwright, book writer, lyricist, and sound designer. He will graduate from Harvard in December 2023 with a B.A. in Applied Mathematics and a minor in Theater, Dance, and Media. Recently, he wrote, produced, and sound designed Queen of Magic, which had its first production in the Loeb Experimental Theater in December 2022. Andrew was first recognized for his lyrics when he was awarded 11 points of extra credit on a high school pre-calculus exam for writing a parody of “Let It Go” about the quadratic formula. He wrote the lyrics for his first full length musical, Fake Moos, in his first year of college. Andrew and Veronica’s songs have been featured at the Harvard Composer’s Festival and won the Berklee Curtain Up competition and were performed with full orchestration at the Berklee Performance Center. Andrew studied playwriting with Sam Marks at Harvard, and his play Negative Results had a professionally directed reading at the Harvard Playwrights Festival in April 2022. He was also the first student to be hired by the historic Hasty Pudding Theatricals as a professional sound designer and an audio technician at the American Repertory Theater for their recent productions of The Wife of Willesden and Evita. Andrew acted throughout high school and college and studied acting and voice with Remo Airaldi and Erika Bailey. When not writing musicals or sound designing, Andrew can sometimes be found in labs researching how bacteria evolve, for which he won the Goldwater Scholarship.
Asher Muldoon, New York, New York, United States
Asher Muldoon (he/him) is an actor, writer, composer, and comedian based in NYC. He graduated Princeton University with a degree in English and certificates in Theater and Music Theater. His first musical, an adaptation of the novel The Butcher Boy, made its New York premiere in Summer 2022 at the Irish Repertory Theater. His thesis musical, What Remains of Burke and Hare, won the Allan S. Downer prize for independent theatrical work by a student. His other thesis, the solo ghost story musical Mine made its international debut at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His original musical Wake, with book by Danielle Koenig and music by Sammy Grob, performed a sold out concert at the Emerging Artists Theater. Current projects include: The Eternity Machine, a speculative horror musical inspired by tech billionaires; a one act drawn from the work of Anthony Bourdain; a show based on the true story of Cynthia the famous mannequin (with Dani Koenig). As an actor, he has performed in regional and professional productions for over a decade. He was a member of the first national tour of the Tony Award winning musical Dear Evan Hansen, understudying the roles of Connor and Jared. Last year he performed with Prospect as part of their concert production of The Hello Girls at the Kennedy Center. He also regularly orchestrates, directs, and builds puppets for various productions. He is currently a second year lyricist in the BMI Workshop.
Alexander Unikowski, Canberra, Australia
Alexander is an award-winning music director, composer, conductor, educator and multi-instrumentalist. Holding a degree in composition and a diploma in Piano Performance, Alexander has studied at the Australian National University and McGill University in Montréal, Canada; under world-renowned conductors in Sydney and Melbourne; and most recently as a part of NYU's music directing intensive. Alexander's music directing work has been extensive and varied, with highlights including an award for Best Musical Direction for 'And The World Goes Round' in 2019, and a Recognition of Excellence for Music Direction of Mamma Mia! in 2021, both in Canberra. Alexander has composed for a range of ensembles and settings, including multiple theatre productions, and in 2013 for the Australian Youth Orchestra.