Musical Theatre Radio presents "Be Our Guest"

Mark Cabaniss is a music publisher, writer, producer, broadcaster, and speaker. He is President/CEO of Jubilate Music Group, a worldwide music publisher creating printed and digital music, recordings, and videos.

As an ASCAP composer and arranger, Mark’s published compositions have been performed nationally and abroad, and include choral anthems, musicals, cantatas, and instrumental pieces. His concert musical Triumph of Faith (co-written with Mark Blankenship) received its world premiere at Carnegie Hall. Other musicals include The Homework Machine, co-written with Tony-nominated composer Keith Herrmann and premiered by the Boston Children’s Theatre and The Stardust Supper Club (featuring the music of Hoagy Carmichael) co-written with Alan Bailey and given an Off-Broadway workshop production by The York Theatre Company.

Mark is the author of three books: Confessions of a Shameless Name-Dropper; Music Business Essentials: A Guide for Aspiring Professionals; and Miracle of The Music Man: The Classic American Story of Meredith Willson.

Mark is a multiple recipient of ASCAP’s Popular Music Award, the NAMM Believe in Music Award, and is a Dove Award and Angel Award-winning producer. He is a member of The Recording Academy, The Dramatists Guild of America, and serves on the Board of Advisors for The Music Man Square, a museum and foundation in Mason City, Iowa, dedicated to furthering music education and honoring the legacy of Meredith Willson (creator of Broadway’s The Music Man). He also created and manages the official Meredith Willson website: www.meredithwillson.com. Mark was recognized as an Outstanding Alumnus by Mars Hill University and serves on the University’s Board of Trustees. Governor Wallace Wilkinson of Kentucky commissioned Mark as an official Kentucky Colonel. Mark is also the founder/donor of The Helen Cole Krause Music Scholarship, awarded annually to a qualifying incoming or current Mars Hill University music major.

Mark serves as a correspondent for Hollywood 360, a weekly nationally-syndicated entertainment radio show based in Chicago.

Mark’s work in music business and broadcasting has led to collaborations with television icons Andy Griffith, Bob Barker, and Kathie Lee Gifford; Academy Award-winner Shirley Jones; legendary entertainer Steve Allen; composer Charles Strouse (Annie/Bye Bye Birdie); Broadway/pop platinum singer/songwriters Rupert Holmes and David Pomeranz; jazz pianist/composer Loonis McGlohon; gospel singer Cynthia Clawson; actor/singer Thurl Ravenscroft (Tony the Tiger/“Mr. Grinch”), and others.

Mark holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Music Education and Communications from Mars Hill University and The University of Tennessee – Knoxville. Mark resides in Nashville.

https://markcabaniss.com/

The Music Man stands as one of the greatest achievements in American musical theatre, but few know about its rocky beginnings and the against-all-odds success story of its creator Meredith Willson.

Mark Cabaniss steps back into the Golden Age of Broadway and brings to life the origins of this classic show, the music behind it, and the unlikely story of its creator. Interweaving behind-the-scenes accounts of people who worked with Willson, Cabaniss looks at his long and unusual career as a composer, conductor, radio personality, and flutist, which reached its pinnacle in The Music Man.

Aaron Netsky

366 Days/366 Musicals: A Musical Theatre Trivia Book and Diary

How long is 21 Chump Street? Who wrote Island of the Lost Coeds? What the heck is Cinderella Meets the Wolfman!? The answers to these musical theatre questions you never thought you'd ask and so many more are in this book. Learn about a different musical on the top every page and then use the bottom to keep track of important events or record your own experiences of each of these musicals. How many have you seen? Which ones may never be seen again?

Sam is one of the first musicians in the world to have a Conservatoire Level Masters Course specially created for him, a ‘Piano Masters in Interpretation and Improvisation’ at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, bringing together his skills in jazz, composition and classical. Graduating with Distinction in 2019, he spent the following year as a Fellow with the Composition Department. He mainly studied the classical piano tradition and only recently in his career discovered his true passion: improvisation.

During lockdown Sam composed a musical, One Shoe of Each Colour, all about his journey as a transgender person. Championed by GSMD as a musical having ‘all the ingredients to be the next hit’ the piece is garnering much interest from the world of Musical Theatre and is due to be released in 2023. He also wrote the music for the new play Consecuencias de la Sed premiered in 2021, and was awarded the Oh! prize to the best new soundtrack.

Sam is the resident pianist for DEBUT at Shoreditch Treehouse in London (No. 1 Airbnb Music Experience Globally in 2018 – Forbes) where he was featured by Steinway & Sons, and he was also part of Yamaha’s ‘Live From Home’ Europe wide Live Stream series.

Steven Greenwood is a Montreal-based writer & director, and the Artistic Director of Home Theatre Productions. He holds a PhD from McGill University with a focus on queer cultural history, and he teaches university courses in film, theatre, and popular culture. His work is influenced by his passion for queer history & culture, and he is a fan of all things geeky, pulpy, campy & queer. 

Erin Murray Quinlan is a published  Playwright, Poet, And Composer

with credits Off-Broadway and beyond. 

Quinlan's latest show, Brain Hemingway, had its premiere at Edinburgh Festival Fringe venue Greenside @ Infirmary Street in August '22 and will be returning to the festival in 2023 to Greenside @ Nicholson Square.

God Save Queen Pam had its Off-Broadway debut in the summer of 2018, and critics raved about the tight script, witty lyrics, and catchy music. "How Can I Tell You", her contribution to the album 'The MS Songbook' (lyrics co-written by Rory Sherman) was chosen again and again by reviewers as the favorite of the song cycle, called 'the cream of a very talented crop'. EMQ's work has been performed at many venues around the US and UK, including the Players Theater, the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, and the Duplex Theater in NYC; the Playwright in Boston; the Tabard Theater  in London; and the Actors Studio in LA. She has also written music for film and television, including 2021's comedy Bad Cupid starring John Rhys-Davies (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lord of the Rings, The Living Daylights). For complete credits, check out the resume page.

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EMQ studied composition and creative writing at Berklee College of Music, playwriting at the University of Oxford, and composition with professors from Juilliard at the EAMA Nadia Boulanger Institute at the Schola Cantorum in Paris. She is also an alumna composer/lyricist of the Tony Award-winning BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Advanced Workshop in NYC, and a protege of accomplished UK-based musical theater writer and director Paul Boyd.

She is inclued in Scott Pfitzinger's Composer Genealogies: A Compendium of Composers, Their Teachers, and Their Students. She is on the selection committee at NYC's the Players Theatre Off-Broadway, and is a very proud member of the Dramatist Guild.

https://www.erinmurrayquinlan.com/

Alexander S. Bermange is a composer and lyricist whose musicals and theatre productions have enjoyed successful runs in the West End, across the UK and around the world, whose comic writing has acquired a formidable following amongst millions of radio listeners, and whose songs have been performed, recorded and released by international stars including Cynthia Erivo, Kerry Ellis, Miriam Margolyes, Ramin Karimloo and Christopher Biggins.

Alexander’s work has won widespread international critical acclaim, and has garnered numerous honours including two Frank Wildhorn Awards, a West End Wilma Award and two Broadway World Award nominations. Alexander has also topped the iTunes comedy album chart with Wit & Whimsy, an album celebrating his comedic work featuring 23 popular personalities and West End stars.

https://bermange.co.uk/

Described by The Observer as ‘a highly individual singer-songwriter’, Maz O’Connor is a truly unique artist.

Known for her haunting, emotive vocals and her poetic lyricism, her songs are most often short stories inspired by her love of literature, folklore and mythology. Her Irish roots, she suspects, inform her love of darker tales—those of heartbreak, longing and loss.

She wrote her first song aged four, whilst making a ‘radio show’ with a cassette player and her older brothers, and grew up singing old folk songs in her local Cumbrian venues. As a teenager, the songs of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell inspired her to learn the guitar, and listening to Regina Spektor inspired her to write her first songs on piano.

Winning a BBC Performing Arts Fund Fellowship in 2014 (once won by Adele) brought Maz to wider attention, and later that year she was nominated for a BBC Folk Award for her first album, ‘This Willowed Light’.

Maz has since released 3 further albums, toured the U.K., Europe and Eastern Canada, played live sessions on BBC Radio 2 and 3, and appeared at major U.K. festivals, including Glastonbury.

Her latest album, 'What I Wanted', was co-written and co-produced with composer Will Gardner and released in May 2022. It's an ambitious song-cycle set in the city at night and explores themes of anxiety, capitalism, sexuality, spirituality, and the search for connection in an age of consumerism.

'What I Wanted' has been widely praised, and called ‘an excellent thing’ by Mark Radcliffe of BBC 6 Music and BBC Radio 2.

‘I’m interested in connection,’ she says, ‘that’s what music is to me. Creating a moment between myself and an audience member, a moment that’s intimate and real. I’m always seeking that.’

The Wife of Michael Cleary is a new folk musical inspired by the true story of Bridget Cleary. Bridget was a talented dressmaker from Co. Tipperary, Ireland, who in 1895 was burned to death by her husband and family because they believed her to be a fairy changeling. She was 26 years old. A trial ensued shortly afterwards and the story was widely covered in the press in Ireland and Great Britain. It has previously served as inspiration for music and literature, but this is the first time the story has been addressed in musical theatre.

The Wife of Michael Cleary explores faith and superstition at a decisive moment in Irish history, whilst also shining a light on the pressing contemporary issue of violence against women.

https://mazoconnor.com/

MINDI DICKSTEIN is an award-winning writer of plays and musicals best known as the lyricist for Broadway's LITTLE WOMEN (licensed by MTI, Original Broadway Cast album released by Ghostlight/Sh-k-boom Records), which continues to be performed worldwide, including recent premieres in Tokyo and London.  Current projects include book and lyrics for MAIDEN VOYAGE (New Works Provincetown), lyrics for WITNESSES (California Center for the Arts, 2022 San Diego Critics award for Best Production), lyrics for BEYOND WHAT CAN BE SEEN, based on The Little Prince and the life of Saint-Exupery, and lyrics for BENNY & JOON, based on the MGM film, which had its world premiere at The Old Globe (2017 San Diego Critics nominee for Best Musical), east coast premiere at Paper Mill Playhouse, and which has been developed at Transport Group, NAMT, Theatreworks Silicon Valley, and the Goodspeed Johnny Mercer and Rhinebeck retreats. 
Her work has been commissioned, produced, and developed widely, including by Disney (book for TOY STORY, based on the animated film), Second Stage (lyrics for SNOW IN AUGUST, based on the novel by Pete Hamill), Playwrights Horizons (book and lyrics for TRIP, based on Rip Van Winkle; Harold & Mimi Steinberg Commission), Theatreworks USA, Two River Theater, and the ASCAP Workshop. Her songs have been performed at The Kennedy Center, 54 Below, The Cutting Room, Gotham Hall (The Dramatists Guild’s “Great Writers Thank Their Lucky Stars”) and Lincoln Center (“Hear and Now: Contemporary Lyricists”), among others. Honors include a Larson Foundation Award, New York Foundation for the Arts and Massachusetts Artists Foundation Playwriting Fellowships, Jane Chambers Award (for her play, THE EXISTENTIAL GOURMET), and a Second Stage Constance Klinsky Award for Excellence in Musical Theater.

Education: MFA, Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program (where she was an Oscar Hammerstein Fellow); BFA, NYU’s Department of Undergraduate Drama.  Member of ASCAP and The Dramatists Guild.

James is a writer, producer, actor, theatremaker, singer, educator and a few other things. He made his Broadway debut as a singer for Riverdance, toured as Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar, and my performance career has spanned Broadway and off, to voiceover, television, and concert halls all over the world. I've also been involved in the development of dozens of new works for the stage as an award-winning writer, director, and producer.

More Info: ⁠https://www.jamessasser.com/⁠

More Info: ⁠https://www.charlesvincentburwell.com/⁠