Andrew Lippa

Andrew Lippa is an American composer, lyricist, book writer, performer, and producer born on December 22, 1964, in Leeds, England. His family emigrated to the United States in October 1967, and Lippa grew up in Oak Park, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. He attended Oak Park High School before enrolling at the University of Michigan, where he initially studied vocal performance before transferring into music education and earning a bachelor's degree in that field. After relocating to New York City in 1987, Lippa worked as a middle school music teacher at Columbia Grammar and Prep School on the Upper West Side. During his second year there, he was promoted to dean of 7th and 8th grade students, an assistant principal role he held alongside his teaching duties through June 1991. In 1988, he was accepted into the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop as a composer, where he met future collaborator Tom Greenwald.

Lippa launched his professional theatrical career at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut, where he was hired in early 1992 as a pianist for a production of It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman, subsequently advancing to the roles of dance arranger and assistant music director. The Goodspeed later produced his first musical, John & Jen, with a book by Greenwald, at the Norma Terris Theatre in Chester, Connecticut, in 1993. That production was followed by a workshop at the Berkshire Theatre Festival and ultimately a nearly six-month run at Lamb's Theatre in New York City.

Lippa then wrote the book, music, and lyrics for The Wild Party, beginning work in 1996. The Manhattan Theatre Club presented a first-act reading that year, and the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center hosted a two-week development in the summer of 1997. Producers Jeffrey Seller and Kevin McCollum subsequently optioned the piece alongside the Manhattan Theatre Club, and the show received its world premiere in 2000 at the Off-Broadway Manhattan Theatre Club. The Wild Party won the Outer Critics Circle Award for best Off-Broadway musical of the season, and Lippa received the 2000 Drama Desk Award for best music. The production earned 13 Drama Desk Award nominations in total, the most of any show that year.

In 1999, Lippa contributed three new songs to the Broadway production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown: "My New Philosophy," written for Kristin Chenoweth; "Beethoven Day"; and a new version of the title song. He also created all new arrangements for the production and produced the original cast recording, earning a Grammy Award nomination for that work. Beginning that same year, Lippa has served as Chenoweth's music director, conducting and playing her concerts at venues including Carnegie Hall in 2004, the San Francisco Symphony in 2005, the Metropolitan Opera House in January 2007, and the Donmar Warehouse in 2002.

In 2001, Lippa partnered with Brian Crawley to develop a musical adaptation of A Little Princess, which premiered in the summer of 2004 at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, California. A cast recording was released on September 13, 2011, on Ghostlight Records. That same year, the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra under Stuart Malina premiered The Addams Family Casket of Orchestral Grotesqueries, a symphonic suite arranged by Lippa and Larry Hochman and orchestrated by Hochman. In 2006, the musical Asphalt Beach, with music and lyrics by Lippa and a book by T. C. Smith and Peter Spears, premiered at the American Music Theatre Project at Northwestern University.

Producer Stuart Oken subsequently asked Lippa to write the music and lyrics for The Addams Family, with a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. Starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, the show broke attendance records during its 2009 Chicago tryout and ran for 725 regular performances and 34 previews at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on Broadway before closing on December 31, 2011. A U.S. national tour launched in New Orleans in September 2011, and international productions followed in São Paulo from March through December 2012, Sweden from September 2012 through May 2013, and Sydney, Australia, from March through June 2013. The Broadway cast recording was released on Decca Broadway. For his work on The Addams Family, Lippa received a Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score in 2010 as well as Drama Desk nominations for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Lyrics.

Lippa wrote the music and lyrics for Big Fish, based on the 2003 film and the 1998 novel, with a book by John August. The show premiered in Chicago at the Oriental Theatre from April through May 5, 2013, before opening on Broadway at the Neil Simon Theatre on October 6, 2013, following previews that began September 5. Susan Stroman directed and choreographed the production, which featured scenic design by Julian Crouch, costume design by William Ivey Long, and lighting design by Donald Holder. Norbert Leo Butz starred as Edward Bloom, with Kate Baldwin as Sandra and Bobby Steggert as Will. Big Fish earned Lippa a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Music in 2014.

In 2012, the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus and several other gay men's choruses commissioned Lippa to write a musical tribute to Harvey Milk. The resulting 60-minute oratorio, I Am Harvey Milk, featured Lippa himself in the title role. Lippa also wrote the music and lyrics for The Man in the Ceiling, based on Jules Feiffer's children's book of the same name with a book by Feiffer. Originally developed by Disney Theatrical and Tom Schumacher, the show had two readings in 2008 before its first full production opened at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, New York, in 2017. Ghostlight Records released the cast recording, featuring Gavin Creel and Kate Baldwin, on April 18, 2019.

As a performer, Lippa appeared on Broadway in 2016 and has performed at Carnegie Hall, Town Hall, The Rainbow Room, and The Supper Club. His Broadway credits include Big Fish, the drama The Family, and My Love Letter to Broadway. His vocal arrangements and singing appear in songs by Stephen Schwartz in the animated feature The Prince of Egypt. Lippa is a resident artist at the Ars Nova Theater in New York City.