Henry Krieger

Henry Krieger, born February 9, 1945, in New York City, is an American musical theatre composer whose Broadway credits include Dreamgirls, The Tap Dance Kid, and Sideshow. He grew up in White Plains and Ossining in Westchester County, New York, and attended the Scarborough School in Scarborough, New York, where he performed in Gilbert and Sullivan productions of Iolanthe and Ruddigore. He later pursued studies in creative and liberal arts at American University in Washington, D.C., and Columbia University in New York, and studied Graphical Arts at the Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogotá, Colombia.

Krieger began composing for Off-Off-Broadway while still in his twenties. His collaboration with lyricist and book writer Tom Eyen began with a 1975 musical adaptation of Eyen's revue The Dirtiest Show in Town, retitled The Dirtiest Musical in Town. Nell Carter's performance in that production inspired the two to develop a musical centered on Black backup singers. They workshopped the concept for producer Joe Papp, but the project stalled in 1978 when Carter left to appear in the television series Ryan's Hope. The following year, Broadway director, producer, and choreographer Michael Bennett took an interest in the material and sponsored a workshop production titled Big Dreams, casting Loretta Devine and a twenty-year-old gospel singer named Jennifer Holliday. After multiple workshops, rewrites, and other obstacles, the show reached Broadway in 1981 under the title Dreamgirls. The production earned thirteen Tony Award nominations, including Best Original Score, and won six. The song "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" became a major hit, and the original cast album earned Krieger a Grammy Award for Best Cast Show Album.

Two years after Dreamgirls, Krieger's musical The Tap Dance Kid, with lyrics by Robert Lorick, opened at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre in 1983 and went on to win two Tony Awards. Nearly fifteen years later, Krieger returned to Broadway with Side Show, featuring a book and lyrics by Bill Russell. The musical opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in 1997 and received four Tony nominations, including Best Original Musical Score. Both the Dreamgirls nomination in 1982 and the Side Show nomination in 1998 are reflected in Krieger's verified Broadway record.

Beyond Broadway, Krieger collaborated repeatedly with Russell on additional projects. Their musical Everything's Ducky opened at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, California, in 2000, winning the Backstage West Garland Award for Best Score and the Will Glickman Award for Best New Bay Area Play of 2000. The show subsequently received productions in St. Louis, Cincinnati, La Mirada, and Chicago, and was later revised and retitled Lucky Duck for a production at the Boston Conservatory. Krieger and Russell also collaborated on Kept, based on Alexandre Dumas fils' Camille, which premiered at TheatreWorks in 2002. The two additionally wrote "Santa's Gonna Rock and Roll," which served as the opening number of the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular for more than a decade, and "Take the Flame," written for the opening and closing ceremonies of Gay Games IV. In 2002, Krieger composed the score for a television adaptation of Sleeping Beauty produced for The Wonderful World of Disney, with lyrics by Susan Birkenhead. He later contributed two songs with Birkenhead to Hats!, a 2007 musical revue associated with the Red Hat Society.

When the film adaptation of Dreamgirls was released in 2006, Krieger wrote four new songs for the production. Three of those songs — "Listen," "Love You I Do," and "Patience" — earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song in the same year, making him one of the rare composers to receive three nominations in that category in a single year. The film's soundtrack reached number one on the album charts.

In 2008, Krieger composed the music for Romantic Poetry, a musical with book and lyrics by John Patrick Shanley. The production premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club at New York City Center in October 2008, with a cast that included Jeb Brown, Jerry Dixon, Ivan Hernandez, Mark Linn Baker, Patina Miller, and Emily Swallow. That same year, Krieger and Russell wrote "We Have to Change" for the benefit event Spare Some Change: NYC Artists for Barack Obama, held on August 11, 2008, in New York City, with the song performed by Michael-Leon Wooley.

Krieger resides in New York City's Greenwich Village with actor Robert Joy, his partner since 1995.