Matthew Sklar

Matthew Sklar is an American composer for musical theatre, television, and film whose Broadway credits include The Wedding Singer, Elf, and The Prom. Born on October 7, 1973, he grew up in Westfield, New Jersey, as the middle child of Dr. Talbot Sklar, a pediatric dentist, and Susan Sklar, a teacher. He attended Edison Intermediate School and Westfield High School, graduating in 1991, and was active in both the school's music and drama programs as well as the Westfield Summer Workshop. His music teacher at Edison, Kristine Smith-Morasso, asked him to write a song for his ninth-grade graduation, an assignment Sklar credits as the beginning of his composing career. He submitted that song to the Disney Channel's All-New Mickey Mouse Club, whose producers selected it to be performed by cast member Jennifer McGill; Sklar was subsequently interviewed on the program.

Sklar graduated with honors in 1991 from the Juilliard School Pre-College Division as a composition major. His orchestral piece Symphonics, written for full orchestra, was premiered at Lincoln Center by the Juilliard Pre-College Orchestra under his own baton. He then studied at New York University from 1991 to 1995. At eighteen, while a freshman at NYU, he began playing keyboards for the Broadway production of Les Misérables and went on to conduct the show at age twenty-one. Over the following years he served as keyboardist, conductor, arranger, or rehearsal pianist on numerous Broadway productions, among them Titanic, Miss Saigon, On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Putting It Together, Oklahoma!, 42nd Street, Nine, Shrek, and Caroline, or Change. He also appeared onstage in the Broadway revival of 42nd Street, playing the role of Oscar.

Sklar made his Broadway debut as a composer with The Wedding Singer, with lyrics by Chad Beguelin, a collaborator with whom he has worked throughout his career. The show earned him a 2006 Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score. His second Broadway musical as composer, Elf, broke box office records at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre and has since been performed in theatres around the world. In 2015, Sklar received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Music Direction for the NBC stop-motion animated special Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas, starring Jim Parsons. He also adapted and arranged the music of Marvin Hamlisch for the Emmy Award-winning PBS/American Masters documentary Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did For Love. His original music and songs have been contributed to Sesame Street, Wonder Pets!, and the NBC broadcast of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and his concert works have been performed by the Atlanta, Baltimore, and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestras.

The Prom, Sklar's most recent Broadway work, features music by Sklar, lyrics by Beguelin, a book by Bob Martin and Beguelin, and is based on a concept by Jack Viertel. Directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw, the musical centers on a high school student in small-town Indiana who is barred from her prom for wanting to attend with her girlfriend, prompting a group of Broadway performers to travel to the town on her behalf. The show had its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, beginning previews on August 18, 2016. It opened on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre on November 15, 2018, following previews that began October 23, 2018, and was named a New York Times Critic's Pick. The Prom won the 2019 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical, and for his work on the show Sklar received both a second Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score and the Dramatists Guild of America Frederick Loewe Award for Dramatic Composition.

A 2024 Broadway revival of Elf the Musical, transferred from a successful 2022–2023 London production directed by Phil McKinley, broke box office records at the Marquis Theatre, recording the top two highest-grossing eight-performance weeks in that production's history, with grosses of $2,295,549 and $2,230,419 respectively. The revival starred Tony nominee Grey Henson as Buddy and Oscar nominee Sean Astin as Santa. In 2025, the production returned to London's West End at the Aldwych Theatre and launched a U.S. tour. Sklar has also written the comedy The Silver Wedding, adding to a body of work that spans Broadway, the West End, and theatres worldwide.