Scott Frankel

Scott David Frankel, born May 6, 1963, is an American composer and Broadway book writer whose work spans performing, conducting, and composing for the musical theatre.

Frankel's musical education began in Cleveland, Ohio, where he studied piano with Betty Belkin. He attended Interlochen Arts Camp and Hawken School, graduating in 1981, before enrolling at Yale University, where he earned his degree in 1985 and was inducted into the Skull and Bones society. His time at Yale also brought him into contact with playwright Doug Wright, a relationship that would later shape his career as a composer.

Before establishing himself as a composer, Frankel worked extensively as a music director, conductor, and pianist on Broadway. His credits in those capacities include Into the Woods, Les Misérables, Jerome Robbins' Broadway, Falsettos, and Rags, on which he served as a rehearsal pianist in 1986. Off-Broadway, he worked on Putting It Together, which starred Julie Andrews. He also accompanied Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep in the party scene of the film Postcards from the Edge.

Frankel subsequently turned to composing for musical theatre, developing an ongoing creative partnership with lyricist and librettist Michael Korie. Their collaboration began with Doll, which was workshopped at the University of Houston as part of Stuart Ostrow's Musical Theatre Lab in 1995, received a staged reading at the Ravinia Festival in 2003, and was further developed at the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in White Oak, Florida, in December 2005. Another collaboration, Happiness, with a book by John Weidman and direction and choreography by Susan Stroman, opened Off-Broadway at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in March 2009. Frankel and Korie also wrote Far from Heaven, adapted from Todd Haynes's film of the same name, with a book by Richard Greenberg. Starring Kelli O'Hara, the show premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2012 before receiving a production at Playwrights Horizons in 2013.

Grey Gardens, with lyrics by Korie and a book by Doug Wright, premiered Off-Broadway in 2006 and subsequently transferred to Broadway. The production earned Frankel a Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score in 2007, along with the ASCAP Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award and the Frederick Loewe Award for Dramatic Composition. Frankel has also received MacDowell Fellowships in 1999, 2004, and 2011.

Frankel and Korie reunited with Wright for War Paint, a musical centered on the rivalry between cosmetics entrepreneurs Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden. Based on Lindy Woodhead's 2003 book and the 2007 documentary The Powder and the Glory by Ann Carol Grossman and Arnie Reisman, the production was directed by Michael Greif and premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in the summer of 2016, with Patti LuPone as Rubinstein and Christine Ebersole as Arden. War Paint transferred to Broadway, opening on April 6, 2017.

Frankel resides in Manhattan. He and his partner, architect Jim Joseph, restored Forth House in the Hudson Valley, New York.