Composer.  Lyricist.  Asian dude.

I am a New York City based composer/lyricist/librettist. I write musicals by myself.  I enjoy writing with other people, but when I do it is anywhere between 33%-50% less fun because I really nerd out over marrying music to lyrics, to theme and character and conflict etc.  That doesn’t mean you can’t hire me to do one though. It just means when you do, you’re getting one for the price of …one-third.. No wait you know what I mean.

I am the son of Peter and Jeanne, the husband of Laura, the brother of Tom, the uncle of Cole and Maya, the godfather of Jordan and as of February 2020, the father of Haven Tuesday Brandel Huang. Born a week before the coronavirus pandemic, she turned my world upside down before the world turned itself upside down. For that I am grateful. 

I spent a lot of my twenties auditioning to be the third dancing potato from the left in Any City USA.  But in the 90s, you couldn't do that if you looked like me.  (Sorry if that threatens your frailty. Actually, screw you if that threatens your frailty.)  You could only do Miss Saigon or the King and I.  Or be labelled an amateur.  So this amateur got his MFA and started writing shows that employed people who looked like me.  It was a pigeon hole I was not only happy to be crammed in to, but one I was more than happy to make larger. 

Fun Fact: I once wrote a song for the DNC that resulted in an unscheduled visit with the President and Vice President. Yeah, the Secret Service told me to tell my friends I shut down the White House for fifteen minutes. Achievement unlocked? I guess? I continue to serve on the Creative Committee of the AAPI Caucus of the DNC. That, I guess is the real achievement.

Among the shows I have written that people still talk about are American Morning, a show about two Asians in a cab, the one-person musical The View From Here, which wasn't about Asians at all, (but secretly was about me, an Asian), Peter and the Wall, which is about an historical Asian, the one-act Koi Story, which is about a half Asian and her non-Asian mother, and the short musicals A Relative Relationship (which features an Asian) and Missing Karma, which is about burying a dog.  If you were around in the early aughts, I was also the guy who wrote So Far, So Good and And the Earth Moved.  But the less said about them the better. 

I have always been a teaching artist. I recently led a songwriting workshop at Harvard (my parents were so proud) and it was suggested to me I be a little more forthright about my experience as a teacher. In addition to teaching songwriting in schools as part of the Lincoln Center Education Songwriting in Schools Program, I’ve lectured and taught workshops on writing and representation for such institutions as Brown, MIT, NYU, Columbia since the early 2000s as well as for the Dramatists Guild National Conference.

Someone is peering over my shoulder and saying I should mention the Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop at BMI, (awesome) the DGF Fellows program, (also awesome) that I recently served on the Dramatists Guild Council (also also awesome) and that I am a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship Grant recipient for Playwriting. Now they're saying it's too long.  I really can't win some days.  Which is fine, because historically, I win a lot. 

Anyways, it takes a village.  I hope you'll check out the blog, which is sort of an extension of the article page where everyone on there has helped me in some way shape or form, and I love them a lot.  There’s a lot of interesting grammar in that last sentence. Cheers.