Ars Nova Announces SPRING INTO THE NOVA, Featuring Works from Tom Kitt, The Spring Standards and More

The concert will take place at Ars Nova on Monday, April 30 at 7:00pm.  Proceeds from the evening will help support Ars Nova’s extensive artistic development initiatives and programming. Tickets to the concert range from $250 to $500 and include an invitation to an exclusive artist cocktail party in the Ars Nova Loft immediately following the performance. Tickets are available at www.arsnovanyc.com or by contacting Development Manager Cameron Kroll at ckroll@arsnovanyc.com or (212) 489-9800 ext. 131. 

 

Tom Kitt (Composer) has presented his music in Ars Nova’s Uncharted series, as well as composed music for Ars Nova and MTC’s co-production of Liz Flahive’s play, From Up Here. He received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as two Tony awards for Best Score and Best Orchestrations (with Michael Starobin) for Next to Normal. His music for Next to Normal also received the 2009 Frederick Loewe Award for dramatic composition and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Score. Tom is responsible for the music supervision, arrangements and orchestrations for Green Day's American Idiot on Broadway and the show’s Grammy Award-winning cast album, and was also the string arranger on their most recent album, 21st Century Breakdown. Tom is also the composer of High Fidelity (Broadway), The Winter's Tale and All’s Well That Ends Well (The Public's NYSF), The Retributionists (Playwrights Horizons), and is the co/composer with Lin-Manuel Miranda for Bring it On, The Musical (National Tour).  As a musical director, conductor, arranger, and orchestrator for Broadway, Off-Broadway and beyond, his credits include 13, Debbie Does Dallas, Everyday Rapture, Hair, Laugh Whore, Pippin (Deaf West) and Urban Cowboy.  He is the proud leader of the Tom Kitt Band, whose songs have been featured in film and TV. 

 

Dave Malloy is a composer/performer/sound designer. He was the 2011 Composer-in-Residence at Ars Nova, and his new rock/electronic opera, Natasha, Pierre and the Comet of 1812, will premiere there in October 2012. He is the winner of an OBIE award, a 2009 Jonathan Larson Grant, and a recipient of the 2009-11 NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Theatre Designers. He is one of the co-creator/performers ofThree Pianos, a drunken romp through Schubert’s Winterreise (Ontological-Hysteric Theater, NYTW, Special Citation 

OBIE), and the composer for the Brooklyn based ensemble Banana Bag & Bodice. He has written six full-length musicals, including BB&B’sBeowulf - A Thousand Years of Baggage (2008 Glickman Award, New Yorker Best of 2009), Sandwich, Clown Bible (Ten Red Hen, “Best Play of the Year,” East Bay Express 2007) and Beardo (Shotgun Players). Other notable shows include (The 99-cent) Miss Saigon, a shoe-string adaptation complete with a toy helicopter on a zip line, for which he was musical director, pianist and Chris.  

 

The Spring Standards are an energetic force of three-part harmony circling over a rock n' roll sound with an old country aftertaste. They first played at Ars Nova in 2006, and are currently developing their first musical with Ars Nova. From small towns to big cities, they explode on stage with spirit, spontaneity and a style all their own. They are, in no particular order: James Cleare, James Smith and Heather Robb. Each member of the band is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, and they use their strengths as a trio to create a sound that 

listeners might expect from a band twice their size. With an emphasis on three-part harmony and a variety of instrumental switching, their range and energy make each live show a unique event. Paste Magazine chimes, "It's no easy task to find a country/folk haystack buried amongst noisy New York needles, but this winsome three piece rewards the hunter." The band?s debut full-length album Would Things Be Different, produced by Bryce Goggin, was released last year and they have recently finished recording a double-EP to be released this spring. 

Shaina Taub is a Vermont-raised, New York-based performer/songwriter and Ars Nova?s 2012 Composer in Residence. She writes for and performs in Political Subversities, a long-running, hit weekly musical sketch show at the People?s Improv Theater, whose music video of her song, "Political Wife" was featured on Huffington Post Comedy. She has also performed in Ars Nova's Uncharted series. Her original folk-funk opera, The Daughters, has been produced at CAP21 Theatre Company and the Yale Institute of Music Theater. She?s currently writing a new musical commissioned by the Tony-Award winning Oregon Shakespeare Festival. 

 

Ars Nova is committed to developing and producing theatre, comedy and music artists in the Early Stages of their professional careers.  Our unique development programs are designed to support outside-the-box thinking and encourage innovative, genre-bending work.  By providing a safe environment where risk-taking and collaboration are paramount, Ars Nova gives voice to a new generation of artists and audiences, pushing the boundaries of live entertainment by nurturing creative ideas into smart, surprising new work.  For more information on Ars Nova's  programs, visit www.arsnovanyc.com.  Ars Nova was founded in memory of Gabe Wiener.  

    

Producing credits include: The Urban Dictionary Plays,The Lapsburgh Layover, Be A Good Little Widow, The Wii Plays, ANT Fest, Now Circa Then, Bloodsong of Love, Missed Connections NYC, Sax & Dixon: We Thee Wed, Mel & El: Show & Tell, Two Girls for Five Bucks and the Ten Dollar Heartbreakers, Playlist, Jollyship the Whiz-Bang, boom, From Up Here, Dixie’s Tupperware Party, At Least It’s Pink, 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother, Holy Cross Sucks!, Freestyle Love Supreme and The Wau Wau Sisters.