TV Exclusive: CUTTING-EDGE COMPOSERS CORNER- Cooper Sings Carmel Dean and Anna K. Jacobs' 'Little Precious'

Carmel Dean and Anna K. Jacobs are two great artists we are thrilled to feature on Cutting-Edge Composers Corner! Their song, "Little Precious" was sung by Lilli Cooper at our concert at the Canal Room.

We caught up with Anna, who told us about her process for writing this song: "I wrote the lyric as a Bill Finn assignment and the prompt was, 'write a song about driving.' My mind immediately went to this one rich kid I knew of growing up in Sydney, whose father supposedly bought him a Porsche for his 18th birthday. When the kid promptly wrote the Porsche off by wrapping it around a telegraph pole, his father went and replaced it with a brand new one."

Carmel Dean is a New York-based, Australian-born composer, musical director and arranger. Broadway: the upcoming If/Then (Musical Director), Hands on a Hardbody (Musical Director/Vocal Arranger), American Idiot (Musical Director), The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Vocal Arranger/Associate Musical Director). Off-Broadway: Emotional Creature, Everyday Rapture and Elegies - a song cycle by William Finn. Other: 52nd Annual Grammy Awards with Green Day; Chita Rivera's musical director for concert/cabaret appearances. Carmel is a graduate of New York University's Musical Theatre Writing Program. As a composer her work includes A Girl Called Vincent (book by Dick Scanlan) and the YouTube series Project: Song Blog. www.carmeldean.com

Anna K. Jacobs composed the music for POP! (3 CT Critics Circle Awards; 7 Helen Hayes Award nominations; 3 Richmond Theatre Critics Circle nominations), Harmony, Kansas (4 SCENIE Awards; 3 San Diego Critics Circle Award nominations), Stella and the Moon Man (Helpmann Award), and Cage Match (Prospect Theater Company, 2013). Evenings of her music and lyrics have been presented in concert at Barrington Stage Company, Ars Nova, and the Darlinghurst Theatre. She is a member of Ars Nova's Uncharted program, where she and collaborator Michael R. Jackson are currently developing a musical adaptation of the indie horror film, Teeth. Anna is a former Dramatists Guild Fellow and an alumna of the NYU Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. Member: ASCAP, Dramatists Guild of America. www.annakjacobs.com