Transport Group To Honor Carmel Dean & Michael Starobin

Transport Group will honor Tony Award-winning orchestrator Michael Starboin and composer Carmel Dean with the Transporting American Theatre Award. The evening takes place Monday, March 11, at The Current, Pier 59 @ Chelsea Piers, and includes a seated dinner, performances, dessert reception, and silent and live auctions.

The Transporting American Theatre Award recognizes significant contributions to the American Theatre. Past recipients of the Transporting American Theatre Awardinclude Dick Scanlan, Mary- Mitchell Campbell, Michael John LaChiusa, Gretchen Shugart, Barbara Whitman, Beth Williams, Sue Frost, Christian Borle, Paul Huntley, Douglas Carter Beane, Lewis Flinn, A.R. Gurney, Liz Smith, Barbara Frietag, Terrence McNally, and Joe Mantello among others. Cocktail hour begins at 6:30pm, and the seated dinner and performances begins at 7:30pm. Tickets are now on sale and can be purchased at transportgroup.org.

Carmel Dean is a New York-based, Australian-born composer, musical director and arranger. Her first musical, Renascence (with a book by Dick Scanlan), was recently produced Off-Broadway with Transport Group. As a Broadway musical director and/or arranger her credits include: If/Then; Hands on a Hardbody; American Idiot and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Other roles include vocal arranger for jam-band Phish (Madison Square Garden and MGM Las Vegas); performer with Green Day on the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards; and former musical director for Broadway legend Chita Rivera. Carmel is a graduate of NYU's Musical Theatre Writing Program and a current member of the BMI Lehman Engel Writing Workshop.

Michael Starobin is a well-known orchestrator and arranger working on Broadway and in Hollywood. He has been the orchestrator for some of Broadway's most innovative musicals such as Falsettos, Sunday in the Park with George, Assassins (2004 Tony Award for Best Orchestrations) and Next to Normal (2009 Tony Award for Best Orchestrations). He was the conductor and orchestrator for Disney's animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame, orchestrated the songs for Tangled and contributed orchestrations to the film versions ofChicago, Nine and Beauty and the Beast (2017), and Mary Poppins Returns (2018).

Transport Group is the recipient of a special Drama Desk Award recognizing its "breadth of vision and presentation of challenging productions," a Special Citation from the prestigious New York Critics' Circle, and a Special Citation from the Obie Awards as well as numerous other awards and award nominations from the Outer Critics' Circle, Lucille Lortel Awards, Obie Awards, Off-Broadway Alliance, Drama League, and others. Founded in 2001, Transport Group stages new works and re-imagined revivals-both plays and musicals-that explore the challenges of relationship and identity in modern America. Currently headed by founder Jack Cummings III (Artistic Director) and Lori Fineman (Executive Director), Transport Group most recently produced the world premiere musical, Renascence, by Dick Scanlan (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Everyday Rapture), music by Carmel Dean (Musical Director, If/Then, American Idiot) and lyrics from the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Transport Group also recently produced a critically acclaimed revival of Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke with Classic Stage Company starring Marin Ireland and Nathan Darrow, Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interludestarring David Greenspan (Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Solo Performance as well as an Obie Award for Greenspan, Cummings and Transport Group), and Picnic & Come Back, Little Sheba: William Inge in Rep, which received two Drama Desk nominations and three Obie Awards (Jack Cummings III for direction, HEATHER MAC RAE for performance, Dane Laffrey for scenic design). Additional recent productions include the first off-Broadway revival of Once Upon a Mattress, starring Jackie Hoffman and John "Lypsinka" Epperson; Three Days To See, a world premiere theatrical exploration of Helen Keller through her own writings; the critically acclaimed revival of John Cariani's modern classic Almost, Maine; and a re-imagined revival of the John Van Druten classic I Remember Mama which was included in the New York Times' Top Ten productions of 2014 and The New Yorker's top cultural moments of 2014. In addition to mainstage productions, Transport Group also produces one-night-only, star-studded concert events, often featuring the productions' original orchestrations performed by as many as 60 actors and musicians. Concert titles have included Baby (2012), Once Upon a Mattress (2013), The Music Man (2014), Peter Pan (2016), A Man of No Importance (2016), Man of La Mancha (2017) and Promises, Promises (2018).

The 2018-2019 season will continue next with a revival of The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, the story of the trial that sparked a wave of Vietnam War resistance. This season's Anne L. Bernstein Concert Series will soon be announced.

Transport Group's annual gala benefit takes place Monday, March 11, 2019 at the The Current, Pier 59 @ Chelsea Piers. Cocktails begin at 6:30, seated dinner, performances and award presentation begin at 7:30pm, a dessert reception follows at 10:00pm. Tickets, e-Journal tribute ads, donations and information are available at transportgroup.org or by phoning 212-564-0333.

Photo Credit: Stephen Sorokoff; Walter McBride