14th Annual Festival of New Musicals

RICHARD BUNGER EVANS is a multi-faceted post-avant-garde composer with a long and richly varied career that includes touring as a concert pianist and lecturer, teaching as an award-winning university professor, as well as his accomplishments as a published author, professional accompanist, recording artist, organist, inventor, and jazz pianist.

Evans’ 2-hour oratorio IRELAND’S POET-PATRIOTS, A Musical History, received its east coast premiere in 2017 in Washington DC’s National Cathedral with chorus, orchestra, operatic soloists, an Irish traditional ensemble, and Narrators that included IrelandÄö√Ñ√¥s Ambassador to the U.S. He has received commissions from such diverse sources as the Rockefeller Foundation, West Bay Opera, the Cinnabar Theatre, and IrelandÄö√Ñ√¥s Minister of the Arts, and is the composer of over a dozen musicals, most of which have been produced. Evans is a member of the Dramatists Guild and ASCAP, and an alumnus of the BMI Advanced Musical Theatre Workshop.

CHARLES LEIPART (Book & Lyrics)
In addition to The Doctor’s Wife, the Madame Bovary Musical, Charles. has written with composer Eric Schorr: Pickwick’s Haunted Christmas, Mondo Latte, the pop adaptation of Sheridan’s School for Scandal, and Frog Kiss. Other musicals: Enchanted April, music by Richard B. Evans, world premiere Pacific Coast Repertory Theatre, Pleasanton, CA;†Me and Miss Monroe, with composer William Goldstein; The Showgirl of 52nd Street, music by John Kroner. Musical Theatre Awards: Kleban Award for Librettist; Three-time Finalist for the Fred Ebb Award in Songwriting with Eric Schorr (2005, 2006, 2008); Excellence in Writing Lyrics NYMF 2010 for Frog Kiss; Winner of the Global Search for New Musicals 2005, Cardiff, Wales. Charles is a former Fellow of the Edward F. Albee Foundation. A graduate of Northwestern University, Charles lives and writes in New York City and is a member of The Dramatist’s Guild and ASCAP. www.charlesleipart.com

Diedre Murray is an American cellist and Obie Award-winning composer specializing in jazz, improvised music, opera, and contemporary classical music. She is also active as a producer, and curator. A pioneer in the use of the cello as an improvisational jazz/new music instrument, she has worked with a wide variety of musicians and groups, including Hannibal Peterson, the Henry Threadgill Sextet, Leroy Jenikns, James Brown, Muhal Richard Abrams, Larry Young, Archie Shepp, Oscar Brown Jr. and Craig Harris.

Over 30 years in the theatre as a playwright, librettist, director, artistic administrator and educator. As bookwriter: The Enchanted Cottage (NAMT winner); Tom Sawyer, Class Clown, and The Play’s the Thing (also co-lyricist with Robert Waldman). Many plays, adaptations and translations produced Off-Broadway and in regional theatre; with Vincent Sardi wrote the coffee table book Off The Wall At Sardi’s published by Amarna Books and Media. As director: over fifty professional productions Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway and Regional Theatre as well as the Richard Rodgers Award presentation of Little Women at the York Theater. Graduate of Ashland University (BA) and Florida State University (MFA) and shares a collective Pulitzer Prize in Journalism with his colleagues at The Wall Street Journal. Member, Dramatists Guild.