Nathan Kelly is an American composer in Los Angeles, best known for working as an orchestrator for Broadway productions such as Gypsy

Gypsy: A Musical Fable

Gypsy is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business...

, Curtains

Curtains (musical)

Curtains is a musical with a book by Rupert Holmes, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and music by John Kander, with additional lyrics by Kander and Holmes....

, The Tony Awards, and Séance on a Wet Afternoon

Séance on a Wet Afternoon (opera)

Séance on a Wet Afternoon is an opera in 2 acts by Stephen Schwartz to a libretto by the composer, based on the novel by Mark McShane and the screenplay by Bryan Forbes to the 1964 film of the same name...

. His work has been eclectic, orchestrating many different styles of music. His modern scores are known for their keyboard writing for the orchestra pit, and their balance between acoustic and synthesised sounds.

Education

Kelly studied music composition at the University of Texas (bachelors), film scoring at the University of Southern California

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

, and took further education at the Juilliard School

Juilliard School

The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...

 of Music, Tanglewood

Tanglewood

Tanglewood is an estate and music venue in Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It is the home of the annual summer Tanglewood Music Festival and the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, and has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home since 1937. It was the venue of the Berkshire Festival.- History...

, Massachusetts, Aspen Music School, Atlantic Center for the Arts

Atlantic Center for the Arts

Atlantic Center for the Arts is a nonprofit, interdisciplinary artists’ community and arts education facility dedicated to promoting artistic excellence by providing talented artists an opportunity to work and collaborate with some of the world’s most distinguished contemporary artists in the...

, Bowdoin

Bowdoin

-Places:In the United States:* Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine* Bowdoin, Maine, a town* Bowdoin Street , in Massachusetts** Bowdoin * Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge, Montana...

, Maine, and the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program, Seattle. While in school, he performed on the Piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

 with dance bands, and some of these jazz and pop elements can be heard in his arrangements for Broadway and record albums. His composition teachers were Tobias Picker

Tobias Picker

Tobias Picker is an American composer. Picker began composing at the age of eight and studied at the Manhattan School of Music, The Juilliard School and Princeton University, where his principal teachers were Charles Wuorinen, Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt...

 and film composer Bruce Broughton

Bruce Broughton

Bruce Broughton is a film, video game, and television soundtrack composer who has composed several highly acclaimed soundtracks over his extensive career, including American music classics such as "Homeward Bound," "Silverado", "Tombstone," and wonderfully lyric music for "Miracle on 34th...

.

Career

In the early 2000s, Kelly began his career as an intern at Walt Disney Music Studios in Kissimmee, Florida writing arrangements for the bands at Walt Disney World and proofreading. After graduating college, he moved to New York City and interned for the Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011...

 Broadway musical The Color Purple

The Color Purple

The Color Purple is an acclaimed 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker. It received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction...

. There, he met eminent orchestrator Jonathan Tunick

Jonathan Tunick

Jonathan Tunick is an American orchestrator, musical director, and composer, one of twelve people to have won all four major American show business awards: the Tony, Oscar, Emmy and Grammy. He has also worked with all of the other eleven people. His principal instrument is the clarinet...

 and became his only student. During this time, he worked as a pianist playing in the orchestra pit of The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera

Le Fantôme de l'Opéra is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serialisation in "Le Gaulois" from September 23, 1909 to January 8, 1910...

, The Wedding Singer

The Wedding Singer

The Wedding Singer is a 1998 romantic comedy film written by Tim Herlihy and directed by Frank Coraci. It stars Adam Sandler as a wedding singer in the 1980s and Drew Barrymore as a waitress with whom he falls in love....

, The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid

"The Little Mermaid" is a popular fairy tale by the Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen about a young mermaid willing to give up her life in the sea and her identity as a mermaid to gain a human soul and the love of a human prince...

, Me & My Girl, Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast is a traditional fairy tale. The first published version of the fairy tale was a rendition by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, published in La jeune américaine, et les contes marins in 1740...

, Grease

Grease

Grease may refer to:* Grease , a type of industrial lubricant* Yellow grease, in rendering, used frying oils, or lower-quality grades of tallow...

, Altar Boyz

Altar Boyz

Altar Boyz is a musical comedy with music and lyrics by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker and book by Kevin Del Aguila . Centering on a fictitious Christian boy band from Ohio, the show satirizes, among other things, the phenomenon of boy bands and the popularity of Christian-themed music in...

, Forbidden Broadway

Forbidden Broadway

Forbidden Broadway is an Off-Broadway satirical revue conceived, written and directed by Gerard Alessandrini. The original version of the revue opened on January 15, 1982 at Palsson's Supper Club in New York City and ran for 2,332 performances. Alessandrini has rewritten the show over a dozen...

, Happy Days

Happy Days

Happy Days is an American television sitcom that originally aired from January 15, 1974, to September 24, 1984, on ABC. Created by Garry Marshall, the series presents an idealized vision of life in mid-1950s to mid-1960s America....

, Radio City Music Hall

Radio City Music Hall

Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in New York City's Rockefeller Center. Its nickname is the Showplace of the Nation, and it was for a time the leading tourist destination in the city...

, and Thrill Me

Thrill Me

Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story is a musical with a book, music, and lyrics by Stephen Dolginoff. It is based on the true story of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the so-called "thrill killers" who murdered a young boy in 1924 in order to commit "the perfect crime." The story is told in...

. He also accompanied American Ballet Theatre

American Ballet Theatre

American Ballet Theatre , based in New York City, was one of the foremost ballet companies of the 20th century. It continues as a leading dance company in the world today...

, The Joffrey Ballet, The Rockettes

The Rockettes

The Rockettes are a precision dance company performing out of the Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, New York City. During the Christmas season, the Rockettes have performed five shows a day, seven days a week, for 77 years...

, and Royal Caribbean Cruise Line tours around the world. He then focused on orchestration, producing scores for Lea Salonga

Lea Salonga

Lea Salonga-Chien is a mezzo-soprano singer and actress from the Philippines well known for originating the lead role of Kim in the musical Miss Saigon, for which she won the Olivier, Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics and Theatre World awards.She was the first Asian to play the roles of Éponine and...

, Sarah Brightman

Sarah Brightman

Sarah Brightman is an English classical crossover soprano, actress, songwriter and dancer. She is famous for possessing a vocal range of over 3 octaves and singing in the whistle register...

, Audra McDonald

Audra McDonald

Audra Ann McDonald is an American actress and singer. She currently stars in the ABC television drama Private Practice as Dr. Naomi Bennett. She has appeared on the stage in both musicals and dramas, such as Ragtime and A Raisin in the Sun...

, and record albums for Radio Disney

Radio Disney

Radio Disney is a radio network based in Burbank, California and headquartered out of the Disney Channel headquarters on West Alameda Ave., from where it has been based since November 2008. Prior to that, the network was based in Dallas, Texas...

, Dionne Warwick

Dionne Warwick

Dionne Warwick is an American singer, actress and TV show host, who became a United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization, and a United States Ambassador of Health....

, and the television show That's So Raven

That's So Raven

That's So Raven is an American cable television teen sitcom/fantasy series. The show premiered on the Disney Channel on January 17, 2003, and ended on November 10, 2007. The show spawned Disney Channel's first spin-off series: Cory in the House...

.

Kelly has acted as composer-in-residence at eight institutions in the United States: Ucross Foundation

Ucross Foundation

The Ucross Foundation, located in Ucross, Wyoming, is a nonprofit organization that operates an internationally known retreat for visual artists, writers, composers and choreographers working in all creative disciplines.-History:...

, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts is a large performing arts venue located on Broad Street, along the stretch known as the "Avenue of the Arts", in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is owned and operated by Kimmel Center, Inc., an organization which also manages the Academy of Music in...

, Atlantic Center for the Arts

Atlantic Center for the Arts

Atlantic Center for the Arts is a nonprofit, interdisciplinary artists’ community and arts education facility dedicated to promoting artistic excellence by providing talented artists an opportunity to work and collaborate with some of the world’s most distinguished contemporary artists in the...

, Academy of Music in Paris, Hambidge, Woodstock, Banff Music Centre, Helene Wurlitzer and Headlands Center for the Arts. His symphonic works have been premiered by the Orchestre de Paris

Orchestre de Paris

The Orchestre de Paris is a French orchestra based in Paris. The orchestra performs most of its concerts at the Salle Pleyel.-History:In 1967, following the dissolution of the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, conductor Charles Munch was called on by the Minister of Culture,...

, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra

The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra located in Buffalo, New York. Its primary performing venue is Kleinhans Music Hall, which is a National Historic Landmark. Its regular concert season features gala concerts, classics programming of core repertoire, Pops...

, Knox-Galesburg Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra is a symphony orchestra located in the state of New Jersey, United States. Philip James founded the orchestra in 1922. The orchestra is headquartered in Newark, New Jersey. Neeme Järvi, the NJSO's music director from 2005 to 2009, is currently the orchestra's...

, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra

Dallas Symphony Orchestra

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra. It performs its concerts in the Meyerson Symphony Center in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, United States....

. Kelly has also collaborated with conductors such as André Previn

André Previn

André George Previn, KBE is an American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world, and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings. -Early Life:Previn was born in...

 and Randol Alan Bass

Randol Alan Bass

Randol Alan Bass is an American composer and arranger, best known for his "Gloria", "Casey at the Bat", and "The Night Before Christmas". He has written over 200 compositions for orchestra, 50 works for chorus, 300 arrangements, and over 100 transcriptions for wind ensemble.His works can be heard...

..

In 2010, Kelly moved to Los Angeles and attended the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program at the University of Southern California

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

, and was mentored by the film composer Thomas Newman

Thomas Newman

Thomas Montgomery Newman is an American composer and conductor, best known for his many film scores. He is one of the more respected and recognized composers for modern film and has scored over fifty feature films in a career which spans nearly three decades.Newman has received a total of ten...

. In 2011, Kelly won the American Composers Orchestra

American Composers Orchestra

The American Composers Orchestra is an American orchestra based in New York City. It is the only orchestra in the world dedicated solely to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers...

composition contest from a national call for scores, and was a finalist in the Morton Gould Young Composers Contest. He was featured in ASCAP's "Playback" magazine. He was also selected to participate in the ASCAP/NYU and ASCAP/LA workshops for film composers. He is currently commissioned to compose a Harp Concerto for the Dallas Metropolitan Winds, Symphony No. 2 for Oslo Symphony, and a ballet for the Blue Lake Ballet.

Notable Orchestrations

• 2011 - "Sèance on a Wet Afternoon: Opera by Stephen Schwartz"
• 2010 - "Dionne Warwick: Only Trust Your Heart (album)"
• 2008 - "Gypsy (Revival)"
• 2008 - "The Tony Awards"
• 2008 - "That's So Raven"
• 2007 - "Curtains"
• 2007 - "Audra McDonald: Live at Lincoln Center & PBS"
• 2006 - "Mame: 20th Anniversary at The Kennedy Center"
• 2006 - "Disney Radio Jams (album)"
• 2006 - "The Tony Awards"
• 2006 - "Sir Andrè Previn concert with Anne-Sophie Mutter"
• 2005 - "Lea Salonga: Carnegie Hall Debut"

External links

• Nathan Kelly Official Website