bio

Jay Alan Zimmerman is the composer/author of several full-length stage musicals including JAY ALAN ZIMMERMAN’S INCREDIBLY DEAF MUSICAL — selected “Pick of The Fringe” by The Washington Post, as well as the award-winning short film musicals PAWNS and LOVE BURNS. He has been commissioned to compose works for stage, film, and dance, and wrote numerous children’s songs published by Mondo Music and Warner/Chappell.

Classical works include: PUNCTUATED THOUGHTS — a song cycle directed by Broadway legend Tom O’Horgan; THE SUNLIGHT ZONE — an experimental soundscape for aerial performance; THE SPICE RACK — a collection of piano solos performed by Barbara Irvine; and ROBOTICUS — a multi-media symphony performed by the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. Dance/film scores include: DO NOT CALL IT FIXITY — Special Music Award, Grand Prix International Video Danse Festival and selected North American film in the MOMA retrospective, Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris; THE LAST LEAF — Best Score, First Run Festival, NYC; and OUT OF PLACE — a dance score using audio from 9/11 and interviews with displaced survivors. He scored the plays BOOTH and OUR BRUTUS, which were both Fringe First Award winners at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and had New York and London productions.

Christened “Broadway's Beethoven” by John Znidarsic of the Lincoln Center Songbook Series, his songs have been performed by many Broadway performers but Jay — like Beethoven — has never lived in complete silence. The son of Midwestern music theory professor, he was a born with normal hearing and studied piano, saxophone, oboe, and performed frequently as a boy soprano. He studied music, theatre, and performance at the University of Iowa and Webster University’s Conservatory of Theatre, and was chosen to present work at the New York A.S.C.A.P. Musical Theater Workshop where his panel of experts included Comden & Green, Terrence McNally, Frank Rich, Charles Strouse, and many other Broadway luminaries.

Mild high frequency hearing loss appeared in his late twenties, propelling him to return to school and earn a B.F.A. in film from NYU’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. But he couldn’t leave music, and instead created film musicals, scored numerous films, and won awards with screenings throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. In the last few years, his hearing has progressed to profound deafness with constant tinnitus (ringing in the ears), causing him to explore new performance and creation techniques, visual music, synesthesia, and deaf culture.

These explorations are evident in the use of rhythmic video projections and live captioning during the Incredibly Deaf Musical, in the use of physical movement through aerial and dance incorporated into his variety shows at The Zipper Factory Theatre, the integration of sign language and captioned ASL during his solo works produced by Dixon Place, and his experiments in combining live performance with real-time video projections of frequency analysis software as seen during the ART/SONG visual music exhibition and performance series at the chashama Times Square gallery.

In spite of only hearing some sound below middle C, Jay continues to create unique music for theatrical, experimental, dance, and film works. Currently he is developing a traveling version of the ART/SONG project for exhibition on Governor’s Island during Figment and in Beacon, NY in November, rewriting his Incredibly Deaf Musical for the NYMF festival in September, and creating several new projects for 2011.

© 2020 Jay Alan Zimmerman Music credits: cast photos by George Bonanno, photos of Jay by Barbara Norman, and graphic elements by Justin Carty.