Biography

A Tony-nominated Broadway composer/lyricist and Grammy-nominated producer, Andrew Lippa is known for musicals such The Addams Family (2010) and Big Fish (2013). Outside of his own musicals, his bright, lyrical songs and whimsical arrangements have led to work in the family and fantasy genres, including in film (The Prince of Egypt) and television (Wonder Pets!) as well as musical theater (You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown). Also an arranger, pianist, and singer, Lippa spent many years as Kristin Chenoweth's music director. Born in Leeds, England, Lippa immigrated with his family to the Detroit suburb of Oak Park when he was still a toddler. A trained singer and pianist, he earned a degree in music education from the University of Michigan. His college roommate was lifelong friend and future Broadway producer Jeffrey Seller (Rent, Avenue Q, Hamilton). Lippa moved to New York City in 1987 to take a position as a middle-school music teacher. A year later, he was accepted into the BMI/Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop as a composer. In 1992, Lippa joined the staff of the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut, quickly working his way up to arranger and assistant music director. His first musical, John & Jen, was produced by the Goodspeed in 1993. It featured a book by collaborator Tom Greenwald, whom Lippa had met at the workshop. In 1996, Lippa wrote the book, music, and lyrics for The Wild Party and began developing it. In the meantime, he sang and did voice arrangements for Stephen Schwartz's songs in the 1998 animated film The Prince of Egypt, and he contributed three songs to the revamped Broadway revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown in 1999, including "My New Philosophy" for Kristin Chenoweth. Lippa also produced the cast recording of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, resulting in a Grammy nomination. Not to be confused with a Broadway production from the same season also called The Wild Party (based on the same 1928 Joseph Moncure March poem), his second complete musical premiered in 2000. It went on to win the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical as well the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music. With music by Lippa and a book and lyrics by Brian Crawley, another literary adaptation, A Little Princess, opened off-Broadway in 2005. After his musical Asphalt Beach premiered at Northwestern University in 2006, Lippa was enlisted by the show's producer, Stuart Oken, to pen music and lyrics for a stage musical version of The Addams Family. After a run in Chicago in 2009, that show opened on Broadway in April 2010 with Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth as Gomez and Morticia. The Addams Family made Lippa a Tony nominee when it was nominated for Best Original Score. A cast recording of A Little Princess' pre-New York run in Palo Alto, California, was issued by Ghostlight Records in 2011. Two years later, with a book by the 2003 film's screenwriter John August and music and lyrics by Lippa, Big Fish had its Broadway opening at the Neil Simon Theatre in October 2013. It closed that December. He contributed the song "Evil Like Me" to the hit TV musical fantasy Descendants in 2015, and four years after its brief run on Broadway, Big Fish opened off-West End in November 2017 with Kelsey Grammer in the lead. That year, Lippa's musical adaptation of The Man in the Ceiling, which featured a book by source novelist Jules Feiffer, opened in Sag Harbor, New York. Two years later, Ghostlight released the cast recording of its world premiere. Also in 2019, the label issued a cast recording of Lippa's choral work Unbreakable featuring the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus. ~ Marcy Donelson, Rovi