Music Theatre Futures 2024 proudly announces Carmel Dean as our keynote speaker

Image credit: Max Sterling

CARMEL DEAN is an award-winning, in-demand and multi-faceted musician working in the theatre industry across Broadway/New York, the UK and Australia.

As a Musical Supervisor and/or Arranger her projects include the new Broadway musical The Notebook, with music by Ingrid Michaelson, and the recent Broadway revival of Funny Girl starring Lea Michele. Carmel was also Musical Director for the Broadway musical If/Then, starring Idina Menzel, and was Music Supervisor of the subsequent National Tour. Other Broadway credits include Hands on a Hardbody, American Idiot, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Off-Broadway credits include Everyday Rapture, Vanities and Elegies by William Finn. International credits include Chicago in Hong Kong and the 2000 Olympic Games Opening and Closing Ceremonies in Sydney. Carmel also served as Chita Rivera’s Musical Director for many national and international appearances, and performed with rock bands Phish at Madison Square Garden and Green Day at the 2010 Grammy Awards.

Her first musical as composer, Renascence, was produced Off-Broadway by the award-winning Transport Group and was named Best New Musical at the 2018 Off-Broadway Alliance Awards. The Original Off-Broadway Cast album is available on Apple Music and Spotify.

Her song cycle Well-Behaved Women, featuring powerful historic women characters such as Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Virginia Woolf, Malala Yousafzai, Billie Jean King and Cathy Freeman premiered to sold-out performances at Joe’s Pub in New York City, and subsequently received a critically-acclaimed run in Sydney, Australia. The studio album starring multiple Tony Award-winners and Broadway A-listers can be streamed here. It was produced at the Hayes Theatre in 2021 and will be receiving a production at Belvoir Street theatre in late 2024.

Carmel’s other compositions include the new musical commissions Maiden Voyage and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir; On Cedar Street (co-composed with Lucy Simon); the YouTube series Project: Song Blog; Disney TV’s Johnny & the Sprites; and Songs of Innocence & Experience (co-composed with William Finn, Deborah Abramson, Vadim Feichtner & Gi-hieh Lee.)

Carmel is a native of Perth, Western Australia, and received a B.Mus. from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). In 2001 she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the United States, and subsequently graduated from NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program with a MFA in Musical Theatre Writing. She is a member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Workshop.

Carmel currently resides in New York City.