MICHAEL KORIE received The Marc Blitzstein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his work in both musical theater and opera. His collaboration with Tom Kitt and James Lapine, Flying Over Sunset, premiered at Lincoln Center Theater last season with a Tony-nominated score. Korie wrote the lyrics to composer Scott Frankel’s music for the Broadway productions of War Paint and Grey Gardens, with books by Doug Wright, and the Off- Broadway productions of Far From Heaven with book by Richard Greenberg, and Happiness with book by John Weidman, directed by Susan Stroman. Korie and Frankel’s scores have been nominated for Tony and Drama Desk Awards, received The Outer Critics Circle Award, and have been produced on Broadway, at Playwrights Horizons, and at Lincoln Center Theater as well as throughout the USA and abroad. The London premiere of Grey Gardens won the Offie Award for Best Musical of the year. For opera he adapted Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath composed by Ricky Ian Gordon. Also with Gordon, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis premiered this past season at New York City Opera and National Yiddish Folksbiene-Theatre with upcoming productions in Europe. Korie's original librettos to operas composed by Stewart Wallace include Harvey Milk, Where’s Dick?, Kabbalah, and Hopper’s Wife. A new production of Harvey Milk returned in a "reimagined” version premiered to acclaim this year at Opera Theater of Saint Louis, and will be seen next year at Opera Parallele in San Francisco. Korie’s operas have been produced at San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Minnesota Opera, New York City Opera, BAM Next Wave Festival, Opera Theater of Saint Louis, Michigan Opera, and abroad in Germany and Australia. Korie’s lyrics have received the Edward Kleban Prize, Jonathan Larson Award, and the ASCAP Richard Rodgers Award. His songs with composer Scott Frankel were featured at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and at The Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage Broadway Today. Korie co-chairs the Dramatists Guild Opera Committee which holds educational forums and podcasts to create more equitable collaborations between composers and playwrights, and produced the short film Credit the Librettist, featuring interviews with dozens of opera composers and playwrights. For the Dramatist Guild Foundation, Korie co-chairs the musical theater division of the Fellows Program for emerging musical theater creators. He teaches musical-theater lyric writing at Yale University, and musical book writing at Columbia University School of the Arts, and leads collaboration seminars for opera composers and theater playwrights for both American Opera Project (AOP) and American Lyric Theater. Korie serves on the advisory committee of The American Theatre Wing. He is a Fellow of MacDowell and Yaddo. Michael can be found on Wikipedia and the Yale School of Drama website.
