What is Special About Musical Theatre
Make it Sparkle Video with David Dabbon
Broadway Music Composer
(2:24) runtime
Director’s Notes
In this segment, David discusses
What drives the music in Musical Theatre.
How the music in Theatre reflects a character's story.
The emotion behind Musical Theatre.
The pulse that drives music and story forward in Theatre.
About David Dabbon
David Dabbon is a composer/arranger based in New York City. He earned an Emmy nomination for composing the music to the song “Eat Shit, Bob!” which aired on HBO’s award-winning Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
On Broadway, he worked as the dance arranger for the Tony-nominated musical adaptation of Beetlejuice, the revival of Funny Girl, and the celebrated musical comedy Disaster! He also provided additional orchestrations for the Broadway bio-musical Sondheim on Sondheim (Grammy nomination). David is wrote original music and dance arrangements for the new production of Bob Fosse's Dancin' (The Old Globe).
He has an ongoing collaboration with six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, regularly providing orchestrations for her concerts and albums. His work can be heard on both Audra McDonald New York Philharmonic: Sing Happy and Audra McDonald: Go Back Home. His orchestration of the song “Somewhere/Some Other Time” was performed at the 42nd annual Kennedy Center Honors.
Other works as composer include: Game On: an interactive game show musical (premiered at Pittsburgh C.L.O), Our New Town (production at Wagner College), Golden Lotus (Workshop through Broadway Asia), Surface (Ballet Commission through Dallas Black Dance Theatre) The Mysteries (Marathon plays in 2014 at The Flea), All God's Creatures (feature length film), Dori the Donor (short film).
He provided arrangements and orchestrations for the HBO documentary Six by Sondheim.
David is also a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop, a member of the Television Academy, ASCAP and The Society of Composers and Lyricists. He earned a master of music degree in choral conducting from Carnegie Mellon University (under the tutelage of Dr. Robert Page) and a self-defined bachelor of music degree from The Hartt School.