A 2016–17 Dramatists Guild Fellow, David Mallamud recently worked with Mike Mills (of R.E.M. fame), arranging and composing additional music for his Concerto for Rock Band and Violin, written for violinist Robert McDuffie, who premiered it with Mills and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. His CD, The Wild & Whimsical Worlds of David Mallamud on Broadway Records, featuring a cast of wonderful performers from Broadway and beyond, accompanied by The Albany Symphony's Dogs of Desire, won a 2016 Broadway World Album Award for Best New Compilation. Mallamud’s other recent credits include music for a stage adaptation of Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches, in collaboration with playwright and Fellow Philip Dawkins, which premiered at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis; music for Flight School: The Musical, currently touring China; performances by the Albany, Harrisburg, and New World Symphonies; and projects with Emmy-nominated lyricist Alisa Hauser, playwright Joshua H. Cohen, and librettists Len Schiff and Nathan Christensen.
At MacDowell, Mallamud worked on the musical Dangerous with Len Schiff. Dangerous is about Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers as seen through the eyes of Robert McNamara. Two days before I got to MacDowell this last time, I was at Symphony Hall in Atlanta for rehearsals with Mike Mills (from REM), Chuck Leavell (Keyboardist and MD for The Rolling Stones), and concert violinist Robert McDuffie for "A Night of Georgia Music." I did the string orchestra arrangements with Mike and wrote additional music. While at MacDowell, I worked on my structuring my ritualistic theater piece Salem, which looks at the Salem Witch Trials through the lens of contemporary call out culture.
