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Jeffrey Stock (composer)

Jeffrey Stock is an American composer of a wide range of types of music including Broadway musicals, orchestral works, and opera. Most notably, he wrote the music for the musical Triumph of Love, which opened on Broadway in 1997.

Early life and education
Stock was born in New York City. He grew up in Dix Hills, Long Island.

He attended Yale College, where he majored in music and composition[?] and graduated in 1988. He stated that he realized he wanted to write musicals during his freshman year, at a performance of West Side Story at the Yale Dramat.

Early work (1988-1996)
Stock traveled in the late 1980s to England, where he wrote incidental music for plays in London's Fringe theaters. For example, he wrote the music for the play Angels Still Falling, by Richard Deakin, which ran at London's Bird's Nest Theatre from March to April 1991. He wrote underscoring music for John Lahr's theatrical adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate, which was first staged in July 1991 at London's Lyric Hammersmith Theatre. [CONFIRM - 1991 London production not 1994 NY production?] He also wrote a commissioned work for the Edinburgh String Quartet.

In New York City in the mid-1990s, Stock continued to write music. At an early age, Stock met the Broadway producer Margo Lion, who appreciated his talent and became an important supporter of his career. In 1994, Stock received a $5,000 National Endowment for the Arts Opera-Musical Theater grant "to support the creation (phase I) of a new chamber opera;" elsewhere the grant's purpose was described as to write the score and libretto for an opera based on Boccaccio's "Decameron," entitled Lodovico.[he had an NEA grant in 2001 per this master's thesis, which was for this purpose?: https://www.academia.edu/789685/The_Patronage_of_Composers_in_the_United_States] In 1995, Stock wrote the music and libretto for The Voice of Temperance, an operetta based on Prohibition texts. It was commissioned by the New York Shakespeare Festival and workshopped at The Public Theater. Some of its music was performed earlier, in May 1993, in the New York Festival of Song. When the New York Festival of Song commissioned ten composers to write a group of ten love songs for a May 1996 premiere performance at the 92nd Street Y, Stock wrote one of them, described by The New York Times as a "lilting setting of Whitman's homoerotic 'We Two Boys Together Clinging.'"

Broadway debut: Triumph of Love (1996-1997)
Stock composed the music for the musical Triumph of Love, which opened in 1996 and reached Broadway in 1997. The musical is based on the 1732 play Le Triomphe de l'amour by Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux. Stock's friend Margo Lion produced it. It was workshopped at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 1995, and its premiere was held at Center Stage in Baltimore in November 1996. It ran there until December 1996, followed by a staging from January to February 1997 at the Yale Rep in New Haven, where it was reported that the show was being groomed for a possible Broadway run. The show reportedly "received standing ovations almost nightly" in Baltimore, "and could easily have been held over had it not been scheduled to transfer to New Haven," but "was unevenly received" at the Yale Rep.

Triumph of Love then moved to New York City where, in Stock's Broadway debut, it was staged at the Royale Theatre (now the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre). Previews began on September 27, 1997, and the show formally opened October 23, 1997. It closed January 4, 1998, having run for 85 performances following 30 previews. The Broadway production starred Betty Buckley, F. Murray Abraham, and Susan Egan. It was named best new musical of the 1997-98 year by USA Today, and was nominated for a Tony and three Drama Desk Awards. Ben Brantley's review of the show for The New York Times praised Stock's score, saying that it "has bright moments throughout, including a nifty use of a Boléro-like introductory refrain to suggest love's martial strife." Variety called the score "delightful," and the Backstage website called it "Sondheim-ish."

Since then, Triumph of Love has been produced over 100 times, including in Europe and Japan.

More recent work (since 1998)
In 1998, Stock wrote an hour-long symphonic and choral piece called Lulie The Iceberg, based on a children's book of the same name by Japan's Princess Hisako. The piece had its premiere performance on November 3, 1998, at a benefit concert for UNICEF at New York's Carnegie Hall. Performers included Yo-Yo Ma on cello, Paul Winter on saxophone, Pamela Frank on violin, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's, with narration by Sam Waterston. Sony Classical released a recording of the performance. The piece has also been performed and televised in Poland.

In 2005, Stock was one of the eighteen composers who each wrote the music for one song in the one-man musical Songs from an Unmade Bed, described by a music publishing service as a show that "explores the romantic life of a gay man living in the city." Stock's song was called "He Plays the Cello." The show premiered at the New York Theatre Workshop in a run from May 12 to June 19, 2005. It has been produced at least 24 times since then, including in Australia, Mexico City, and Madrid, as well as in a 2020 Zoom production featuring BD Wong and many guest stars, to benefit Broadway Cares.

A musical co-created by by Stock and Marc Acito, A Room with a View, debuted in 2012. Stock wrote the music and lyrics, and Acito wrote the book for this work based on E.M. Forster's novel of the same name. It had its world premiere at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre in March 2012. A revised version opened at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle in April 2014.

A 2014 biographical sketch said that Stock "has recently been commissioned by a Chinese theater company to compose a new musical about the Jewish ghetto of Shanghai."

In recent years, Stock and Acito have been developing a new musical, Dutch Master, about an art forger. Stock wrote its music and lyrics. The musical was commissioned by Seattle's 5th Avenue Theater, supported by Stacey Mindich Productions and a 2015-16 grant from the Frank Young Fund of the National Alliance of Musical Theatre. A staged reading, or workshop, of Dutch Master was held on March 8, 2017, at the York Theatre Company at Saint Peter's. An announcement of the reading described the musical as "he thrilling true story of Han van Meegeren, an unsuccessful artist who turned to forgery and duped the greatest art lovers of Europe - not to mention top Nazi brass - into believing that his Vermeers were the real deal." [also Prospect Theater Co workshop?]

Other work and activities, and personal life
Stock is also a music critic, food blogger, teacher and photographer.

Stock has written music criticism, including ...

In 1999, Stock moved to Bali for a year. He stated, "I just fell in love with Bali. I became fluent in Balinese. I moved into a little village there that adopted me. I worked with my hands; I studied mask making and wood carving."

he has taught master classes in music drama at the Shanghai Theatre Academy and lectured at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and Beijing’s Central Academy of Drama.

time in Indonesia - his website

The caption of an October 2014 photo published at Broadway.com described Stock as the boyfriend of the actress and author Jamie Bernstein, daughter of Leonard Bernstein.

Recognition

 * 1994 - National Endowment for the Arts grant to write the score and libretto for a new opera.
 * 2001 - MacDowell Fellowship, artist in residence at MacDowell.
 * 2001-02 - Guggenheim Fellowship for music composition
 * 2003 - Jonathan Larson Musical Theater Foundation Award.
 * 2012 - Nominee, San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Craig Noel Awards for Excellence in Theatre, Outstanding Original Score, (for A Room with a View, as composer and lyricist).

Stock has twice been a finalist for the Kleban Prize for lyrics.

Recordings

 * Triumph of Love: Original Broadway Cast Album (Jay Records, 1998)
 * Lulie the Iceberg (Sony Classical, 2000)
 * Songs from an Unmade Bed: World Premiere Recording (Ghostlight, 2006)