Steven Lutvak made his Broadway debut with his score to A Gentleman's Guide to Love And Murder, for which he supplied the music, and co-wrote the lyrics with Robert L. Freedman. A Gentleman's Guide won the Drama League, the Outer Critics Circle, the Drama Desk and the Tony Awards for Best Musical of 2014. Since its successful run of over two years on Broadway, there have been two National Tours (the second of which is currently on the road), and productions have already been seen in Sweden, Japan, and the first Chinese language production opens this December.
Previously, Lutvak and Freedman won the Kleban and Fred Ebb Songwriting Awards for their songs to A Gentleman's Guide, which was originally developed at the Sundance Theater Lab, and which premiered as a co-production at the Hartford Stage, and the Old Globe in San Diego. Lutvak and Freedman previously wrote the musical Campaign of the Century, which won the California Musical Theater Competition from the Beverly Hills Theater Guild. Campaign was originally commissioned by The American Musical Theater of San Jose, and was later presented in a concert version at Chicago's Humanities Festival, and featured in the New York Music Theater Festival.
Other musicals include Almost September, which premiered on the mainstage of the Repertory Theater of St. Louis, and was subsequently produced at Missouri Repertory Theater, and won eight Bay Area Critics' Circle Awards for its run at Theater Works in Palo Alto, California. The Wayside Motor Inn, his adaptation of a play by A. R. Gurney, began as a commission by the Harmony Project of the National Alliance for Musical Theater, for which Lutvak was named Artist-in-Residence at the Eugene O'Neill Opera Music/Theater Conference. His Esmeralda premiered at the Studio Theater of the St. Louis Rep, and was awarded a New American Work grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Lutvak scored Off-Broadway's Hannah Senesh, which was nominated for a Drama Desk Award, and was later produced at the Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles, the Philadelphia Theatre Company, the Baltimore Center Stage, the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and more recently at Penguin Repertory Theatre. The production also toured throughout Canada and Israel. During the 1994 Toronto Summer Arts Festival, a revue of Steven's songs was presented as part of Garth Drabinsky and Live Entertainment of Canada's New Voices Series. Other works of his have been performed at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, La Mama ETC, Weill Recital Hall and the New York Shakespeare Festival.
Lutvak wrote the title track to Paramount's hit film, "Mad Hot Ballroom", and, the score to "Anything But Love", which starred Eartha Kitt and Andrew McCarthy, and was released by the Samuel Goldwyn Company.
As a singer/songwriter, Lutvak has performed his songs around the country, including such prestigious New York venues as Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Recital Hall, The Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, Rainbow and Stars and the Russian Tea Room. His two CD's are called THE TIME IT TAKES and AHEAD OF MY HEART. He is also the winner of the Johnny Mercer Emerging American Songwriting Award, the ASCAP Foundation Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award, and is the only two-time recipient of the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Grant. Steven is proud to now be an Adjunct Professor at his alma mater, the NYU Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program.
And now that several of his songs are discussed in David Jenness and Don Velsey's "Classic American Popular Song", the follow-up to Alec Wilder's classic book, "American Popular Song", Steven Lutvak's place in the American Popular Songbook is even more firmly planted.
Steven lives in New York City with his husband, choreographer Michael McGowan, and their daughter, Eliot Rose Lutvak-McGowan.
