Tom Kitt

Composer

• Born: Long Island, New York

Contribution: Tom Kitt is a Tony Award–winning composer best known for his work on the musicals High Fidelity (2006), Next to Normal (2008), and Bring It On: The Musical (2011).

Background

Thomas Robert Kitt was born on Long Island, New York, the son of one time New York Yankees pitching prospect Howard Kitt, who later became an economist, and Judith Kitt, who worked as a real estate broker. Kitt’s family later moved from Long Island to Bedford, New York, and Kitt attended Byram Hills High School in Armonk. Kitt began studying music at age four and was already composing music by age eight.

Kitt studied classical music in his youth but discovered rock and roll around age eleven, attending Camp Alton in New Hampshire, a sports and music camp run by Peter Guralnick, a music writer. A counselor at Camp Alton introduced Kitt to the music of Billy Joel, who became one of Kitt’s musical idols.

Kitt attended Columbia College—a part of Columbia University, in New York City—and had his first experience working in musical comedy in Columbia’s Varsity Show performance. Kitt was involved in a number of other school-oriented performances and even had the opportunity to perform the song “New York State of Mind” with Joel, when the performer visited the college as part of a lecture circuit. Kitt was the lead writer on the 100th and 102nd Varsity Show productions for Columbia, working with Brian Yorkey, who later became one of his frequent collaborators.

Career

Kitt graduated from Columbia University in 1996 with a degree in economics but turned down a job working for the financial services firm Morgan Stanley to pursue his career in music. During this period, he and three college friends formed the Tom Kitt Band, which had moderate success when one of their songs, “Road to You,” was featured on an episode of the television series Dawson’s Creek. From 1997 to 2002, Kitt participated in the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, a support group for writers of popular music and theater. The BMI workshop is famous in the Broadway circuit for spawning collaborations that led to hits like A Chorus Line (1975) and Avenue Q (2003).

Kitt met lyricist Amanda Green at the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop and the two became close friends, collaborating on a number of projects, including writing songs for singer and actor Kristin Chenoweth. In 2006, Kitt and Green debuted High Fidelity, a musical based on the Nick Hornby novel of the same name (which, in 2000, had also been adapted into a film from the Disney studio Touchstone Pictures). High Fidelity was the first big Broadway production for the team as musical directors and songwriters.

Kitt and Green worked on songs for the High Fidelity project slowly, over a period of around six years, as they did not know if they would be able to obtain the rights from Disney to stage their production. Though Kitt and Green are proud of the work they did on the project, High Fidelity was a critical and commercial failure, remaining in theaters for only ten days before it was canceled.

Kitt and cowriter Brian Yorkey received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for their work on Next to Normal, a Tony Award–winning musical about emotional mental illness and its effects on the family. Next to Normal was only the eighth musical in history to receive a Pulitzer Prize. Yorkey and Kitt worked on the project for more than a decade while collaborating through the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, and the full-length play was based on a ten-minute musical the pair wrote at BMI dealing with electroconvulsive therapy. In 2008, Next to Normal was nominated for eleven Tony Awards and won three, including best original score for Kitt and Yorkey’s rock opera–style compositions.

The decision to award the Pulitzer Prize to Next to Normal was controversial as the seventeen-member board rejected the choices presented by the five-member jury. Members of the jury then criticized the board for favoring native New York works and failing to recognize innovative developments in the field in other areas. Next to Normal therefore won the Pulitzer Prize without receiving an official nomination from the jury.

Following his success with Next to Normal, Kitt went on to create the one-act rock opera American Idiot (2009), based on the 2004 album of the same name from rock band Green Day, which garnered three Tony nominations, including best musical.

In 2011 Kitt—along with Green and Tony-winner Lin-Manuel Miranda—also wrote the music for the stage adaptation of the 2000 film Bring It On, about competitive high school cheerleaders. The musical premiered in Atlanta, Georgia, in January 2011, after which it began a national tour. Bring It On: The Musical premiered on Broadway in the summer of 2012 and was nominated for the Tony Award for best musical in 2013.

Kitt next cowrote the musical If/Then with Brian Yorkey, which was workshopped with Broadway star Idina Menzel, before premiering on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on March 4, 2014. The musical was nominated for a Tony Award later that year. In 2016, he and Yorkey wrote a musical adaptation of Freaky Friday. Kitt later wrote Dave, a musical based on the 1993 movie of the same name. In 2018, Kitt earned a Tony Award nomination for Orchestrations for his work on the musical SpongeBob SquarePants, which ran from December 2017 to September 2018. The following year, he cowrote the musical Superhero, with John Logan, which premiered Off-Broadway in February 2019.

His next major success came from the play Jagged Little Pill, which began running in 2019. It was paused in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and resumed in 2021. Based on the music of singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette and others, Kitt created new orchestrations and arrangements for the stage adaptation. The show garnered the most Tony Award nominations for the 2019-20 season with fifteen, including one for Kitt for the orchestrations. The play ultimately won two Tonys, a Grammy shared by Kitt for Best Musical Theater Album, and Kitt also won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Orchestrations.

Kitt also received Grammy nominations for Best Original Score in 2022 for Flying Over Sunset and in 2023 for Almost Famous, and in 2024 for his orchestrations for Hell's Kitchen, the semi-autobiographical musical based on the life and music of Alicia Keys. In 2024, Kitt was tapped to provide music and orchestrations for a project called Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical.

Impact

Kitt and Yorkey’s accomplishment in winning the Pulitzer Prize for musical drama established Kitt as an important figure in modern theater. Critics have also noted that Kitt has made significant strides in bringing the rock sound to Broadway productions in innovative ways, thereby helping to craft a new approach to musical theater.

Personal Life

Kitt met his wife, Rita Pietropinto, an actor and teacher at Barnard and Marymount High School, while he was at Columbia University. Kitt and Pietropinto have one son and one daughter.

Bibliography

Healy, Patrick, and Dave Itzkoff. “A Broadway Stop for ‘Bring It On.’” New York Times. New York Times, 16 May 2012, Web. 27 June 2013.

Kahn, Robert. “Hoping for a Long-Playing Hit: Port Washington-Raised Songwriter Tom Kitt Finds His Groove with the New Musical ‘High Fidelity.’” Newsday. Newsday, 3 Dec. 2006. Web. 27 June 2013.

Lascala, Marisa. “Tom Kitt’s Big Year.” Westchester Magazine. Today Media, 20 July 2010. Web. 26 June 2013.

Shuster, Yelena. “From the Varsity Show to Broadway.” Columbia College Today. Columbia University, Nov./Dec. 2006. Web. 27 Mar. 2013.

Tom Kitt, www.tomkitt.com/. Accessed 18 Sept. 2024.

“Weddings; Rita Pietropinto, Thomas Kitt.” New York Times. New York Times, 29 Oct. 2000. Web. 27 June 2013.

Wild, Stephi. "The Lesser-Known Works of Composer, Musician, and Orchestrator Tom Kitt." Broadway World, 19 April 2024, www.broadwayworld.com/article/The-Lesser-Known-Works-of-Composer-Musician-and-Orchestrator-Tom-Kitt-20240419. Accessed 18 Sept. 2024.