Noel Katz
Musical Director/Accompanist
Noel Katz wrote book, music and lyrics to Such Good Friends, which won three awards at the New York Musical Theater Festival and two Talkin’ Broadway Citations, including Best Musical. His 2003 wedding to casting director Joy Dewing was actually an original musical in a theatre, with singing bridesmaids, preacher, parents, and flower girl. His Gilbert and Sullivan-esque backstage mystery, Murder at the Savoy, premiered many years ago in New York and has since been produced five times in Great Britain. More recently, he orchestrated his Dickensian romance, The Christmas Bride, for the sold-out production in Portland, Maine. His other musicals include Area 51, On the Brink, The Pirate Captains, and The Music Playing.
He’s taught improvisation at the Second City Training Center, scoring many of their revues in New York, including We Built This City on Rent Control, A Time For Heroes and Hoagies and Generation F’d. His music helped blind children learn to dance (National Dance Institute at The Lighthouse) and he currently teaches at Fairleigh-Dickinson University and Talent Unlimited High School.
At the piano, he’s accompanied performers as varied as Lady Gaga, Amy Poehler, Robin Williams and Vanessa Redgrave.
“My mission is to ensure the performer overlooks nothing. A change in loudness, the pronunciation of a syllable, the way parts of sentences are phrased together, a moment one has a thought and takes in breath. Writers have chosen every marking for a reason, and it’s important to understand their instructions in the context of the whole show, as well as the time and place in which they created.”
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