Shaina Taub

Songs of the Great Hill

Streaming on Joe’s Pub Live!

May 20th, 8:00 p.m.

Shaina Taub — the fast-rising musical theater creator and performer, most recently of the forthcoming Suffragist at The Public Theater and The Devil Wears Prada with composer Sir Elton John on Broadway – will debut Songs of the Great Hill, a fully-produced, streaming concert premiere of new music created during quarantine by Taub (vocals, piano, accordion) and presented with her friends and bandmates Mike Brun (bass/guitar), Hiroyuki Matsuura (drums), David Farrell Melton (keyboards/organ), and Kuhoo Verma and Sylver Wallace (backing vocals).

As summer turned to fall in quarantine, Taub took solace in a daily walk on the Great Hill in Central Park, trying to face the unrelenting surreality of the year — “This other great hill we’ve all been trudging up.” The view from that higher ground inspired Taub to sit down at the piano every day. “I just wanted to see what came out: all the messy grief, uncertainty, hard-won joy, some stories I’ve been meaning to tell for years, others that appeared completely by surprise.”

“I’ve been in a lengthy creative stretch of making musical theater, which is necessarily focused on character and structure,” says Taub. “So these are the first songs I’ve written in a long time that were sparked from the impulse of music rather than words.”

There will be a virtual tip jar to accompany this performance, with all proceeds going to the Alliance for Quality Education.

Shaina Taub is an Emmy-nominated songwriter and performer. A winner of the Kleban Prize, the Fred Ebb Award and the Jonathan Larson Grant, Taub is an artist-in-residence at the Public Theater, where she has a regular concert residency at Joe’s Pub. She’s currently writing lyrics for the upcoming Broadway musical The Devil Wears Prada, with music by Sir Elton John, as well as Suffragist, a new musical about American women’s fight for the vote. She created and starred in critically acclaimed musical adaptations of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and As You Like It that were commissioned and produced by the Public Theater at the Delacorte in Central Park as part of their groundbreaking community-based program, Public Works. Those adaptations have now been produced in London, Seattle, Dallas and beyond. She has released two solo albums and recently signed with Atlantic Records.

Taub starred in the New York re-mounting of the Signature Theatre’s hit production of Bill Irwin and David Shiner’s Old Hats, featuring her original songs. She appeared in the original Off-Broadway productions of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 and Hadestown, and has performed her music in concert at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series and with the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall. Taub writes songs for Sesame Street, is an NYCLU Artist Ambassador and a member of the Resistance Revival Chorus.