KATIE MADISON

Composer // Director // Bookwriter // Lyricist // Producer // Vocalist // Poet

Katie Madison at Piano

"I live in music."

— ntozake shange

Katie is a composer, director, bookwriter, lyricist, producer, vocalist and poet based in the Canarsie and Munsee Lenape land known as Brooklyn. She is a 2021 Jonathan Larson Award finalist, and was recently seen in conversation with New York Times best selling author Ibi Zoboi debuting a digital commission she produced with Kweli Journal. Katie was featured in Lincoln Center's Summer for the City Festival in July of 2022 where she shared 10 original compositions arranged for voice, piano, acoustic guitar, upright bass, percussion, and cello. Her show SUN SONGS (music, lyrics, vocals, arrangements, casting, direction & dramaturgy by Katie Madison, book, direction and dramaturgy by Deborah Cowell) was workshopped with New York Stage and Film as part of their 2022 summer programming at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Katie and her girlfriend Deborah Cowell were photographed and featured in Laylah Amatullah Barrayn's NPR piece "Black Love inspired me. Making these portraits renewed my spirit." She is part of the inaugural cohort of the Hi-ARTS Artspace Exchange Program in collaboration with the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts.

A 2021 New York Stage and Film Founders Award finalist, Katie was one of three featured emerging artists in the 2021 Crossroads Theatre Genesis Festival.

In August of 2021, Katie used her New York City Artist Corps Grant to produce, direct and perform in a concert of her work at the historic Weeksville Heritage Center. Katie was a Critical Breaks Resident with Hi-Arts in April 2021 developing her new musical SUN SONGS.

She was chosen by The Downtown Alliance in collaboration with En Garde Arts and The Tank to re-open New York City in their first live performance post pandemic which was featured in Vogue, New York Magazine, and Vulture. Her work has been commissioned by the University of Michigan’s Musical Theatre Department, New York Stage and Film, Crossroads Theatre Company, American Opera Project, The Civilians, Milwaukee Skylight Theatre, The Tank, Judson Memorial Church, Rockwood Music Hall, and Dixon Place. She has also produced and performed work at 54 Below, Don't Tell Mama, The Stonewall Inn, The Dramatists Guild, Playwrights Horizons and with Broad Views on Broadway and Multicultural Womxn in Theatre.

She also volunteers with the 52nd Street Project as a composer. In 2019, Katie’s show [ taking ] space was a Sundance Theatre Lab Finalist and she was one of three finalists for the National Black Theatre’s Soul Producing Residency. She has produced numerous digital musical theater works which can be found exclusively at www.kvmadison.com.

All Videos

"Time" by Katie Madison (BFA '11) // Helen Shen & Christopher Tamayo, vocals // Eric Banitt, piano

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"Time" by Katie Madison (BFA '11) // Helen Shen & Christopher Tamayo, vocals // Eric Banitt, piano

Time Katie Madison (BFA ’11, musical theatre) Helen Shen (BFA ’22, musical theatre) Chisholm Musical Theatre Scholarship Andrew Lippa Endowed Scholarship Donald R. Shepherd Scholarship in Musical Theatre Christopher Tamayo (BFA ’22, musical theatre) Janet E. and William C. Cassebaum Endowed Scholarship Jeanne and Sanford Robertson Scholarship Donald R. Shepherd Scholarship in Musical Theatre Susan M. Smith and Robert H. Gray Endowed Scholarship in Musical Theatre Eric Banitt, piano (BFA ’22, jazz studies) Professor Cynthia Kortman Westphal, music director Professor Linda Goodrich, director (BFA ’85, dance)

Queer Ladies' Night : 10.18.18 : "It's Not Your Fault" Katie Madison

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Queer Ladies' Night : 10.18.18 : "It's Not Your Fault" Katie Madison

Queer Ladies' Night Lesbian Singer/Songwriters Jessie Standafer & Cassidy Andrews have curated a night of music presented exclusively by Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer women, and we want you in the room. This monthly collaborative show is unlike any other, with every musician onstage supporting one another musically to create a one-night-only band. The incredible & diverse women featured in these evenings are all professional musicians in NYC, with music featured on network tv, film, & podcasts, and performances across the US and abroad. ---------------- "It's Not Your Fault" by Katie Madison @kvmad Cello: Lenaé A. Harris @lenae.h Piano: Janelle Maire @janellemaire Percussion: Alexa Wilkinson @alexabwilkinson ----------------- Video Shot + Edited by Kids on Rocks Productions www.kidsonrocksproductions.com Sound Mixed by Jessie Standafer Poster Design by Alexa B. Wilkinson Rockwood Music Hall NYC

Katie Madison - Sun Songs - CRITICAL BREAKS Sharing

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Katie Madison - Sun Songs - CRITICAL BREAKS Sharing

Revolve. Evolve to solve the question. Depart and start to chart a new answer. Only for you, the answer isn’t just what you do, the answer is who...you are. So who are we? Stardust. Mostly...a bunch of atoms held together by gravity. In Sun Songs, a new musical work-in-progress by Katie Madison, suns...stars...characters...bodies...explore their relationship to the natural world to investigate where they are in hopes of understanding where they’re going. Through song, scene, and spoken word We lift off to get a little closer to landing exactly where We were always supposed to be. Developed in collaboration with Deborah Cowell, Jacinth Greywoode, and Jarrett Murray.

"Time" Composed and Arranged by Katie Madison

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"Time" Composed and Arranged by Katie Madison

I have been looking for a way to say to you, “These are the people I worked with, and here’s what we made!” But I think the best way to start this conversation is to let the artists who inspired the piece, talk: On writing “Lovely Day,” Bill Withers said “We're all sponges in a sense. You put us around very nice people, and the nice things come out in us. You put us around some jerks, and we practice being jerks. We all adjust. Did you ever notice the difference in the way you speak to your grandmother or your best contemporary friend? If I had sat down with the same music and my collaborator had been somebody else with a different personality, it probably would have caused something else to cross my mind lyrically." Gwendolyn Brooks wrote of Paul Robeson: That time we all heard it, cool and clear, cutting across the hot grit of the day. The major Voice. The adult Voice forgoing Rolling River, forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge and other symptoms of an old despond. Warning, in music-words devout and large, that we are each other’s harvest: we are each other’s business: we are each other’s magnitude and bond. And Bessie Smith said, “Listen to my story and everything will come out true.” This new arrangement of my song “Time” is a collaboration of artists, built from love, respect, truth, and commitment to the work that lets our art do the talking, the work that lets our art say the things we can’t articulate without the craft of our lyric, our melody, our scansion, our beat, our rhythm, and our blues. You’ll hear, reinterpreted, Gwendolyn Brooks in conversation with the National Portrait Gallery’s Living Self Portrait Series. You’ll hear Bill Wither’s “Lovely Day” and Bessie Smith’s groundbreaking performance in St. Louis Blues. Featuring: Katherine Thomas (vocals) Daniel James Belnavis (vocals) Jarrett Murray (bass) Cynthia Kortman Westphal (piano & director) Jacinth Greywoode (additional music help) Billy Harrington (drums) Linda Goodrich (direction) Ron De Jesus (direction) Please watch. Please remember. Please honor. Please take time.