Jeff Kennedy

Jeff Kennedy is a theatre artist, musician, author, scholar, and teacher whose interests have led him into a wide variety of experiences. He is currently an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance at Arizona State University, where he has been teaching since 2000. As a music director, he is currently serving at Phoenix Theatre, most recently playing and conducting Camelot (small cast version), Fun Home, and The Scottsboro Boys. For five years, he was the music director of the Phoenix Theatre New Works Cabaret; the workshop production of The Upside of Down by Amanda Jacobs and Y York, the Phoenix Symphony/Phoenix Theatre concert productions of An Evening of Rodgers and Hammerstein, South Pacific, My Fair Lady and Oliver; and he received the AriZoni Award in 2016 as Best Music Director for the Phoenix Theatre production of The Toxic Avenger, and in 2014 for Avenue Q. As an actor, he performed the one-person play Liberace, and Anthony in End of the Rainbow, both at Phoenix Theatre and is a proud member of Actors Equity. He has conducted for Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx in a tribute concert to Ray Charles that featured a line-up of jazz all-stars and recently created vocal arrangements performed by Dave Koz on his national Christmas tour. He has directed Arizona premiere productions that have included Passing Strange by Stew and Heidi Rodewald, Floyd Collins and Myths and Hymns: Saturn Returns by Adam Guettel (iTheatre Collaborative); James Joyce's The Dead; the John Bucchino revue It's Only Life; the world premiere of Daniel Lentz's Café Desire (also performed for the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco), and the world premiere live performance of Handel's Messiah: A Soulful Celebration at Phoenix's Orpheum Theatre. For iTheatre Collaborative, he created, directed and performed their Holiday Cabaret for thirteen years. He worked for Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine as a production assistant (revival of Merrily We Roll Along and first production of Into the Woods). He has also been a music director for Broadway performers, including Pamela Myers, Carol Lawrence and Jubilant Sykes. An award-winning composer, arranger and producer, he has many recordings in gospel and choral music and traveled as the pianist for the Bill Gaither Trio and Gaither Vocal Band for a number of years, also accompanying vocal artists that include Sandi Patty, Larnelle Harris, Mark Lowery, and Michelle Pillar. Jeff has a Bachelor of Arts in Music from California State University, Fullerton, and a Masters of Arts and Ph.D. in Educational Theatre from New York University. While a teaching fellow at NYU, he was the founder/producer with Dr. Lowell Swortzell of the award-winning New Plays for Young Audiences reading series at the Provincetown Playhouse, where he also designed the Playhouse's historical gallery and has since become a recognized scholar on the Playhouse and its history. In June 2008, he launched a research website about the Playhouse, www.provincetownplayhouse.com, served for two years as the President of the Eugene O'Neill International Society, and was the chair of their 2011 international conference in New York City and 2015 conference in Provincetown that celebrated the centennial of the Provincetown Players. He is a widely published author of articles, chapters, and reviews, and his new book is Staging America: The Artistic Legacy of the Provincetown Players, published by the University of Alabama Press. Jeff served as the ASU West Campus Artistic Director from 2002-2006, and then again from 2012-2015, where he was the producer of the campus series of artistic and cultural events. He was awarded the Outstanding Teacher Award by the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences in 2012, and in 2015 was given the Champion of the Arts award by the West Valley Arts Council for his work as the ASU West campus Artistic Director. He was recently awarded a Fulbright Scholar Award to study in London at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. He continues to be a frequent speaker about American theatre nationally for groups like the New York Historical Society, the Greenwich Village Preservation Society, Metropolitan Playhouse, the Newberry Library, and at theatre conferences internationally, most recently in Paris, Nancy, and Toulouse, France, and he will appear on the PBS series Poetry in America this next season.

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