Acclaimed Broadway songwriter Craig Carnelia spent two days on campus last week offering master classes for top Elon University students in the performing arts programs.
Carnelia worked with the students in Yeager Recital Hall the evening of Sept. 17 and the afternoon of Sept. 18. Seven students were chosen to work with him in each session.
Carnelia wrote the score for the Broadway musical Is There Life After High School and contributed four songs to Studs Terkel’s Working, for which he received a Tony nomination. Three Postcards, written with playwright Craig Lucas and presented at Off-Broadway’s Playwright’s Horizons, was named one of the year’s ten best musicals by Time magazine and is included in the Burns-Mantle anthology, Best Play of 1986-1987, as Best Musical of the Season.
Carnelia teaches music theatre performance classes in New York City to many Broadway actors and stars.
Off Broadway, the Manhattan Theatre Club presented Notes, a collection of Carnelia’s songs. He contributed single songs to The No-Frills Revue, Diamonds and A…My Name Is Still Alice. Craig wrote the lyrics for the Broadway musical, The Sweet Smell of Success, with music by Marvin Hamlisch and book by John Guare.
Hamlisch and Carnelia were also represented on Broadway later in 2002 by Imaginary Friends, a play with songs by Nora Ephron.
Carnelia has won a number of major songwriting awards, among them the Johnny Mercer Award as “Emerging American Songwriter” and the prestigious Kleban Award for distinguished lyric writing.
