Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play

The Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play is an annual award presented by Drama Desk in recognition of achievements in the theatre across collective Broadway, off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway plays (distinct from full musicals) produced in New York City. This category was introduced at the 1980 ceremony, presented sporadically (seven times) through 2008, and has been regularly awarded since 2009.

Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music
Awarded for	Outstanding Music in a Play
Location	New York City
Country	United States
Presented by	Drama Desk
First award	1980
Currently held by	Will Butler for Stereophonic (2024)
Website	dramadesk.org (defunct)

Winners and nominees

1980s

Year	Composer	Production
1980
	Norman L. Berman	Strider
	Richard Peaslee	Teibele and Her Demon
	Stanley Silverman	Bent
1981–89	—

1990s

Year	Composer	Production
1990–91	—
1992
	Jan A.P. Kaczmarek	'Tis Pity She's a Whore
	Richard Peaslee	Akin
1993
	Ladysmith Black Mambazo	The Song of Jacob Zulu
1994
	Stephen Warbeck	An Inspector Calls
	Jonathan Dove	Medea
	Duke Ellington & Stanley Silverman	Timon of Athens
1995–98	—
1999
	Jeanine Tesori	Twelfth Night
	Steven Edis	Not About Nightingales
	Drew McVety	Corpus Christi
	David Van Tieghem	The Turn of the Screw
	Richard Woodbury	Death of a Salesman

2000s

Year	Composer	Production
2000–01	—
2002
	Willy Schwarz	Metamorphoses
	Crispin Cioe	True Love
	Nona Hendryx	Blue
	Peter John Still	Cymbeline
2003–06	—
2007
	Mark Bennett	The Coast of Utopia
	Adam Cork	Frost/Nixon
	Gerard McBurney	Oliver Twist
	The Propeller Company	The Taming of the Shrew
	Ray Rizzo, Adam Rapp & Lucas Papaelias	Essential Self-Defense
	David Van Tieghem	Inherit the Wind
2008	—
2009
	Dominic Kanza	Ruined
	Mark Bennett	The Cherry Orchard
		The Winter's Tale
	DJ Rekha	Rafta, Rafta...
	Richard Woodbury	Desire Under the Elms
	Gary Yershon	The Norman Conquests

2010s

Year	Composer	Production
2010
	Branford Marsalis	Fences
	Adam Cochran	A Play on War
	Adam Cork	Red
	Shelby Gaines & Latham Gaines	A Lie of the Mind
	Philip Glass	The Bacchae
	Hem	Twelfth Night
2011
	Wayne Barker	Peter and the Starcatcher
	Kathryn Bostic	Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo
	Lars Petter Hagen	Baby Universe
	Alan John	The Diary of a Madman
	Tom Kitt	The Winter's Tale
	Dan Moses Schreier	The Merchant of Venice
2012
	Grant Olding	One Man, Two Guvnors
	Mark Bennett	An Iliad
		Richard III
	Tom Kitt	All's Well That Ends Well
	Gina Leishman	Septimus and Clarissa
	Duncan Sheik & Suzanne Vega	Carson McCullers Talks About Love
2013
	Glen Kelly	The Nance
	César Alvarez with The Lisps	The Good Person of Szechwan
	Jiří Kadeřábek, Mahir Cetiz & Ana Milosavljevic	Act Before You Speak: The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
	Eugene Ma	The Man Who Laughs
	Steve Martin	As You Like It
	Jane Wang	Strange Tales of Liaozhai
2014
	Nico Muhly	The Glass Menagerie
	Lewis Flinn	The Tribute Artist
	Elliot Goldenthal	A Midsummer Night's Dream
	Rob Kearns	The Life and Sort of Death of Eric Argyle
	Tom Kochan	Almost, Maine
	Duncan Sheik	A Man's a Man
2015
	Arthur Solari & Jane Shaw	Tamburlaine the Great
	Cesar Alvarez	An Octoroon
	Danny Blackburn and Bryce Hodgson	Deliverance
	Sean Cronin	Kill Me Like You Mean It
	Bongi Duma	Generations
	Freddi Price	The Pigeoning
2016
	Philip Glass	The Crucible
	Billie Joe Armstrong	These Paper Bullets!
	Estelle Bajou	Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally
	Shaun Davey	Pericles
	Tom Kitt	Cymbeline
2017
	Bill Sims Jr.	Jitney
	Daniel Ocanto, Graham Ulicny, & Sean Smith	Alligator
	Marcus Shelby	Notes from the Field
2018
	Imogen Heap	Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
	Justin Hicks	Mlima's Tale
	Amatus Karim-Ali	The Homecoming Queen
	Justin Levine	A Midsummer Night's Dream
	Adrian Sutton	Angels in America
2019
	Jason Michael Webb and Fitz Patton	Choir Boy
	Paul Castles and Jongbin Jung	Wild Goose Dreams
	Justin Ellington	Mrs. Murray's Menagerie
		The House That Will Not Stand
	Nick Powell	The Lehman Trilogy

2020s

Year	Composer	Production
2020
	Martha Redbone	for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf
	Steve Earle	Coal Country
	Frightened Rabbit	Square Go
	Jim Harbourne	Feral
	Adam Seidel, Jane Bruce, and Daniel Ocanto	Original Sound
2021	No awards: New York theatres shuttered, March 2020 to September 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City[1]
2022
	Bill Sims Jr.	Lackawanna Blues
	Te'La and Kamauu	Thoughts of a Colored Man
	Michael Thurber and Farai Malianga (drum compositions)	Merry Wives
2023	Suzan-Lori Parks	Plays for the Plague Year
	Ben Edelman, Zane Pais, & Sinan Rafik Zafar	Letters from Max, a ritual
	Mauricio Escamilla	the bandaged place
	Ian Ross	Wuthering Heights
	Daniel Schlosberg	Montag
2024[2]	Will Butler	Stereophonic
	Michael "Mikey J" Asante	The Effect
	S T A R R Busby and JJJJJerome Ellis	(pray)
	Dionne McClain-Freeney	The Harriet Holland Social Club Presents The 84th Annual Star-Burst Cotillion in the Grand Ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel
	Ben Steinfeld	Pericles

See also

• Tony Award for Best Original Score