Shaina Taub

A singer/songwriter and composer/lyricist, Shaina Taub displays her agility as a vocalist, lyricist, and melodicist both in solo releases that blend pop, jazz, and folk and with her smart, playful musical theater creations. She emerged as a professional in both arenas in the early 2010s, eventually releasing her full-length solo recording debut, Visitors, in 2015. As an artist-in-residence at the Public Theater, she premiered her own musical adaptations of Shakespeare, with cast recordings for Twelfth Night and As You Like It appearing in 2018 and 2022, respectively. The year 2022 also saw the release of her third solo album and Atlantic Records debut, Songs of the Great Hill. In 2024, she made her Broadway debut with Suffs, a musical based on the American women's suffrage movement. It not only featured a book, music, and lyrics by Taub but she also starred in the original Broadway cast. Taub loved musical theater and pored over cast albums as a kid growing up in Waitsfield, Vermont. She started performing at a young age, taking part in shows at the local Valley Players Theater and commuting to Burlington for community theater and Monpelier for dance classes. She joined her school's annual musical starting in seventh grade, and moved to New York upon graduating from high school in 2005 at the age of 16. With a pinpoint focus on a career in musical theater, she graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 2009 and quickly used her ability as a piano player to land jobs as an accompanist. She heeded the advice of one of her professors who encouraged her take songwriting seriously, and used the pomodoro method (short, timed stretches of focused work) to chip away at writing. Taub's self-released debut EP, What Otters Do, demonstrated a sophisticated blend of classic piano pop, jazz, and folk upon its arrival in 2011. That year, her work The Daughters, described as a "soul-folk opera," was a 2011 Richard Rodgers Awards finalist. She was the Ars Nova composer-in-residence in 2012. Taub followed up her debut EP with an eponymous trio EP under the banner Shaina Taub Trio in early 2013. Back in theater, she became a Jonathan Larson Award recipient in 2014. Her debut album, the self-released Visitors, appeared in December 2015. In 2016, Old Hats -- a part-musical, part-sketch comedy, part-revue penned by Bill Irwin and David Shiner with music by Nellie McKay -- enjoyed an off-Broadway revival with Taub stepping in with original songs. A sampler EP, Songs from Old Hats, was issued on Sh-K-Boom Records that April. She took up a year-long residency at Joe's Pub in Manhattan in 2017, the same year she was named a Fred Ebb Award recipient, and in cooperation with Public Works, her musical adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was performed in Central Park. In June of 2018, Taub delivered her second solo LP, Die Happy. The original cast recording of Twelfth Night arrived on Craft Recordings in late 2018. In the meantime, her social and political advocacy included work on behalf of progressive candidates, voting rights, and immigrant rights, among other causes. She also took roles in productions of musicals including Hadestown and the Ragtime on Ellis Island concert. In 2019, Taub won the 2019 Kleban Prize (for a promising lyricist and a promising librettist in American theater), which came with a $100,000 monetary award. With her star still on the rise, Taub make her Atlantic Records debut In April of 2022 with her third album, Songs of the Great Hill. That December, Concord released the original Public Works cast recording for another Taub Shakespeare adaptation, As You Like It. The year also saw the premiere of her original musical Suffs off-Broadway at the Public Theater. It was based on the women's suffrage movement in the U.S. in the decade leading up to the passage of the 19th amendment. With Hillary Clinton and 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai among the show's producers, it moved to Broadway in April of 2024. Later that year, her lyrics appeared alongside Elton John's music in a stage-musical adaptation of the novel and movie The Devil Wears Prada in London's West End.
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