David Yazbek

Citing Elvis Costello and XTC — a band he later produced — among his chief influences, singer-songwriter David Yazbek achieved wider recognition as a Tony-winning composer and lyricist for the stage. His credits also encompass screen and small-screen projects, among them the early-’90s theme for Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego? His debut solo album, Laughing Man, appeared under the mononym Yazbek in 1996; shortly afterward he teamed with playwright Terrence McNally on The Full Monty, which reached Broadway in 2000. Additional theater scores followed, including the 2005 musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and 2017’s The Band’s Visit, both of which captured the Tony Award for Best Musical; the latter brought Yazbek his own Tony for Best Original Score.

Born and raised in New York City, David Yazbek began studying cello in elementary school before taking up piano as a teenager. After graduating from Brown University in 1982, he shared an Emmy with the writing staff of The Late Show with David Letterman in 1986, then chose to pursue music full-time. Early commercial success came through jingle writing; from 1987 to 1989 he also served as part owner of the Manhattan Recording Company alongside founder Billy Straus.

Together with high-school friend Sean Altman of Rockapella, Yazbek supplied the theme song for the PBS series Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, which debuted in 1991. Over the ensuing years he scored short films and established himself as a producer, working with the Persuasions, Tito Puente, and XTC, whose leader Andy Partridge counted among his songwriting influences. Partridge in turn co-produced and played guitar on Yazbek’s first solo release, Laughing Man, issued by What Are Records? in 1996 under the single name Yazbek. A second album in a similar college-rock vein, Tock, followed on the same label in 1998 and featured the Partridge-penned track “You Are Here,” on which Partridge also performed.

Meanwhile playwright Terrence McNally was preparing the book for a stage adaptation of the 1997 British film The Full Monty. When composer Adam Guettel (The Light in the Piazza) withdrew from the project, he recommended his former bandmate Yazbek; the resulting show opened at Broadway’s Eugene O’Neill Theatre in October 2000, transferred to London’s West End two years later, earned Yazbek a Tony nomination for his score, and won him the 2001 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music. Yazbek’s third solo album, Damascus, appeared that same year, and in 2002 he supplied additional lyrics for A.R. Rahman’s Bombay Dreams.

His next Broadway venture was Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, an adaptation of the 1988 film, with music and lyrics by Yazbek and a book by Jeffrey Lane; it arrived in 2005 and received eleven Tony nominations, including those for Best Musical and Best Original Score. What Are Records? also issued the Yazbek compilation Tape Recorder (Collected Works) in 2005.

Returning to solo work, Yazbek released Evil Monkey Man on Ghostlight Records in 2007 under his full name. That year he contributed two songs—“Written in Stone” and “Who Am I and Where Do I Go from Here?”—to the film comedy The Ten. Onstage he reunited with Lane for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, drawn from Pedro Almodóvar’s 1988 film; the production opened on Broadway in October 2010 and earned Tony nominations for featured actresses Patti LuPone and Laura Benanti as well as for Yazbek’s score.

The Band’s Visit, another film adaptation with a book by Itamar Moses, premiered off-Broadway in late 2016 before transferring to Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre in November 2017. The story follows an Egyptian ceremonial band temporarily stranded in a remote Israeli desert town; its score blends Egyptian folk, Arab classical traditions, klezmer, improvisational jazz, and additional elements, reflecting Yazbek’s own Jewish-Italian and Arab-Lebanese heritage. In 2018 the musical collected eleven Tony nominations and secured ten awards, among them Best Musical and Yazbek’s first Tony for Best Original Score; he also received Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Lyrics.