Martin Erskine is a three-time Emmy Award-winning composer for Nickelodeon’s TV series, The Wonder Pets!, and has composed the scores for 3rd & Bird, currently airing on Disney Junior and the Disney Channel. He has also produced music for numerous Disney movies, including Pocohontas, Enchanted, and Cinderella, and live theme park background music for Disneyland, Disneyworld, Tokyo Disneyland, and Shanghai Disneyland, set to open in 2015. He was one of the composers for PBS Kid’s Peg + Cat and Amazon and PBS Kids’ Clifford the Big Red Dog.
Zina Goldrich won the 2009 Fred Ebb Award for excellence in songwriting with Marcy Heisler. She worked on the musical Ever After, directed by Kathleen Marshall. Goldrich and Heisler’s musical, The Great American Mousical, directed by Julie Andrews premiered at Goodspeed’s Chester Theatre in Connecticut. Their song, Baltimore was sung by Audra McDonald on Live at Lincoln Center. She composed music for Dear Edwina (Drama Desk Nomination) and Junie B. Jones (Lucille Lortel Nomination) which ran successfully Off-Broadway. Snow White, Rose Red (and Fred) (Helen Hayes Nomination) was commissioned by the Kennedy Center and is currently licensed by MTI. On television, she has composed for The Wonder Pets!, Johnny and the Sprites, Pooh’s Learning Adventure and Peg + Cat on PBS. She is the recipient of the ASCAP Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award, a Larson grant and is a Seldes-Kanin Fellow. She has played keyboards on Broadway for Avenue Q, Bombay Dreams, Oklahoma and Titanic, where she also conducted.
Originally from Pascagoula, MS, three time Emmy Award-winning composer/trombonist/ukulele player J. Walter Hawkes has been an active performer, composer, and arranger/orchestrator in New York City for about two decades. He has played and/or recorded with some people you’ve possibly heard of, Norah Jones, Elvis Costello, John Lithgow and many more you possibly haven’t. It’s also likely that he’s freaked out your little kids with the music he’s composed for The Wonder Pets! (Nick), Third & Bird (CBeebies & Disney Channel), Blue’s Clues (Nick), Bubble Guppies (Nick) as well as other tv cartoony gems on Cartoon Network, Sprout, and the Disney Channel. He is happy and proud to have served as the Music Director for Peg + Cat, and one of the composers for Clifford the Big Red Dog. He also enjoys playing with old computers and writing about himself in third person.
Canadian-born, NYC-area-based D.D. Jackson is a two-time Emmy-winning composer for his work on Peg+Cat (5-times nominated) and has also written music for such shows as The Wonder Pets (Little Airplane/Nickelodeon), 3rd & Bird (Little Airplane/BBC), The Ocean Room (Sinking Ship), Esme & Roy (Sesame Workshop/HBO), Sunny Day (Nickelodeon), and more. He is also a producer and a Juno-winning jazz pianist/composer who has recorded 13 CD’s as leader or co-leader, and with diverse artists ranging from saxophonist David Murray to Questlove and The Roots. As an award-winning professor, D.D. currently teaching courses (part-time) in the Global Jazz Masters program at Brooklyn College, and Media Scoring at their Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema. As a writer, he has penned articles for such publications as the Village Voice, and he wrote a popular column for DownBeat magazine entitled “Living Jazz” for 5 years. D.D. lives in Maplewood, NJ (just outside of New York City) with his wife Elizabeth, their 13-year old son Jarrett and 11-year old daughter Aria. His website is: ddjackson.com
Allison Leyton-Brown is an
award-winning composer, pianist, and Musical Director. She has composed
countless original scores for theatre, dance, opera and film productions across
the U.S. and Canada. Recent productions include Pete the Cat: The
Musical (2015 premiere), and Pilgrimage to the Mouth (Skyline
Theater/NJ Arts Collective). Upcoming, Allison is writing score and songs for a
regional production of the absurdist play BOB.
Leyton-Brown composes regularly
for various TV programs including 20/20, The Good Wife,
Primetime, What Would You Do?, and PBS Kids’ Peg+Cat. Recent
film credits include dramatic shorts It Had Wings (Archipelago
Cine), The Bicycle (NY Film Fest), documentaries Rainy
Season and features Millions: A Lottery Story (nationwide
screening) and Dog’s Life (Telluride Film Fest).
Leyton-Brown works regularly as a
Musical Director, band-leader and recording pianist. Most recently, she
musically directed and arranged music for the touring stage show and album
of Tennessee Williams: Words and Music, and Bottle Shock:
The Musical for the Napa Valley Film Festival and Fogg Theater in SF.
Allison can be seen performing
around NYC with multiple groups including New Orleans jazzers Smith
& 9th Ward.
