The Composer Series, Lincoln Center Theater’s new run of one-night-only songwriter evenings at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, now has its dates: Benj Pasek and Justin Paul open it on Monday, November 30, 2026, Lin-Manuel Miranda follows on Monday, December 14, and Sara Bareilles closes the inaugural lineup on Monday, June 21, 2027.
Each headliner shares the stage with emerging composers they have chosen themselves, and that pairing is the point of the format rather than a garnish on a concert: the established writers perform their own songs, the newcomers bring new material, and the evening moves between performance and conversation about the craft of songwriting and how one generation of musical theater writers brings on the next. LCT frames the series as support for writers developing new work, and it arrives in Lear deBessonet’s second season as the company’s Kewsong Lee Artistic Director.
The Pasek & Paul evening brings five emerging writers into the room: Barlow & Bear (Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear), Marie Dresselhuis, Joriah Kwamé, Oliver Richman and Jaheem King Toombs. Barlow & Bear won the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album with The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical Album and went on to write the songs for Disney’s Moana 2; Barlow is also returning to SIX on Broadway from November 1. Kwamé, this year’s Stephen Schwartz Award recipient from the Dramatists Guild Foundation, already has a credit alongside the headliners, having co-written Top of the World with Pasek & Paul for the film Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. Dresselhuis is a singer-songwriter from British Columbia; Richman, a 2022 graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, has written more than 1,000 songs since taking up a song a day; and Toombs, who wrote and produced Dream Come True for Zombies 4, is writing music and lyrics for Disney Theatrical Group’s stage adaptation of Zootopia.
All three evenings start at 8:00pm. Lincoln Center Theater members can buy tickets for November 30 from 10:00am on Monday, November 2, and the general sale opens at 10:00am on Tuesday, November 3, at LCT.org, by phone on 212-239-6200 or at the Lincoln Center Theater box office. Tickets for the Miranda and Bareilles nights will go on sale at a later date, and the guest performers, vocalists and emerging composers for both are still to be announced.
The series is presented by special arrangement with Creative Partners Productions.
