janet yates vogt  & mark friedman

Composers/lyricist/playwrights Janet Yates Vogt and Mark Friedman have been long-standing musical partners, performing together and collaborating on a variety of musical compositions and projects. Theirs is a true colla-boration -- with each of them composing both music and lyrics, as well as crafting the story and creating dialogue.

Janet Yates Vogt
 

Janet Vogt is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), where she has served as a faculty member of the CCM Preparatory Piano Department and the CCM Alumni Board. She has been a pit orchestra member for theatre productions, a vocal coach for the CCM Musical Theatre Institute, and has sung under the direction of Leonard Bernstein and James Levine.  Her vast array of credits include everything from a published composer of piano collections and choral works to composing music for the daytime dramas The Guiding Light and Another World.  

Mark Friedman

 Mark Friedman is a professional vocalist, actor, and musician, and has had numerous musical compositions published nationally and internationally.  He has released several vocal CDs and has produced music for individual artists, music videos, and animated videos. He holds a BS in Education and a Master of Arts degree and is a frequent speaker at music conventions and educational seminars across the country. Mark has written music, scripted and hosted opening events for many  national conventions, as well. Mark toured the nation with acting troupe The Fountain Square Fools, as well as with The Good News Company which he founded. In addition, Friedman was co-founded of Cincinnati’s first free Shakespeare Festival and founder of Peanut Butter Theatre of Cincinnati and Covington.

Together Janet and Mark work as composers, studio producers, arrangers, and performers and have published a large body of work that includes choral pieces for adults and children and music for animated and live-action videos, CD recordings, and computer CD-ROMs.

Their choral cantata for young people entitled WE SHALL PREPARE won a Unity Award in 2000 as Best Children’s Musical of the Year. Janet and Mark have collected three distinguished Owen Awards for outstanding music publishing and sales, and have music featured in songbooks, choral octavos and folios, catalogs, and music publications both nationally and internationally. In 2005, Janet and Mark were named national Music Educators of the Year. They are members of ASCAP, the Dramatist Guild, and the Theatre Communications Group. In addition, Janet and Mark are also the creative team behind several exciting new musicals which are playing regionally across the country. 

Their adaptation of Melinda Long's popular children's book HOW I BECAME A PIRATE, had its premiere in April of 2009 at First Stage Theatre in Milwaukee.  The ever-popular Pirates will soon be seen at the Des Moines Playhouse, South Carolina Children's Theatre, and the Oklahoma Theatre for Young Audiences. Aaaarrgh!

Mark and Janet's first musical GREEN GABLES was lovingly adapted from the wonderful classic  book Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maude Montgomery and has played to delighted audiences across the country. Premiering at the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati in 2000, it has gone on to play off-Broadway at the York Theatre in New York City; the Human Race Theatre in Dayton, Ohio; the Barter in Abingdon, VA;  and in theatres in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, New York, Washington State, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

Their powerful musical HARRIET AND SAM captures the times and events of pre and post Civil War America as seen through the eyes of two writers: Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens). It has met with critical acclaim for its timely themes of freedom and human rights. 

They have also penned a humorous, irreverent, and satirical look at married relationships with their musical cabaret, WAR GAMES: MARRIAGE ON THE FRONT LINES - lovingly dubbed by critics as the "musical in need of an intervention!" 

Their  holiday shows: EBENEZER (a musical version of A Christmas Carol Vogt and Friedman). and TWAS THE NIGHT (co-authored by playwright Joe McDonough) have been delighting children's audiences.

A new work, ROSIE, TENDERLY, is a musical about the life and career of Rosemary Clooney with a two-person cast.  

CLICK ON THE TABS AT THE UPPER  LEFT OF THIS HOME PAGE TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEIR MUSICALS.