Rick Bassett is a composer, pianist, arranger and orchestrator. Rick recently released “The Kosova Sessions,” an album of his jazz compositions recorded when he was living in Prishtina, Kosovo. The album can be heard on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Amazon, and most major streaming services. Full credits and information on the album can be found here. Further links can be found here.
Rick's orchestrations have been performed by Sutton Foster with orchestras including the NY Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, NY Pops, Boston Pops, and the Cincinnati Pops, and are featured on Ms. Foster's CD, "Take Me To The World." On Broadway, Rick is a co-orchestrator for “Caroline, or Change, ” "Violet," and “Twelfth Night” at Lincoln Center. Rick's keyboard programming credits include Classic Stage’s “Pacific Overtures,” ”Fiddler On The Roof” (Broadway), "Dames At Sea" (Broadway), "Big River," "1776" (Encores), and Ahrens and Flaherty’s “Little Dancer” (Kennedy Center).
Rick and his collaborator, lyricist/playwright Jessica Fleitman, received the BMI Harrington Award for Outstanding Achievement in Musical Theatre. Their songs have been featured at NY City Center’s “Front & Center: The Original Musicals of Tomorrow with Tom Kitt,” The BMI Musical Theatre Showcase, The Lori Beechman Theatre, and Cornelia Street Café in New York City, and the series "A Little New Music" in Los Angeles. Fleitman and Bassett are adapting Jessica's play – “The Average-Sized Mermaid” – into a new musical comedy in the BMI Musical Theatre Advanced Workshop.
Rick's orchestrations have been performed by Sutton Foster with orchestras including the NY Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, NY Pops, Boston Pops, and the Cincinnati Pops, and are featured on Ms. Foster's CD, "Take Me To The World." On Broadway, Rick is a co-orchestrator for “Caroline, or Change, ” "Violet," and “Twelfth Night” at Lincoln Center. Rick's keyboard programming credits include Classic Stage’s “Pacific Overtures,” ”Fiddler On The Roof” (Broadway), "Dames At Sea" (Broadway), "Big River," "1776" (Encores), and Ahrens and Flaherty’s “Little Dancer” (Kennedy Center).
Rick and his collaborator, lyricist/playwright Jessica Fleitman, received the BMI Harrington Award for Outstanding Achievement in Musical Theatre. Their songs have been featured at NY City Center’s “Front & Center: The Original Musicals of Tomorrow with Tom Kitt,” The BMI Musical Theatre Showcase, The Lori Beechman Theatre, and Cornelia Street Café in New York City, and the series "A Little New Music" in Los Angeles. Fleitman and Bassett are adapting Jessica's play – “The Average-Sized Mermaid” – into a new musical comedy in the BMI Musical Theatre Advanced Workshop.
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Rick was a Fellow at the John Duffy Composers Institute at the Virginia Arts Festival and a nominee for a 2016 MAC (Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs) Award. He is the composer of "Burning Up!" featured at the 2016 NY Sound Bites festival. Other international experience includes writing the musical “Hope,” performed at the National Theatre in Uganda, teaching electronic music in Japan, teaching jazz at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, and playing in "Eshee Havana," an Ethio-Latin-Jazz band there.
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Fleitman & Bassett
photos by Aaron Phillips |