Matt Dahan

**Matt Dahan** (born March 12) is an American composer, songwriter and music director. He is best known for co-creating the musical, *Starry,* and his work with American musical theatre company, Team StarKid. He is also the writer of Pulp Musicals.

## Early Life and Education

Dahan's music career started with an abandoned upright piano and a Talkboy tape recorder in the suburbs of Boston.

He went on to study at the Berklee College of Music where he graduated with a Bachelors degree in songwriting. He also studied film scoring at the University of Southern California.

## Dahan & D'Angelo

*Starry* isn't the first project Dahan and Kelly Lynne D'Angelo have worked on together. The writing team, appropriately dubbed Dahan & D'Angelo, premiered their first musical, *The Count of Monte Cristo*, at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. It had a sold out run and was invited to participate in the Festival of New American Musical's Musi-Cal showcases at Rockwell Table & Stage alongside *Starry* in both 2016 and 2017. Dahan created the music and orchestrations for the show, as well as acting a music director.

## Career

Outside of Dahan & D'Angelo, Dahan has worked on numerous projects throughout his career.

He released his first album, *Love Sick*, in 2008 and has released four more since: *Shadowboxing* (2010), *Sightseeing Through Whiskey* (2014), *Angels for Angeles* (2018) and *Dahanthology, Vol. 1* (2020).

In 2013, Dahan composed for the film *How Sweet It Is*. The film was listed as a semi-finalist for the 86th Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song. Dahan has been involved in the song and score for over a dozen films, including *Lonely Boy* (2013), *The Bus Driver* (2018), *The Muse* (2016), and *Hipmen: LA* (2017). He also wrote the original song, "Beyond the Shore," for the 2021 film, *CODA*.

In 2016, Dahan wrote music for *Break: The Musical*, a musical television series written by Mary Bonney. The series won an Indie Series Award and was nominated for others. Dahan's work can also be heard in the 2016 off-Broadway musical, *The Babies*, as well as *The Adventures of Peter Rabbit* which played at Theatre West, Los Angeles. The musical was supposed to run from October 5, 2019 to March 21, 2020, but was closed early as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After meeting members StarKid through *Starry*, Dahan was invited to be music director for StarKid's Los Angeles debut musical, *The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals*, in 2018. He also featured in the show's band as Keyboard 1. Dahan returned to StarKid in 2019 to act of music director and feature once again as Keyboard 1 in *Black Friday*. Dahan also acted as music director for both *Nightmare Time* and *Nightmare Time 2* alongside underscoring both seasons of the series.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dahan found his theatre community plunged into a time of uncertainty and slowly began to adapt to a world without live venues. It inspired him to create Pulp Musicals, a radio-musical series based on the Pulp genre. The first part of *Pulp Musicals Episode 1: The Great Moon Hoax* was released on November 15, 2021 with the final part and the episodes album being released on November 19, 2021. Dahan featured in the episodes as the Narrator as well as creating all of the music. The second episode is currently in development.

## Personal Life

Matt currently resides in Los Angeles. He greatly enjoys the sci-fi genre especially Star Trek.