Shaina Taub
Biography Shaina Taub
Shaina Taub
Raised in the green mountains of Vermont, Shaina Taub is a New York-based songwriter and performer.
Her concert work includes a Lincoln Center solo debut in the acclaimed American Songbook series, as well as residencies at Ars Nova and Rockwood Music Hall. Taub has independently released two EPs and a full-length album Visitors, and will play a year-long residency of monthly shows at the Public Theater’s Joe’s Pub in 2017.
As a songwriter, she is a winner of the Jonathan Larson Grant and the first female recipient of the ASCAP Foundation’s Lucille and Jack Yellen Award. She writes tunes for Sesame Street, including Just Like Magic featuring Sara Bareilles. Six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald is currently performs Taub’s song, The Tale of Bear & Otter on tour. Taub’s songs have also been performed by Broadway stars Sutton Foster and Phillipa Soo.
Taub’s original musical adaptation Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was commissioned by the Public Theater as part of the groundbreaking Public Works initiative and received a critically acclaimed production at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park in which she played the role of Feste. Her original soul-folk opera, The Daughters, was featured in workshop productions at CAP21 Theater Company, and New York University’s mainstage season. Taub is currently writing a new musical about Alice Paul and the American women’s suffrage movement in the decade leading up to the passage of the 19th amendment.
As a performer, Taub has traveled the world as a vocalist, actor and musician. She starred in the west coast premiere and New York re-mounting of the Signature Theatre’s hit production Old Hats, created by Bill Irwin and David Shiner and directed by Tina Landau, featuring Taub’s original songs. She earned a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for her portrayal of Princess Mary in the Kazino production of Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 directed by Rachel Chavkin. She sang back-up for Karen O and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in O’s psycho-opera, Stop the Virgens at St. Ann’s Warehouse and the Sydney Opera House, and arranged/played the songs of Tom Waits in the American Repertory Theater’s production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Taub was in the original Off-Broadway cast of Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown at New York Theatre Workshop, and is featured on the live cast album. She played the role of Emma Goldman in the Ragtime on Ellis Island concert, and performed in Jeanine Tesori’s 2016 Off Center Jamboree.
A fellow of the MacDowell Colony, the Yaddo Colony, the Sundance Institute and the Johnny Mercer Songwriter’s Project, winner of a MAC John Wallowitch Award, a TEDx conference speaker, Taub served on the music theatre faculty at Pace University, and is a University Scholar alumnus of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
“Shaina Taub’s infectious music is a playful blend of Billy Joel’s piano-driven pop, Aretha’s soul and Regina Spektor’s whimsy. Taub’s imaginative lyricism is all her own though. She has creativity in spades” (NPR)
