About Me
Dawson Atkin (they/she) is a New-York based composer, songwriter, instrumentalist, and musical storyteller. Their work spans and defies genre, including musical theatre, opera, indie-folk, and contemporary concert music. Dawson incorporates storytelling and heightened theatricality, blending influences to create unabashedly original pieces that question our society as it is and dream of a better one.
Much of Dawson's work explores mutual themes, especially those of place, time, nostalgia, memory, and the effects of progress and capitalism on the modern world. As a queer and trans writer, this perspective informs their work and the stories they choose to tell. In their work, Dawson seeks to highlight the stories of those who are often overlooked: those who live on the margins of society, who create our culture but who our culture is often so desperate to erase.
Recent premieres include ANABASIS (American Opera Projects, New York Transit Museum), Frozen With You (New York City Center), and a river // we carry (Tisch Dance). Dawson's full-length musicals FOUNDATIONS and Dirt Roads are in development, and both have received recent workshops and readings. These projects, among others, represent recent collaborations with artists Thomas Barrett Blakeley, Mel Hornyak, Nina Osso, Maddy Noble, and Parker Atkin (Dawson's sister).
Dawson's music has been performed at New York City Center, the Hartford Fringe Festival, the New Britain Museum of American Art, Stonewall National Monument, the New York Transit Museum, The Cutting Room, and The Bowery Electric. They have been commissioned to write for artists including Robert Black (Bang on a Can All-Stars), American Opera Projects, the Into the Light Ensemble, and the Foot in the Door Ensemble (CBDNA-selected performers). Dawson has been featured on All Of It with Allison Stewart on WNYC, Backstage Pass with Lia Chang on MNN, and various newspapers, including an interview in the West Hartford News.
Dawson is a member of Cycle 35 of New York University's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, where they received their M.F.A. They have a B.M. in Music Composition from The Hartt School at the University of Hartford. Dawson has studied with composers and writers including Robert Carl, Gilda Lyons, Randall Eng, Michael John LaChiusa, Rachel Sheinkin, and Adam Lenz. In 2021, Dawson was named Presser Scholar of The Hartt School. They are the recipient of the Edward Diemente Composition Award, and were a highlighted performer at the Northeast Regional Honors Conference for outstanding undergraduate honors thesis projects (for Escaping Eden). Dawson is a proud member of ASCAP, The Dramatists Guild, and MAESTRA.
A passionate arts educator, Dawson served for two years as a Resident Teaching Artist in Queens through ArtistYear, an AmeriCorps program. They are currently the New York City Program Coordinator for ArtistYear, where they oversee a team of teaching artists and manage partnerships with the Department of Education.
"The music and lyrics are intimate poetry"
-- Kitty Drexel, New England Theatre Geek
"Atkin’s music varies from soft and contemplative, though grief stricken and disconsolate, to rousing and galvanizing."
-- Michael J. Moran, In The Spotlight
