Daniel Messe

Dan Messé is the founder and principal songwriter for the band Hem, which has garnered worldwide acclaim over the course of 9 studio albums. Starting as a humble DIY project out of Dan’s bedroom, Hem was signed to DreamWorks Records by the legendary music impresario Lenny Waronker. Since that time, Hem has been featured in every major media outlet from The New York Times and The New Yorker, to NPR’s All things Considered and Fresh Air, to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In 2009, the Public Theater tapped Hem to score Twelfth Night for their Shakespeare in the Park Festival (starring Anne Hathaway and Audra Mcdonald, dir. by Daniel Sullivan) for which they earned a Drama Desk nomination. Other popular music credits include composition contributions to country singer Elizabeth Cook as well as the album Road Trip: American Singer Songwriters. He’s acted as producer on the band A Girl Called Eddy’s self-titled album as well as Paul Heaton’s Under the Influence and the album Almost You: The Songs of Elvis Costello. Messé was the 2001 recepient of the Jonathan Larson Grant from the American Theatre Wing, along with longtime collaborator Mindi Dickstein, with whom he has written the musicals Beasts and Saints, Nate the Great, and The Mystery of King Tut. He also contributed compositions to the musical revues Reading Rainbow through TheatreWorks USA and last season’s Stars of David. Messé is currently working as composer with bookwriter Craig Lucas and lyricist Nathan Tyson on the musical adaptation of the wildly successful French film, Amelié.