NewMusicalTheatre.com Adds Sheet Music of Ryan Cunningham & Josh Salzman

NewMusicalTheatre.com, the first website ever exclusively devoted to selling sheet music by musical theater writers, launches Ryan Cunningham and Josh Salzman's sheet music catalogue today. Over the course of the next severAl Weeks and leading up to an April launch concert, NewMusicalTheatre.com will be adding a new writer to the site every Friday.

The e-commerce site already sells sheet music written by Nick Blaemire (Glory Days), Adam Gwon (Ordinary Days), Joe Iconis (The Black Suits, The Plant that Ate the Dirty Socks, Things to
Ruin), Kait Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk (Henry & Mudge, Tales from the Bad Years, The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown), Ryan Scott Oliver (Darling, Mrs. Sharp,
Rated RSO), Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dogfight, Edges), Jeremy Schonfeld (Drift), and most recently Paul Gordon (Tony-nominee for Jane Eyre). 

Joshua Salzman (music) and Ryan Cunningham (book and lyrics) met at the NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Newest  Program. Their thesis musical, I Love You Because, went on to
be professionally produced Off-Broadway, earned a Drama Desk nomination for the team, spawned a cast album on PS Classics, and garnered a licensing deal with Theatrical Rights, resulting in productions both nationally and internationally. They continue their collaboration with many projects; Queen Esther, a family musical comedy based on the story of Purim, commissioned by the Kaufman Center; The Next Thing You Know, a song cycle currently in development with director John Simpkins; and as contributing songwriters on the Disney Channel's Johnny and the Sprites. Their song "Just Not Now" from I Love You Because was featured on Lauren Kennedy's new solo album Here and Now.

Ryan and Joshua are both members of the BMI Advanced Writing Workshop, ASCAP and the Dramatist Guild. "In order for musical theatre to keep evolving, it is crucial that new voices be heard, developed, and nurtured. Some of the most memorable and critically acclaimed productions of the recent past have been created by "new" musical theatre writers: RENT, Avenue Q, Spring Awakening, [title of show], The Drowsy Chaperone, In the Heights...to name a few. I am
glad to support a forum that showcases writers just a few steps away from their big break!" says Sutton Foster (Young Frankenstein, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Drowsy Chaperone).

The up-and-coming writers represented on NewMusicalTheatre.com have netted many of the prizes and laurels available to writers in the theater community. Among them, they've won four Jonathan Larson awards, two Ed Kleban awards, two Rodgers awards, one Fred Ebb award,
Original Members of NewMusicalTheatre.com as well as having had songs featured on television, and several Broadway, off-Broadway and regional productions.
The goal of NewMusicalTheatre.com is to create a direct connection between people who write

music and people who want to perform and listen to it. It provides an affordable and legal one-stop shop for musical theater fans and performers to discover and share the work of self-published writers. Site features include custom songbooks, song ratings, and a search functionality that caters to singers browsing for new audition songs. It aspires to foster a dynamic community where fans and actors can directly connect and impact writers while they're still struggling to make a living on their music. NewMusicalTheatre.com will bring writers, actors, and fans together to share music in a safe, dynamic - and most importantly - legal way. "The site's an extension of what we all do in the real world -- support each other's work. To have a site that not only gets our music out to people who want to sing it, but helps those people discover other young writers, is amazing. It's bursting the doors of the new musical theater community open to the whole world," says site member Adam Gwon, composer of Ordinary Days.

The site was created by writers for writers as an alternative to traditional publishing. Most songs have mp3s or video samples. NewMusicalTheatre.com uses new technology to protect writers from having their sheet music illegally downloaded by password protecting the downloaded file with the customer's credit card number. While protecting the writer, it also allows customers to have more control over their purchase. Rather than having to print their sheet music right away, they can keep the sheet music on their computer for continued access to the file and multiple printings.

When Jeff Marx (co-creator of Avenue Q) previewed the site, he said, "Whoever thought of making your credit card number the password to unlock the downloaded file was an absolute genius. That changes everything and serves everyone. This is going to be bigger than porn."

NewMusicalTheatre.com is dedicated to the distribution and promotion of a new generation of musical theater writers who self-publish their own digital sheet music. This is an e-commerce website designed by writers for writers. It allows fans to directly support the writers of
tomorrow's big hits.