Jay Allan Zimmerman Favorite 

Zimmerman a composer who uses art, dance, tech, and even robots in his shows. You might call this interdisciplinary. Wagner called it total art, or gesamtkunstwerk.

The son of a midwestern piano teacher, Zimmerman literally grew up over the piano and spent his childhood performing classical, jazz, modern, and Broadway music. Throughout his early career in New York City, he was commissioned to create a variety of classical, dance, children’s, experimental, and Broadway music.

Then he began to lose his hearing, and like any sane person, he totally freaked out. But he still had rhythm, so he rapped. He could still see, so he used film. He experimented with visual music, aerial, stand-up, robots... anything that pushed him past his disABILITIES into a celebration of his remaining abilities.

And before long, Jay was again creating classical, jazz, experimental, and, Broadway music! He put it all into my Incredibly Deaf Musical and was called “Broadway’s Beethoven.” Though he can only hope to someday reach the level of the great master, h's excited to continue pursuing his dreams.

Now he's on a journey to combine the diverse artforms he's explored into heartfelt and whimsical works about the contradictions of life, the extraordinary hidden in the mundane, and the fascinating we all hope to discover.