Artists’ Profiles

Marvin Laird

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Conductor

MARVIN LAIRD is the composer of the award-winning Off-Broadway musical, Ruthless!. His collaboration with Joel Paley, the author/lyricist of that show, has been ongoing for 25 years. Their most recent piece, The Yiddish are Coming…! The Yiddish are Coming…! is currently playing regionally throughout North America. Since the 1960s, he has conducted and/or written dance and vocal arrangements for over two dozen Broadway and West End shows, including the award-winning production of Annie Get Your Gun, and the most recent Broadway revival of Gypsy, both starring Bernadette Peters. Laird supplied the music for the Lar Lubovitch ballet, Smile with My Heart, which had its world premiere with both Lubovitch’s company and the ABT in New York. In the early ’60s, he was assistant conductor for a national tour of Gypsy, which also featured a child actress named…Bernadette Peters. The rest is history.

Bernadette Peters

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Vocalist

Bernadette Peters is an American actress, singer and children’s book author. Over the course of a career that has spanned five decades, she is regarded as one of the most critically acclaimed Broadway performers, having received nominations for seven Tony Awards, winning two (plus an honorary award), and nine Drama Desk Awards, winning three.

At age nine, she obtained her Actors Equity Card. In her teen years, she attended the Quintano’s School for Young Professionals. Peters is particularly noted for her roles on the Broadway stage, including in the musicals Mack and Mabel, Sunday in the Park with George, Song and Dance, Into the Woods, Annie Get Your Gun and Gypsy.

Peters was praised for her early work and for appearances on The Muppet Show, The Carol Burnett Show and in other television work, and for her roles in films like Silent Movie, The Jerk, Pennies from Heaven and Annie. She also has recorded six solo albums and several singles. Peters been nominated for three Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards.

Peters serves on the Board of Trustees of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and is the co-founder of Broadway Barks with Mary Tyler Moore.