Theatre Register

Brenda Russell

Shows · Brenda Russell

ComposerLyricist b. 1949

Brenda Russell (née Gordon; born April 8, 1949) is an American-Canadian singer-songwriter, producer, and keyboardist. Russell has a diverse musical range which encompasses R&B, pop, soul, dance, and jazz. She has received five Grammy nominations, winning in 2017 for writing the music for The Color Purple.

Also credited on2 works

The Color Purple
The Color Purple (2015 Revival)

These come off the person record, which names a work and not a production. So we can say this name is attached to the work and we cannot say which staging, or in what capacity. For a composer or a writer that is the whole career we hold; there is no cast list to find them in.

In the literature1 passages

  • The Color Purple (2005–2006) was more retro and sentimental than Caroline, or Change , so it ran almost seven times longer. To be fair, librettist Marsha Norman and songwriters Brenda Russell, Stephen Bray, and Allee Wills had one great benefit: great name recognition from Alice Walker’s best-selling 1983 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel and…ebooks/Filichia, Peter/Strippers, Showgirls, and Sharks - Peter Filichia.txt

Passages naming this person, found by keyword across 178 books. A keyword match is not a biography, and a common name will pull in the wrong one.

What this page does not know

  • What this person played. No cast list we hold records a character against a performer.
  • Any staging. This name appears in no production cast list we hold — 1,877 of 7,139 people are in that position, most of them writers, composers and designers rather than performers.
  • Which of the credits above the roles on this record — composer, lyricist — apply to. The roles sit on the person and never on a credit, so a director who also acted looks the same here as one who did not.

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