Bio

Mel Atkey began his career in 1977 by co-producing a jazz concert with Vancouver impressario Willi Germann. This experience would later be recalled in his musical Poor Little Rich Girl Sings the Blues. Other early projects included a telethon featuring folk singer Tom Northcott, and he spent two years as a theatre critic before moving to Toronto to pursue his career as a musical theatre writer. He was commissioned to write songs for CBC Radio, and was a member of the Guild of Canadian Musical Theatre Writers' Lehman Engel Workshop. He was a director of the Cabaret and Musical Theatre Alliance until he moved to London in 1991. He made his New York debut in April 2001 with O Pioneers! with book by Robert Sickinger, and in 2003 they worked together again on A Little Princess, about which the New York Times praised Atkey's "lovely music". His two character musical Perfect Timing was showcased at Greenwich Theatre, London, in 2005. He has written two books: When We Both Got to Heaven, which tells the story of his ancestor James Atkey, who came to Georgian Bay from the Isle of Wight in 1854 as a teacher to the Ojibwa, amd Broadway North: The Dream of a Canadian Musical Theatre. Both are published by Natural Heritage Books. Its follow-up, A Million Miles from Broadway: Musical Theatre Beyond New York and London was published in 2012 . In another book -- Running Away with the Circus -- or "Now is the Winter of Our Missing Tent", published in 2013, he tells of his experience touring Taiwan with a circus in 1997. Mr. Atkey is a Professional Associate of Mercury Musical Developments and is a member of the Writers Union of Canada.