LOS ANGELES, CA. (Allee Willis) - In late 2005, three decades into a songwriting career that's contributed to the sale of over 50 million records, Los Angeles-based composer and multi-media artist Allee Willis saw her first ever musical - The
Color Purple - open on Broadway to extraordinary acclaim. The
Color Purple phenomenon continues for Willis with a "Best Musical Show Album" 2007 GRAMMY Award nomination (Field 21-Musical Show, Category 79) for the 49th annual ceremony, set to take place in L.A. on February 11. Allee shares the honor with co-writers
Brenda Russell and Stephen Bray as well as producer Jay
David Saks.
Allee Willis previously won a GRAMMY for 1985's multi-platinum Beverly Hills Cop: Original Soundtrack and "Boogie Wonderland," her classic hit song and Top 10 single for Earth, Wind & Fire - currently featured in a major set-piece in the animated box office smash Happy Feet - scored the group a "Best R&B Instrumental Performance" GRAMMY in 1979. Making for inclusion of her music in three current hit movies, another of Willis' Top 10 smashes for EWF, "September," is featured in two high profile films in wide release right now - the acclaimed dramatic thriller Babel, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett (via a memorable mashup with Fatboy Slim's "The Joker") and in the Ben Stiller-starrer Night At The Museum.
Leading up to her latest GRAMMY nomination, Allee Willis consulted on the musical direction for The Color Purple for almost two years before teaming with Russell and Bray on the music & lyrics, a collaboration that grew out of their work together on scores for two Willis-conceived animated series, Driving While Black and Fat Girl. The Color Purple is now a long-running, perennially sold out success - and a soulful tour de force that's drawn unprecedented numbers of African-American theater-goers to Broadway. The national tour launches in Chicago this April. In his review of The Color Purple soundtrack for BarnesAndNoble.com, music journalist Dave Gil de Rubio wrote, "the recasting of this redemptive story as a musical is a feat befitting [Alice] Walker's original masterpiece."
The Oprah Winfrey-produced show earned eleven 2006 Tony Award nods - including "Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre" - and won "Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical" for LaChanze's star turn as Celie. The Color Purple's run, along with last year's Earth, Wind & Fire-themed "jukebox" musical Happy Feet, also helped Willis make Broadway history in '06 as the first woman - and only the fifth person ever - to have written music for two shows opening on Broadway in the same season.
Allee Willis is currently developing various music, film, literary and multi-media projects - including the album The Soul Of Bubbles & Cheesecake with singing and composing partner Holly Palmer, formerly of Gnarls Barkley - from the studio in her architecturally historic William Kesling-designed Los Angeles home, a Streamline Moderne marvel often called "Willis Wonderland."
For more information, visit https://www.alleewillis.com
