Edelman and Fishman

Harvey Edelman and Neil Fishman are a songwriting team that created and produced the first two audiobook musicals. The first, entitled Spin - The Rumpelstiltskin Musical, distributed by HarperAudio, and featuring Jim Dale, legendary Broadway performer and the voice of the Harry Potter series. The music of Spin was composed by Mr. Fishman, who also did the musical arrangements for the audiobook. Mr. Edelman wrote the book and lyrics and adapted his original stage play to the audiobook with David B. Coe, a popular writer of Fantasy novels. The cast of Spin, a witty musical re-imagining of the Grimm’s fairy tale, also features a list of Broadway and audiobook performers. Spin won the 2018 SOVAS Voice Arts Awards in two categories including Best Cast in Children's Production and Outstanding Audiobook Production, the 2018 Parents Choice Awards – Silver Honor for Audiobook, and the 2019 Audie Award winner for best "Original Work". They followed up "Spin" with "Puss In Boots a Musical," which was co-adapted by Khristine Hvam, a voice over actress, award-winning audiobook narrator, and director. "Puss In Boots" also featured Jim Dale and a cast of Broadway veterans and was released in August of 2019. "Puss In Boots a Musical" won two 2019 SOVAS Awards for Best Voiceover performance in a Children's Production and Best Audiobook Production, Parents Choice Silver Honor, and was a Audie Awards finalist for Best Audio Drama.

Mr. Edelman and Mr. Fishman started working together in 1975, when they collaborated on a musical adaptation of George Farquhar's restoration comedy, "The Beaux' Stratagem," entitled, "To Bed a Fortune," which was produced in 1976. They were introduced by their co-writer and director of the production, Alan Gerstel, who later wrote a book about his personal search for his birth parents, entitled "Swing: The Search For My Father, Louis Prima." Mr. Gerstel, among other endeavors, was a respected news anchorman in the south Florida area for many years.

Mr. Edelman and Mr. Fishman have collaborated on a number of educational works including "Songsleuth" a musical to be performed by sixth graders for their classmates. Songsleuth was published in the Macmillan Publishing Educational Series, "Music and You" and a recording of the songs is part of the accompanying "Music and You" soundtrack on CBS Records, produced by Merrill Staton and Barbara Staton. With the success of "Songsleuth," the pair was commissioned to write a new kids musical for the 1995 edition of "Music and You" entitled, "Earthkids, the Musical" a musical that teaches children about environmental concerns and what they can do about them. In addition to hundreds of school productions, "Earthkids" was produced in Nyack, New York, in 1996, under the direction of Rita Veri.

Mr. Edelman and Mr. Fishman have also written and produced songs about hygiene, nutrition, and dental care for the national Headstart Program, sponsored by the Soap and Detergent Association, Weightwatchers, and Colgate-Palmolive, respectively.

In 1989, they were commissioned by the Pittsburgh Playhouse Junior to write a musical version of "Puss 'n Boots," for its Spring Season and serve as Artists In Residence prior to its debut. "Puss 'n Boots, the Musical" was subsequently produced in other regional and community theaters. The genesis of that commission was the Pittsburgh Playhouse's production of an earlier Edelman/Fishman children's musical, "Rumpelstiltskin," originally produced in northern New Jersey by the Bergen County Players.

Their other works include "On The Air," a musical spoof of the Golden Age of Radio, co-written by Peter Palame, which first appeared Off-Broadway in 1984 with numerous subsequent theater productions; a musical based on Sidney Kingsley's landmark play, " Dead End," also co-written with Peter Palame, first developed in the ASCAP Musical Theater Workshop that was chosen for a staged reading at the Dramatists Guild Musical Theater Workshop; and a musical about independent business people entitled, "Entrepreneurs", written with Mel Friedman.

In 2004, they collaborated with Janice Cohen, the author of "The Christmas Menorahs, How a Town Fought Hate" to create the musical "Nightlights,“ which recounted the true story of how people of all faiths and races came together in the town of Billings, Montana in 1993 to successfully fight a group of haters threatening the town’s tiny Jewish population and other minorities. ”Nightlights” had its debut production at the Passage Theatre in Trenton, New Jersey in 2005.