On June 8, Daniel Kluger will vie for the Tony Award for Best Sound Design of a Play for his work on George Clooney and Grant Heslov's Good Night, and Good Luck, which also plays its final performance at the Winter Garden Theatre that same day.
For those unable to snag a ticket to Good Night鈥攏ominated for five 2025 Tony nominations鈥攖he hit production will be broadcast live on CNN June 7 with a simultaneous streaming option also available.
Composer, music producer, orchestrator, and sound designer Kluger is also represented on Broadway this season with Cole Escola's acclaimed comedy Oh, Mary!, which features both sound design and a score by Kluger. The farcical production, recounting the final days in the marriage of Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln, is also nominated for five 2025 Tonys, including Best Play.
Known for his Tony, Grammy, and Olivier-nominated bluegrass orchestrations for the 2019 Broadway revival of Oklahoma!, Kluger's 2025 Tony nod is his fifth, following earlier recognition for Best Original Score Written for the Theatre and Best Sound Design of a Play for The Sound Inside in 2020, Best Sound Design of a Play for Sea Wall/A Life in 2020, and Best Orchestrations for the aforementioned Oklahoma! revival.
Kluger's other Broadway credits include sound designer for Significant Other and sound designer and composer for both Marvin's Room and last season's Prayer for the French Republic. Off-Broadway, he scored the premieres of Sunday, The Village Bike, and Animal as well as Judgment Day at the Park Avenue Armory.
The Philadelphia native created the scores for the feature film The Courtroom, the narrative audio drama Vapor Trail, the Audible series The Miranda Obsession. In 2021 Kluger launched the music label Archie & Fox Records with playwright Ken Urban; he also teaches music production at the David Geffen School of Drama Yale.
In the interview below for the 半岛体育 series How Did I Get Here鈥攕potlighting not only actors, but directors, designers, musicians, and others who work on and off the stage to create the magic that is live theatre鈥擪luger discusses the function of the jazz recording studio in Good Night, and Good Luck; why it's important not to over-amplify; how Chopin influenced the Oh, Mary! score; and why this season has made him eager to work with other screen stars.
Where did you train/study?
Daniel Kluger: Jazz piano lessons growing up were the luckiest accident. Then I majored in English at Yale, and while I was there fell deep into theatre, being so close to the Drama School. Friends asked me to create music for their plays, and I haven鈥檛 stopped. The first professional job I had, I was surprised when they asked me to record and mix the score, which was daunting. Now it鈥檚 so common that composers are also producers and can express their ideas in recordings. For me, it鈥檚 a blessing that composing projects forced me to learn how to use the studio. It鈥檚 really influenced me creatively, and I鈥檓 obsessed with the latest guitar pedals, synths, and how electronic production can be integrated with acoustic music.
Was there a teacher who was particularly impactful/helpful? What made this instructor stand out?
One summer I attended the Pennsylvania Governor鈥檚 School for the Arts, a high school program for students across the state. A piano teacher named George W. Russell Jr. told us something to the effect of 鈥渆very time you sit down to play music, imagine it could be the last time you touch your instrument.鈥� It was such powerful advice. It made you get out of your head and work from an emotional connection, which has only become more and more crucial in my life, as I have had to work under deadlines and different pressures, technical challenges, etc. That line reminds me to try to connect to something spiritual every time.
Since you're both the sound designer and musical supervisor for Good Night, and Good Luck, can you detail the duties of each job, both before and after the show opens?
As sound designer on the project, I am responsible for supervising the sound production editorial process, and final mix of the show. It鈥檚 really soup to nuts, from choosing microphones for each actor, instrument, source, as well as speakers for each area of the audience. Then we turn to creating sound effects, any pre-recorded material, processing and balancing all the live elements鈥攄ialogue and music鈥攁nd then sculpting the final mix.
I鈥檓 really passionate about dialogue spatialization. In a film, the dialogue is always in the center, and the music and ambience is spread out. When you're watching a play, even from the best and most expensive seats, you are constantly turning your head left and right because the actors are anywhere on the stage. It sounds simple, but the work of moving the dialogue mix around to match the staging is integral to making the show smooth. We want every word to be clear, and we also want to always know where to look so that we may hear the actors speak, not the sound system. My associate, Will Pickens, is a true artist and steward of these details, and the show is as smooth as it is because of his talent.
But that is all what happens onstage. Meanwhile, I am in the house with David [Cromer] determining where the music fits in amidst the dialogue and all other sonic elements. We are sculpting how the music sits in the space and making changes to the timing and arrangement of things depending on how it hands off to video content and other elements.
I鈥檓 also super proud of how the music came together. George Clooney and Grant Heslov had developed this awesome approach to the score in the film, in which a jazz group is recording music in a CBS studio down the hall from the newsroom. It has this diegetic connection to the life and business of the totality of the CBS endeavor. It grounds the period and simultaneously functions as score, offering this lyrical and poetic lift to the story.
I recommended a close friend of mine named Bryan Carter, a talented jazz drummer and band leader. Bryan did the orchestrations for Some Like It Hot, and I knew he not only had the musical rigor to make the jazz as high-caliber as it needed to be, but also understood the Broadway process. Brian, David, George, Grant, and I all met and brainstormed how we wanted each song to function in the story, and then Bryan put together an amazing band of talented jazz musicians. These were all guys that Bryan had played with before, and they just have this amazing musical chemistry together, so I am really proud of their musicianship in the show. It is as vibrant and authentic as it should be.
What were some of the specific challenges of designing the sound for Good Night?
This is my 10th show with David Cromer, and I think the most rewarding and most challenging. It鈥檚 always important to us that live theatre feels immediate and natural, and in the past we鈥檝e been very sensitive not to over-amplify things.
The ultimate goal for a show like this is that every audience member, no matter where they are sitting, can hear the whole play without it sounding canned. We are dealing with wide-ranging sources that we needed to manage into an appropriate dynamic range. We have some quiet conversation scenes on one corner of the stage, but we also have live music and broadcasts that are much louder, not to mention quiet asides and archival videos played across several different screens of several different sizes. With all that in mind, we still had to deliver something that is clear and consistent. I am particularly proud of how the music is able to feel natural and like it is really in the space, while also lifting and functioning as a heightened score. Music is treated in the mix so that it can move from a presentational mode to something quite intimate when it needs to. The Winter Garden Theatre is a large theatre with a wide stage and a gigantic auditorium. We use close to 100 speakers in order to properly distribute the amplification around the space evenly.
It must have been an exciting season for you, since you are also the sound designer and composer for the juggernaut that is Oh, Mary! Can you explain how it was decided where music should be used in the one-act production?
I am so proud of the score for Oh, Mary!, especially Mary鈥檚 musical theme. Cole [Escola], Sam [Pinkleton], and I had early brainstorms about the different stylistic periods the [play] could draw from. They are great provocateurs, obviously. What if it sounded like a 1940s Hollywood melodrama? What would Alex North have written for this show? We used Frank De Vol鈥檚 score for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? as another point of reference. Mary is emotionally unhinged, so we knew the music needed to have a really arch style that could match her.
We experimented with all these wide-ranging ideas, but Cole and Sam鈥檚 brilliance is that they kept the production humble and scrappy. The music couldn鈥檛 be overproduced, and yet the emotions had to be huge. Cole sent me some Tchaikovsky and Chopin piano pieces, and it finally made sense. So I鈥檓 basically doing my impression of Chopin through a comedic framework. I played the score for the downtown production, and then when we moved to Broadway, we got to bring in the virtuosic pianist Natalie Tenenbaum, and we rerecorded it at Renaissance Recording. She just took it to a whole other level. That session was honestly my favorite day of last year.
I loved the orchestrations for the recent revival of Oklahoma! Can you discuss your creative approach/process for writing those orchestrations? Were you given free rein from the creative team and/or the Rodgers and Hammerstein organization/estates?
Thank you! That project was a dream. I had done a handful of plays with director Daniel Fish, and each one was a total surprise. It was his first time doing a big musical, and we put a lot of care into our relationship with the R&H estate. In hindsight, you know, Oklahoma! is a story about people living a violent existence, so we wanted the music to be raw and unsentimental. We took the full orchestration and adapted it for a seven-piece bluegrass band. I was inspired by the Punch Brothers and frontman Chris Thile鈥檚 arrangements. They gave me a way to think about bluegrass in an orchestral and harmonically complex way. We didn鈥檛 change a note of the original score, and yet the different instrumentation completely opened up the sonic space around the music in a new way.
This is your fifth Tony nomination and your third for sound design. What does it mean to be recognized this season and for this particular production?
I am most excited that the entire design team is being recognized together. It is a testament to the group working hard together to grapple with this production, as well as a testament to David Cromer, who held on to crucial fundamentals of the project as director.
I truly just feel lucky. I have a lot of respect and admiration for this entire endeavor by George and Grant to produce this show on Broadway. They are doing it for the right reasons, and I am honored to be affiliated with a production that I genuinely consider to be an act of brave citizenship to be making right now. It has me intrigued to work with other filmmakers and stars of the screen who want to adapt progressive and interesting works for the stage. Good Night, and Good Luck is proof of just how well it can work!
Is there a person or people you most respect in your field and why?
I worked with British director Richard Jones on a play called Judgment Day at the Park Avenue Armory, and I really admired the way he gave direction. He spoke so succinctly, and you knew exactly what had to happen next. He had a clarity about how to get people to go deeper into their work. I respect Richard a lot as a genius communicator with a clear vision, and I have always wanted to work with him again. He pushed me to make music I did not think I was capable of making. We had a nine-piece brass ensemble, and Richard approached our collaboration with such generosity and rigor. He changed the way I think about taking risks on a score with this simple instruction: 鈥淵our work should be virtuosic.鈥�
What advice would you give your younger self or anyone starting out?
At a preview of Oklahoma!, music arranger Glen Kelly said to me, 鈥淒on鈥檛 forget to enjoy it.鈥� It is so simple, but it changed my relationship to my work. I recycle that line quite a bit, and I thanked Glen when I saw him again a few years later.
In such difficult times in this country and around the world, how do you think theatre can play a positive role, either for yourself and/or the community at large?
Theatre is a laboratory. We live in a moment where we are all siloed in our individualistic social platforms, disconnected from each other by our phones and other devices. When you make theatre or attend a show, you have to physically show up and connect with people. The structure of how we show up and the quality of our attention is crucial. I believe that participating in theatre as an artist, audience, or advocate makes you live a fuller life overall.
What is your proudest achievement as a designer and/or orchestrator and/or composer?
I recently did the score for a new show The Thing About Jellyfish with my friends, director Tyne Rafaeli and writer Keith Bunin. It is the thing that I have worked on the hardest this year. It is a beautiful story about childhood imagination, grief, and friendship. The score is both electronic and orchestral, and I really hope we get to bring it to New York.
George Clooney and company of Good Night, and Good Luck
George Clooney in Good Night, and Good Luck
Company of Good Night, and Good Luck
George Clooney in Good Night, and Good Luck
Paul Gross and George Clooney in Good Night, and Good Luck
George Clooney and Clark Gregg in Good Night, and Good Luck
George Clooney in Good Night, and Good Luck
Company of Good Night, and Good Luck
Company of Good Night, and Good Luck
Ilana Glazer in Good Night, and Good Luck
George Clooney in Good Night, and Good Luck
