Hello, I'm Jay Alan Zimmerman


I'm a composer, author, performer, speaker, and visual artist, but am best known for being "Broadway's Beethoven" aka, a DEAF COMPOSER. Becoming Deaf because I WAS THERE ON 9/11 has inspired an exciting loop of creating, innovating, and advocating. Essentially I allow my challenges with deafness to push creative artforms forward by innovating and incorporating new accessibility technologies and advocating for change—which then inspires me to create new works full of vibrant music visualizers, flying text, and musical robots. Some might call this interdisciplinary. Wagner called it total art, or gesamtkunstwerk. I call it fun! If you want to help me change the world, please read 3 Things You Can Do, watch How To See Hearing Instead Of Hearing Loss, and then connect.

A sophisticated composer.

CURTAIN UP

Let Jay Alan Zimmerman inspire you as he inspired me.

THEATRE IS EASY

Creative Projects

as a composer / author / performer / visual artist


Jay's creative works as a composer, author, visual artist, and performer include BRAIN. STORM.—commissioned and produced by Prospect Theater Company—and the award-winning INCREDIBLY DEAF MUSICAL seen Off-Broadway at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater and Duke on 42nd Street. His scores for films, plays, dance, aerial, and experimental projects that have been heard throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including the Edinburgh Festival and Paris Pompidou; and his plays and monologues COMFORT PET, LIP-LOSS, and SEEING CLEARLY IN THE DARK, have been presented by Fault Line Theater. Visual music installations include using projection mapping to transform a 30 foot window into WINDOW MUSIC at the NY Academy of Medicine, surrounding singers with visualizations of their voices for ART/SONG at chashama Times Square, and assembling orchestras of musical robots with the EMMI bots at Spotify and LEMUR bots at LemurPlex for his show ROBOTICUS. Songbooks include THE RHYMES AND ROARS OF DINOSAURS and his NAUGHTY & NICE HOLIDAY SONGBOOK developed through over a decade of annual debuts at Lincoln Center, now available on Amazon.

Apparently Zimmerman still hears well enough to hold the stage, but not well enough to hear the cheering audience that wanted him to come back for another bow.

THE WASHINGTON POST

A thoughtful show... elevated by authentic experience.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Innovative Talks & Tech Development

as an inventor / consultant / speaker


Supertitles, captioning, lyric videos. Connects with Incredibly Deaf Musical, Globetitles, accessible script formats, article in DG magazine.

Seeing Music Tutorial: Experience music visually

In this video, composer Jay Alan Zimmerman shows how to use Seeing Music, a tool for visualizing music. You can try it at https://g.co/seeingmusic

VISUAL MUSIC

Text/images to come

Robotic Orchestras

Text/images to come

Accessibility Design

Text/images to come

A sophisticated composer.

CURTAIN UP

Let Jay Alan Zimmerman inspire you as he inspired me.

THEATRE IS EASY

Advocating for Change


I first started using frequency analysis to transform audio into visual music with the installations Art/Song at chashama Times Square and Window Music for the Hearing Health Foundation, but am most known for being a DEAF COMPOSER. That contradiction has inspired all my creative work and accessibility innovations since I became Deaf. So scroll around to learn more about how I'm using musical robots, visual music, and data visualization to transform art and lives. Hope you enjoy visiting 🙂

How To See Hearing Instead of Hearing Loss

Deaf composer Jay Alan Zimmerman introduces The Hearing Visualizer (© 2021, U.S. Patent Pending 63/124,390). A new and easy-to-understand method of seeing hearing abilities by not only reinventing the audiogram but also creating a whole new approach to how we talk about and treat "hearing loss" — including how to get rid of loss language.

9/11 WTC epidemiological studies on hearing loss

Jay inspired the 9/11 World Trade Center epidemiological studies on hearing loss.

Related links: 

A video on the WTCHR site:

Jay Alan Zimmerman’s Silent Symphony

And the WTC studies:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31567659/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30523633/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31614778/

Rebuilding the Twin Tower site

Growth Strategies committee member and advocate for the memorial site on the New York New Visions group.

Captioning to mobile devices

Talk at MOMA (photo now, video later), collaborations with Globetitles, augmented reality captioning with Microsoft Hololens and Jujamcyn theaters.

Vibration Wearables

Collaboration and consultation on the Not Impossible Labs vibration device, also Subpac, Buzz, and others.

Apparently Zimmerman still hears well enough to hold the stage, but not well enough to hear the cheering audience that wanted him to come back for another bow.

THE WASHINGTON POST

A thoughtful show... elevated by authentic experience.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Connect