Doug Day

Music

DOUG.DAY@rileyschool.org

Doug began as a high school English teacher and soccer coach.  He took his students down the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers on bicycles in a program called How Huckleberry Would Have Gone If He had not found a Raft.  Then, at graduate school at Brown University, he taught undergraduates creative writing.  Moving to New York City to work on a musical of his own, he studied acting and musical theater.  Doug has made over two-hundred original musicals with student groups as visiting artist in residence, often with historical and literary themes.  Notably, with elementary and middle school students: Antigone, Beowulf, Moby-Dick, River of Grass, ICE! An Historical Musical of the Ice Industry in Dresden, Maine, 1880-1900, and Fuerza! (A bilingual circus musical for the City of Hartford).  He has published a number of these projects as well as produced recordings of his own work: Jackson’s Kite; Love Come Down; and Barefoot to the Sea. 

When not on the road as artist in residence, Doug directs The Sweet Chariot Music Festival on Swan’s Island, Maine.  A mid-winter version of this Cavalcade of Whoop-dee-doo will take place this winter at Watts Hall in Thomaston.  He lives in Rockport with wife, Diana, son Jackson, and daughters Julianna and Lydia, a senior at Camden High School.