All about the Actor
Two-time AUDELCO Award winner for “Best Director of a Musical,” Lee Summers is an American theatre, television, and film actor, singer, librettist, composer, director, educator and theatre producer, best known for Off Broadway’s From My Hometown. ¶ Summers’ “Ella, First Lady of Song,” conceived by Maurice Hines, and for which Summers is director and librettist won the 2022 AUDELCO Award for “Best Musical” along with four other 2022 category awards.
Producer
Lee Summers served as conceiver/co-writer/co-composer and lead producer for Off Broadway’s From My Hometown, which has been produced at over twelve regional theatres including the Madison Theatre at Molloy.
Director
Lee Summers is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, a national theoretical labor union. Presently, Summers serves as adjunct faculty at NYU’s Steinhardt Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions. After Tennessee State, Summers earned his BA from SUNY Empire State College and his MFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Reviews for Lee’s Musicals

Lee Summers performs a wonderful and refreshingly unique and endearing tribute to my Dad!
- Timolin Cole-Augustus

(From My Hometown)…captures the spirit of Hitsville USA…
- Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee

From My Hometown packs in more than 30 songs, including a tribute to the many “Three Man Groups” who paved the way for the breakthrough R&B, soul, funk and Motown acts.
- Examiner.com, Michigan

An Energetic and Effervescing Summer Sensation – the high octane musical FROM MY HOMETOWN.
- Broadway World.com, Houston

It’s a show that takes you to a musical time past, and the cast succeeds. It’s fun, fast-paced and well-sung.
- NUVO.net, Indianapolis

They’re throwing a party at the American Heartland Theatre. Every night. It’s called From My Hometown…
- The Kansas City Star, Kansas

FROM MY HOMETOWN is a success in virtually every department, largely because its creators have kept things streamlined and simple.
- nytheatre.com

Exuberant and so full of life! (The creators) deserve high praise for knowing what it takes to get an audience on a musical high.
- NY1

A marvelous trip down R&B memory lane … A great time at the theatre. There are too many fabulous songs to list them all; you have to go see it and experience the show!
- New York Amsterdam News

FROM MY HOMETOWN hustles faster than any show in New York … The appeal of the show is the chance to hear your favorite tunes sung just the way they sound on the radio. Make no mistake, together, the trio could bring down the house.
- Time Out New York

You’d have to be stone cold dead not to find yourself tapping your feet and ‘putting your hands together’ during the R&B numbers. HOMETOWN is a fun, rousing evening.
- Backstage

Scads of sweet music and a charismatic cast elevate FROM MY HOMETOWN … A selection of great old songs.
- New York Daily News

FROM MY HOMETOWN is similar to Billy Joel and Twyla Tharp’s Moving Out – except in this terrific show, the dancers and singers are the same people.
- New York Post

A high energy, low maintenance roof raiser. The feel-good pocket musical features three dynamite performers. This sassy, soulful show must not be allowed to skip town at the end of its all-too-brief run.
- Variety

Beginning at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, this paean to a more melodic time in popular music is a double dip into nostalgia. …A story of hope, struggle, friendship…ultimate triumph…
- New York Times (2004)

The song list glides through everything from “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” and “Sweet Georgia Brown” to selections from the “Songbook” albums Fitzgerald recorded celebrating great composers such as Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, and Rodgers and Hart.
- The Washington Post

The Funkentine Rapture is a delightful romp through an era and it’s music. Truly original, it evokes the spirit of Funk and Harlem of the 70’s as well as any jukebox musical ever could. In fact better. I highly recommend it.
- Kent Nicholson, Director of Acquisitions and New Works at Broadway Licensing

…Three incredibly talented young men, are on stage for 90 minutes delivering the most tantalizing music and dancing from the past and present. The setting is the Big Apple, mostly in and around the Apollo Theater. The band is as good as it gets…
- Liz Smith, NY Post

Lee Summers incorporation of the band being used as ensemble members was as brilliant as John Doyle using his Sweeney Todd ensemble as the pit orchestra. I was also moved by Lee’s brilliant timely direction of Ms. Payne’s performance of Hoagy Carmichael and Ned Washington’s “The Nearness of You”.
- Nicholas Pontolillo