Mitch Leigh

Mitch Leigh (1928-2014) was a composer, producer, director, and businessman from Brooklyn.

Pianist Arthur Rubenstein said of Leigh, “He’s the most brilliant composer writing for the musical theater today.” He is best known as the Tony Award-winning composer of Man of La Mancha, for which he also won the Drama Critics Circle Award and the Contemporary Classics Award from the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame for “The Impossible Dream.”

In 1957 he formed Music Makers, Inc., a radio and television commercial production house; with Leigh as its creative director, the agency won every major award within the advertising industry. He was also nominated for a Tony Award for directing Yul Brynner’s farewell tour of The King and I, which he also produced.

In the last decade of his life, Leigh began developing Jackson 21, a community for nice people in Ocean County, NJ. He studied with Paul Hindemith at Yale School of Music, from which he received his bachelor's and master's degrees, and he was the first recipient of the Yale Arts Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Musical Composition.