Jillian Hicks

Biography

Jillian (Jill) Hicks is an emerging musical theater writer and multidisciplinary artist who studies in the Narrative Medicine graduate program at Columbia University. Jill is in the process of developing a new original full-length musical, THICKET OF HEARTS, which won an O'Neill National Music Theater Conference (NMTC) Semifinalist honor in 2024.

She has previously composed three exploratory musical storytelling works: HEART OF STATE, a teen rom-com demo soundtrack based on a concept by Rachel Syme (2021); QUIET AND SIRENS, a time-capsule song cycle recorded at home as a witness to cataclysm (2020); and THE MAGI, a song cycle inspired by James Tissot’s painting “Journey of the Magi” that premiered in Minneapolis (2017). In Minneapolis, Jill was also part of the University of Minnesota narrative psychology team that published research on psychosocial outcomes for digital storytellers. In New York, she studied with Freestyle Love Supreme Academy (now FLS+) and served as an improvisatory piano accompanist and performer for FLS+ online workshops.

One of the pursuits Jill has enjoyed most during the past few years is learning traditional animation to pair with her music. She has studied animation and visual storytelling with former Walt Disney animators Todd Bright and Hyrum Osmond and in 2023 won the third-place prize in the MerMay global animation challenge for her original short film and song "The Frog Zaddy." Jill is currently creating a series of hand-drawn animations to complement her original musical works.

Profile art by Madelyn Hernandez.