One Singular Sensation
Marvin Hamlisch is honored at 11th Annual ASCAP Foundation Awards at a sensational event in New York City
The ASCAP Foundation honored composer Marvin Hamlisch with the Richard Rodgers Award during its 11th Annual Awards Ceremony on December 6 at Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. The event, hosted by ASCAP President and Chairman and ASCAP Foundation President Marilyn Bergman, also honored a wide variety of scholarship and award recipients, all of whom benefit from programs of The ASCAP Foundation.
Hamlisch's award-winning musical career is marked both by diversity and substance. The recipient of three Academy Awards, a Tony, four Emmys, four Grammys and the Pulitzer Prize, Hamlisch has excelled in musical theatre, film and television music and writing for the Pop music charts. New York City native Hamlisch wrote the Academy Award-winning score for
The Way We Were, and with lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman, wrote the film's Oscar-winning title song. His third Academy Award was for his adaptation of Scott Joplin's ragtime music for the score of
The Sting. Hamlisch's performance of Joplin's "The Entertainer" from the soundtrack topped the charts. Hamlisch's Broadway musicals include
They're Playing Our Song (co-written with Carole Bayer Sager) and
A Chorus Line (cowritten with Ed Kleban). The Tony-winning
A Chorus Line was also honored with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The show's original run, from 1975 – 1990, lasted nearly 15 years and over 6000 performances. In November,
A Chorus Line returned to Broadway in a new production.
To celebrate the award to Hamlisch, were performances of Hamlisch songs from
The Sweet Smell of Success (Brian D'arcy James),
A Chorus Line (Liz Calloway) and
The Way We Were (Alan Bergman).
Another of the evening's major awards was the Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award, which recognizes emerging musical theatre talent. This year the award honored the lyricist/ composer team of Michael Korie and Scott Frankel, who are currently enjoying their first Broadway musical hit with
Grey Gardens. Christine Ebersole, who stars in the show, was on hand to help honor Korie and Frankel with a performance from the show.
Other performance highlights featured Robert Allen Award recipient Rosi Golan, Young Jazz Composer Award honorees Remy and Pascal Le Boeuf and 12-year-old Conrad Tao, who was among the youngest recipients of the 2006 Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.
