Photo Coverage: ASCAP Foundation Honors Stephen Schwartz with Richard Rodgers Award

The ASCAP Foundation honored composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz for his lifetime contributions to the Musical Theater with The ASCAP Foundation Richard Rodgers Award. On hand to make the presentation was Richard Rodgers’ grandson and fellow musical theater composer Adam Guettel (The Light in the Piazza). The accolade was presented today during the Foundation's 16th Annual Awards Ceremony, held at the Allen Room, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, in New York City. The invitation-only event, hosted by ASCAP Foundation President Paul Williams, also honored a wide variety of Scholarship and Award recipients, all of whom benefit from programs of The ASCAP Foundation.

Over the course of a four-decade career, New York native Stephen Schwartz has created a major body of musical theater works, including Godspell, Pippin, The Magic Show, The Baker’s Wife and the current, long-running hit, Wicked. Schwartz, the recipient of multiple Oscar and Grammy Awards and a Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, has also contributed lyrics to the scores of the films The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Pocahontas, and both music and lyrics to Prince of Egypt and Enchanted. He is also notable as the Artistic Director of the acclaimed ASCAP Foundation/Disney Musical Theater Workshop since 1994.

Other participants in this evening’s tribute to Schwartz were cabaret and Broadway stars Judy Kuhn and Scott Coulter, both of whom performed Schwartz songs.

Four newly named ASCAP Foundation scholarship and/or award programs have been established in 2011 and the beneficiaries of each new program were honored at the December 7 event. The new programs include: The ASCAP Foundation “Reach Out and Touch” Award in honor of Nick Ashford to provide promising songwriters with financial assistance for professional recordings of their original songs; The ASCAP Foundation Freddy Bienstock Scholarship & Internship which provides the opportunity for a music business student interested in music publishing to intern at a major publishing company; The ASCAP Foundation Mary Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Award, presented to an ASCAP member who is a promising musical theater lyricist or to a composer/lyricist team; and The ASCAP Foundation Louis Prima Award which is presented to a talented vocalist or musician attending the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts.

Photo Credit: Stephen Sorokoff