Bert Berns to Receive Posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award at 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Ceremony

It was announced earlier today that songwriter Bert Berns will posthumously receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. The ceremony is set to take place on April 8th in Brooklyn.

Berns, whose life and music are the inspiration for the upcoming musical Piece of My Heart, is known as the co-writer of hits such as "Twist and Shout" and "Piece of My Heart." Lead Producers Merged Work Productions and Executive Producer Jack Thomas are aiming for a 2016 opening on Broadway.

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Featuring a book by Daniel Goldfarb, the stirring and legendary songbook of Bert Berns, and direction/choreography by Denis Jones, Piece of My Heart: The Bert Berns Story, opened Off-Broadway at the Irene Diamond Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center on July 21, 2014 for a limited engagement that was extended by popular demand before ending its run on September 14, 2014. The production recently held two industry readings this past February, featuring members of the original Off-Broadway cast.

Bert Berns, whose life is also the subject of the recently released book Here Comes the Night, was born in New York in 1929 and died tragically of a heart attack at just 38 years of age. But in his short career, Berns left an indelible mark on popular music; he made fifty-one pop chart singles in seven years and became one of the most successful songwriters of the 1960s. Piece of My Heart: The Bert Berns Story tells his remarkable story, once dubbed by Rolling Stone "one of the great untold stories of rock and roll," through his hit songs, which include "Twist and Shout," "Tell Him," "I Want Candy," "Hang On Sloopy," "Cry Baby," "Piece of My Heart," and many more. Berns is #64 on Rolling Stone's recently released list of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time.