Society of Composers & Lyricists To Present Benj Pasek, Justin Paul and Jeff Beal With The Ambassador Award

The Society of Composers & Lyricists has announced songwriters Benj Pasek & Justin Paul ("La La Land," "Greatest Showman," "Dear Evan Hansen") and Composer Jeff Beal ("Pollock," "House of Cards," "Monk") as the 2024 recipients of the prestigious Ambassador Award:

The Ambassador recipients will receive their respective honor at the SCL New York Holiday Party on December 4th.

Past SCL Ambassador Award recipients include Dave Grusin, Wayne Kirkpatrick, Thomas Newman, Burt Bacharach, David Shire, Marcelo Zarvos, Johnny Mandel, Earl Hagen, James Newton Howard, Leiber and Stoller, Alan Silvestri, Randy Newman, and Hal David.

Ashley Irwin, President of the SCL says of the SCL Ambassador Award: "The Ambassador Award was created to recognize and acknowledge music creators who have made significant and valuable contributions to our profession and our music community. Their achievements will be used as the ultimate standard for future generations of media composers and songwriters."

In the coming months, The SCL will announce the recipients of the Trailblazer Award in Nashville on December 7th and the Lifetime Achievement Award in Los Angeles on December 11th. The holiday Celebrations are held by the SCL annually to celebrate SCL members' achievements and to honor outstanding composers and songwriters, featuring special presentations and performances.

About Benj Pasek and Justin Paul

Currently Emmy-nominated for the original song "Which Of the Pickwick Triplets Did It" from "Only Murders in the Building," the Oscar, Grammy, and Tony Award-winning songwriters/producers  Benj Pasek & Justin Paul are best known for their work on "La La Land," "The Greatest Showman" and "Dear Evan Hansen," each of which spawned albums that landed in the Top 10 on the Billboard 200, including multiple weeks at #1 for "The Greatest Showman," which in 2018 was the world's best-selling album. Their song "City of Stars" (co-written with Justin Hurwitz) from "La La Land" won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Song, with "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)" from the film also nominated for the Academy Award in the same category. They won their second Golden Globe for "This Is Me" (Academy Award and Grammy Award nominations) from "The Greatest Showman," for which they won the Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media. The stage adaptation of the hit musical film is currently in development at Disney. For their original musical Dear Evan Hansen, they received an Obie Award, a Drama Desk Award, an Olivier Award, a Grammy Award, and the Tony Award for Best Score.

Onscreen, they most recently wrote the songs and served as consulting producers for the critically acclaimed, musical-themed third season of Hulu's "Only Murders in the Building." Alongside collaborators Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman, they were nominated for a 2024 Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for the song "Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It," performed by Steve Martin. They also collaborated with Sara Bareilles and Michael R. Jackson on songs for the hit series.

Other screen credits include Apple's original live-action musical "Spirited," Sony's live-action hybrid musical "Lyle, Lyle Crocodile," Disney's live-action "Aladdin," Dreamworks Animation's "Trolls," Amazon's comedy series "Harlem," Apple TV+'s "Dear Edward," NBC's "Smash," The CW's musical episode of "The Flash," the Amazon concert documentary "Pink: All I Know So Far" (Grammy nomination) and FX's sports documentary television series, "Welcome to Wrexham."

Benj and Justin were awarded a Tony Award for Best Musical as co-producers of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical "A Strange Loop." They made their Broadway composing debut with their Tony-nominated score for "A Christmas Story," an adaptation of the classic holiday film, further adapted into a live telecast for Fox, for which they wrote the new song "In the Market for a Miracle" (Emmy nomination). Their early theater work includes the acclaimed musical "Dogfight" (Lucille Lortel Award for Best New Musical); the children's musical "James and the Giant Peach;" and the popular song cycle "Edges." Among their numerous honors, they became the youngest winners ever of the Jonathan Larson Award and the first writers for stage or screen to be honored with the ASCAP Vanguard Award.

About Jeff Beal

Five-time EMMY winner Jeff Beal's improvisatory method, sense of timing, and sophistication have made him a favorite of directors including Ed Harris ("Pollock" and "Appaloosa"), David Fincher ("House of Cards"), Oliver Stone ("JFK Revisited," "The Putin Interviews"), Lauren Greenfeld (The Queen of Versailles", "Generation Wealth.") and Rob Reiner ("Shock and Awe"). His work on documentaries "Blackfish," "The Biggest Little Farm," Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Sequel," "Athlete A," Frank Marshall's "Rather" and dramatic scores for HBO's "Rome," "Carnivàle," "The Newsroom," USA's "Monk," Netflix "House of Cards," AppleTV+'s "Raymond & Ray" have shown him to be one of the most distinctive and recognizable composers working today. His latest film "Can You Hear Me?" is expected to be released in the fall.

In addition to his distinguished scoring career, Beal is a prolific composer of concert music. Recent commissioned works include "The Paper-Lined Shack" for Leonard Slatkin, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and soprano Hila Plitmann, "Sunrise" for the The Los Angeles Master Chorale, A flute concerto for Sharon Bezaly / Minnesota Orchestra, and "Body in Motion", a violin concerto for Kelly Hall-Tompkins.

Beal's performing, conducting, and composing worlds converged in 2016 when he led the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in the premiere of "House of Cards in Concert," with further performances in Miami, Denmark, The Netherlands (Concertgebouw) and Jerusalem. This symphonic work was recorded by BIS Records on the double SACD "House of Cards Symphony," which includes Beal's flute and guitar concerti, all conducted by the composer.

His latest recording, New York Etudes, is a collection of solo piano works, and has already had 3 million streams on Apple Classical. Beal was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2006, and these compositions focus on the connection of music making, wellness and mindfulness. He has been featured on NPR, and BBC3 Radio performing and discussing the works, and has been named an official Steinway artist.

Beal has also conducted The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in his original score for Keaton's silent film "The General," and the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the film score of "Boston," as well as the Boston Pops Esplanade for the live-to-picture premiere of "Boston." In March of 2019 he led the Qatar National Symphony in the world premiere of his work "The Radiant Pearl," commissioned for the opening of the Qatar Museum in Doha. He also led the Rochester Philharmonic and Eastman Philharmonia in the world premiere of an antiphonal orchestral work "The Cathedral," in honor of the centennial of the Eastman Theater. Beal gave his Carnegie Hall Debut in June leading the Silver Nitrate Big Band and Fourth Wall in a concert of his score to "The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari." - presented as a part of Carnegie Hall's 2024 Weimar Festival.

Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Beal's grandmother was a pianist and accompanist for silent movies. An avid jazz fan, she gave him Miles Davis'/Gil Evans' Sketches of Spain album that would influence his development as a jazz trumpet player and composer. In addition to studying both classical and jazz trumpet, Jeff was a self-taught pianist and spent countless hours in the library learning music theory and composition on his own. Encouraged by conductor Kent Nagano, Jeff composed a trumpet concerto at age 17, which he performed with the Oakland Youth Symphony, as well as a number of large ensemble jazz charts that are still in publication today.

It would be across the country at the Eastman School of Music that Jeff would discover both his musical voice, as a student of Christopher Rouse and Rayburn Wright, and the love of his life, soprano Joan Sapiro Beal, who frequently performs his music. In 2015, the couple donated funds for the creation of The Beal Institute for Film Music and Contemporary Media at Eastman. The Beals have also donated to fund the collaborative Music and Medicine initiative at the University of Rochester, having experienced the impact of music on health in their own lives. He lives in New York City.

About The Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL)

The Society of Composers and Lyricists is a non-profit and primary organization for professional film, television, video game, and musical theater composers and lyricists, and those working in our industry such as orchestrators, arrangers, music supervisors, music agents, music attorneys, music editors, copyists, recording engineers, and related jobs, with a distinguished, nearly 75-year history in the fine art of creating music for visual media. Current SCL Members include the top creative professionals whose experience and expertise is focused on many of the creative, technological, legal, newsworthy and pressing issues of the film music, television music, game music, and musical theatre industry today.

For more information visit: www.TheSCL.com