Society Of Composers & Lyricists To Present Awards To Giorgio Moroder, Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, and More

The Society of Composers & Lyricists will award legendary composer and producer Giorgio Moroder with its prestigious 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award and posthumously induct into the SCL Hall of Fame composers Hoyt Curtin and Carl Stalling, both architects of the best-loved, iconic music in the most popular cartoons and animated films.

EGOT-winning songwriters Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, and Emmy-winning Jeff Beal will also be presented with 2024 SCL Ambassador Awards. Emmy-winning film and TV composer Brian D. Siewert has also been named the recipient of the SCL's 2024 Trailblazer Award.

The awards presentations and inductions will take place as part of the SCL's upcoming holiday events in New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville. The annual celebrations are held by the SCL to celebrate its members' achievements and honor outstanding composers and songwriters.

In making the announcements, Ashley Irwin, President of the SCL, said: "The SCL Lifetime Achievement Award and these other special honors were created to recognize and acknowledge a select group of music creators with significant contributions to our profession and music community. Their achievements will be used as the ultimate standard for future generations of media composers and songwriters."

Past SCL Lifetime Achievement Award honorees include Quincy Jones, Danny Elfman, Bill Conti, Lalo Schifrin, Philip Glass, Alan Menken, and Ginny Mancini.

Composers and lyricists are inducted into the SCL Hall of Fame posthumously. Leonard Bernstein and Pete Carpenter were last year's SCL Hall of Fame inductees.

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

The SCL Trailblazer Award was created to recognize and acknowledge a select group of composers and lyricists whose valuable contributions have pioneered scoring for film, television, and other visual media in Nashville, and without whose creativity our community would be deprived of the wonderful music and song expressed by their expertise. Last year's inaugural SCL Trailblazer Award recipient was Paul Mills.

Legendary award-winning Italian composer, songwriter, and producer Giorgio Moroder is the founder of disco and an electronic music trailblazer behind some of the most popular film scores and hit songs, including Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby," "Hot Stuff" and "I Feel Love." In his career of more than six decades, Moroder has worked with superstars such as Barbra Streisand, Elton John, Cher, Roger Daltrey, Janet Jackson, Freddy Mercury, David Bowie, Chaka Khan, Cheap Trick, and Pat Benatar. He is responsible for composing some of the most unforgettable scores including Scarface and Midnight Express, timeless songs for film soundtracks such as "Take My Breath Away" (Top Gun), Irene Cara's "Flashdance," Blondie's "Call Me" (American Gigolo), Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone" (Top Gun), and David Bowie's "Putting Out the Fire" (Cat People), and compositions on films such as The NeverEnding Story, Superman III, Rambo III, and Beverly Hills Cop II. Moroder has accumulated three Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, four GRAMMYs, more than 100 gold and platinum records, and was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame in 2004. His collaboration with Daft Punk on "Giorgio by Moroder" from their GRAMMY-winning Random Access Memories (Album of the Year) garnered Moroder his 3rd GRAMMY. His 2015 album Deja Vu (Sony/RCA) reached No.1 in the US. Moroder also notably wrote the songs "Reach Out" for the 1984 Olympics, "Hand in Hand" for the 1988 Olympics, "Un Estate Italiana" for the 1990 Soccer World Cup in Italy, and "Forever Friends" for the 2008 Summer Olympics. At 84 years old, he continues to tour and inspire audiences worldwide.

American composer Hoyt Curtin is the genius behind unforgettable, iconic themes for classic Hanna Barbera series such as The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Josie and the Pussycats, Scooby-Doo, Jonny Quest, and The Smurfs. With a knack for creating catchy, singable tunes, he served as music director of Hanna-Barbera from 1957 to 1965 and again from 1972 until his retirement in 1989. As former president of animation at Warner Bros. Jean MacCurdy once said, Curtin's themes were "something almost anyone on the street could sing at the drop of a hat." The fact that the Flintstones' theme has been sampled over 50 times proves that Curtin's work has stood the test of time, remaining memorable and culturally relevant today.

The late American composer and arranger Carl Stalling created music for more than 600 animated films, including masterpiece scores for Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940), and Fantasia (1940, and Warner Bros. popular cartoon series Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. As music director at Warner Bros., his impact on the studio's early achievements is immeasurable. Working with directors Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson, and Chuck Jones, Stalling developed the Looney Tunes style of very rapid and tightly coordinated musical cues, punctuated with both instrumental and recorded sound effects, and occasionally reaching into full-blown musical fantasies such as The Rabbit of Seville and A Corny Concerto.

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 music for documentaries such as 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's House of Cards, and AppleTV+'s Raymond & Ray have shown him to be one of the most distinctive and recognizable composers today. In addition to his distinguished scoring career, Beal is a prolific composer of concert music, with commissioned works that include "The Paper-Lined Shack" for Leonard Slatkin, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and soprano Hila Plitmann, "Sunrise" for The Los Angeles Master Chorale, a flute concerto for Sharon Bezaly / Minnesota Orchestra, and "Body in Motion," a violin concerto for Kelly Hall-Tompkins. He led the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center for the premiere of House of Cards in Concert. The 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 recording, "New York Études," a collection of solo piano works, has more than 3 million streams on Apple Classical.

Benj Pasek and Justin Paul are the Oscar, GRAMMY, Tony, and Emmy Award-winning team, who recently achieved EGOT status with their Emmy win (alongside collaborators Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman) for Outstanding Original Music for the song "Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It" from Hulu's hit series Only Murders in the Building. As composers and songwriter/producers, they are best known for their work on the films La La Land, The Greatest Showman, and the musical Dear Evan Hansen, each of which also spawned albums that went Top 10 on the Billboard 200, including multiple weeks at #1 for the 2018 "The Greatest Showman (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)." Their song "City of Stars" (co-written with Justin Hurwitz) from La La Land won both the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Song. They won their second Golden Globe for "This Is Me" from The Greatest Showman and won a GRAMMY for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media. For Dear Evan Hansen, they received an Obie Award, a Drama Desk Award, an Olivier Award, a GRAMMY Award, and the Tony for Best Score. They also received a Tony for Best Musical as co-producers of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical A Strange Loop. Other credits include Spirited (Apple), Lyle, Lyle Crocodile (Sony), Aladdin (Disney), and Trolls (DreamWorks Animation), among others.

Brian D. Siewert is a prolific music and television composer who served as principal composer/songwriter/music producer for the longest-running drama in television history, CBS's Guiding Light, and As the World Turns, NBC's Another World, and Aaron Spelling's Sunset Beach. He earned 24 Emmy Award nominations and took home four Emmy wins. Drawing the attention of Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres, he served as a composer for their popular talk shows. A recipient of multiple BMI and ASCAP Film and TV Music awards for "Most Performed Theme and Underscore," it is estimated that Siewert has scored more than 5,000 hours of network TV syndicated to millions of global viewers. In 2007, he established the "Brian D. Siewert Artist In Motion" Scholarship at his alma mater, Lakeshore High School in Stevensville, MI, where he was the 2008 recipient of their Distinguished Alumni Award. The annual scholarship grants higher learning tuition support and ongoing mentorship to a graduating senior in any arts field.

The Society of Composers & 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 76-year history in the fine art of creating music for visual media. Current SCL Members include the top creative professionals whose experience and expertise are 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

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