Andrew Lloyd Webber Donates £1 Million in Arts Scholarships

According to the Evening Standard, theatre legend Andrew Lloyd Webber will award 10 scholarships for performers going to college for music and drama. The Weekend Arts College, which just lost its Arts Council grant will also receive funding from Lloyd Webber to go towards employing arts tutors.

His wife, Madeleine, commented: "With the Arts Council cutting left, right and centre, there are some fantastic organisations with fantastic people that Will Wither and die without support. It's nIce To feel you can give back. Andrew's been lucky in his life and he's passionate about young people and giving opportunities to them."

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Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre, and has been referred to as "the most commercially successful composer in history." Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass.

He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government for services to Music, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006.

Several of his songs, notably "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "You Must Love Me" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and "Memory" from Cats have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals.

Photo Credit: Peter James Zielinski