17th Annual Fred Ebb Award Recipients Announced

The Fred Ebb Foundation will present the seventeenth annual Fred Ebb Award for aspiring musical theatre songwriters to the team of Isabella Dawis & Tidtaya Sinutoke. The award, named in honor of the late award-winning lyricist Fred Ebb, will be presented on Monday January 3rd, 2022, at a by-invitation-only ceremony at Birdland Jazz Club. Additional details about the event will be announced at a later date.

The Fred Ebb Award recognizes excellence in musical theatre songwriting, by a songwriter or songwriting team that has not yet achieved significant commercial success. The award is meant to encourage and support aspiring songwriters to create new works for the musical theatre. The prize includes a $60,000 award. The Fred Ebb Foundation is funded by royalties from Mr. Ebb's vast catalogue of work. Past winners include John Bucchino (2005), Steve Lutvak & Robert L. Freedman (2006), Peter Mills (2007), Adam Gwon (2008), Marcy Heisler & Zina Goldrich (2009), Douglas J. Cohen (2010), Jeff Blumenkrantz (2011), Sam Willmott (2012), Michael Kooman & Christopher Dimond (2013), Chris Miller & Nathan Tysen (2014), Stacey Luftig & Phillip Palmer (2015), Thomas Mizer & Curtis Moore (2016), Shaina Taub (2017), Will Reynolds & Eric Price (2018), Angela Sclafani and Benjamin Velez (2019), and Ben Bonnema & Christopher Staskel and Michael R. Jackson (2020).

The selection panel is comprised of Foundation Trustee Mitchell S. Bernard, actress Ann Harada, music director David Loud, and actress Amy Spanger. Each year, the Foundation also makes a donation to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

ISABELLA DAWIS is a Filipina-American playwright and performer. As a librettist, she currently holds a 2021-23 Composers and the Voice Fellowship with the American Opera Project. Her work with composer Tidtaya Sinutoke includes Half the Sky (Weston-Ghostlight New Musical Award, 5th Avenue Theatre Digital Radio Play/First Draft Commission, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Theater Mu's New Eyes Festival, Theater Latté Da's NEXT Festival, Richard Rodgers Award Finalist, O'Neill NMTC Finalist) and Sunwatcher (The Civilians' R&D Group, Goodspeed's Johnny Mercer Writers Grove, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater Global Forms Festival, Ancram Opera House Summer Play Lab, Tofte Lake Center's National Emerging Artists Program). Isabella was a 2019-2020 Rockwell Scholar at the Primary Stages Einhorn School of Performing Arts. Her writing has also been featured/supported by the Kurt Weill Foundation's Lotte Lenya Competition Songbook, Musical Theatre Factory, 24 Hour Viral Musicals, New York Theatre Barn, Coalition of Asian American Leaders, Broadway Buskers, Central Square Theater, the Skeleton Rep, and the Schubert Club. As a singer and actor, Isabella has performed with Theater Mu (peerless, opposite sister Francesca), the Center for Contemporary Opera (Sweat), the New York Philharmonic Biennial (soprano soloist), the Minnesota Opera, and more. She holds a B.M. summa cum laude in piano performance from the University of Minnesota, with additional vocal study at New England Conservatory. isabelladawis.com

Tidtaya Sinutoke is a Thai musical theatre composer, writer, and musician based in New York City. Originally from Thailand, educated and living in America, her music reflects a life-long multicultural journey. Her writing celebrates Asian/-American women and immigrant stories, through combining contemporary musical theatre sounds with traditional world music tonality. Composition credits include Half the Sky (The 5th Avenue Theatre's First Draft Commission & 20/21 Digital Season); Sunwatcher (The Civilians R&D Group, Ancram Opera House Play Lab, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater Global Forms Festival); and Dear Mr. C (NYFA's City Artist Corps Grant). She was awarded the 2017 Jonathan Larson Grant, the 2020 Weston-Ghostlight New Musical Award, the 2020 Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award, the 2021-2023 Composers and the Voice Fellowship with the American Opera Project, and the Playwrights Realm's 2021 International Theatermakers Award. Her works have been supported by the Composer-Librettist Studio at New Dramatists, Yale Institute for Music Theatre, Robert Rauschenberg Residency, EtM Con Edison Composer-in-Residence, Drama League, Tofte Lake Center, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, and the Kurt Weill Foundation. A proud member of ASCAP, the Dramatists Guild, Maestra, MUSE, and Thai Theatre Foundation. BM: Berklee College of Music; MFA: NYU. tidtayasinutoke.com

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