19th Annual Fred Ebb Award To Be Presented To Freya Catrin Smith & Jack Williams

The Fred Ebb Foundation (Mitchell S. Bernard, Trustee) in association with the Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, President/CEO, in memoriam; Scott Ellis, Interim Artistic Director) will present the nineteenth annual Fred Ebb Award for aspiring musical theatre songwriters to the team of Freya Catrin Smith & Jack Williams.

The award, named in honor of the late award-winning lyricist Fred Ebb, will be presented by Bebe Neuwirth on Monday November 27th from 6-8pm at a by-invitation-only ceremony in the Penthouse Lounge of The American Airlines Theater.

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); Ben Bonnema & Christopher Staskel and Michael R. Jackson (2020); Isabella Dawis & Tidtaya Sinutoke (2021); and Julia Riew (2022).

The selection panel is comprised of Foundation Trustee Mitchell S. Bernard, actor Adam Chanler-Berat, music director David Loud, and actor Meghan Picerno. Each year, the Foundation also makes a donation to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

Freya Catrin Smith and Jack Williams are award-winning British musical theatre writers. They met at school and have been collaborating since their teenage years. Freya studied English Language and Literature at Oxford university and Jack read Law at Durham University. They both have a master's degree in Musical Theatre Composition from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Their award-winning musical RIDE (about round-the-world cyclist Annie Londonderry) will have its American premiere at The Old Globe in March 2024. RIDE was nominated for Best Musical Theatre Book Writing at the 2022 UK Writers Guild Awards, and for Best Off West End Production at the 2023 WhatsOnStage Awards. During its first outing at VAULT Festival in 2020, RIDE won the Origins Award for Outstanding New Work. 

Jack and Freya were joint winners of The Chamber Musical Prize developed by Adam Lenson & Katy Lipson and are currently developing new musical ECHOES with them. Jack and Freya have been finalists for the Cameron Mackintosh Composer Residency, the Stiles and Drewe Best New Song Prize, and the MTI Mentorship Award. In 2021, Freya was awarded a prestigious MGC Futures Bursary to develop new work.

Writing credits: RIDE (Leicester Curve & Southwark Playhouse 2023, Charing Cross Theatre 2022, the Garrick Theatre West End 2021, the VAULT Festival 2020 [award-winner]); THE LIMIT (winner of VAULT Festival's People's Choice Award and Origins Award for Outstanding New Work 2019); and song-cycle PART A (Edinburgh Fringe sell-out show). Their work has been performed at UK venues including The Garrick, The Other Palace, The Roundhouse and The Leicester Square Theatre, and developed with London drama schools including The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and ArtsEd.

As a writer, lyricist, composer and director, Fred Ebb made incalculable contributions to the New York theatrical community. Mr. Ebb is a Tony, Grammy, Emmy, Olivier and Kennedy Center Honors Lifetime Achievement Award winning recipient. Fred Ebb's first professional songwriting assignment came in 1953 when he and Phil Springer were hired by Columbia Records to write a song for Judy Garland called "Heartbroken." Mr. Ebb was introduced to composer John Kander in 1964 by music publisher Tommy Valando and became one of the most legendary songwriting teams in American history. The first successful collaboration was on the song "My Coloring Book," recorded by Barbra Streisand. Their second theatrical collaboration, Flora, the Red Menace, created a star out of Liza Minnelli in her Tony Award-winning Broadway debut. In 1966, their collaboration Cabaret, opened and received seven Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Score. A 1972 movie version of Cabaret starring Liza Minnelli was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won eight awards and was nominated for nine Golden Globe Awards and won three including Best Picture, Musical or Comedy. The same year, the songwriting team wrote a number of songs for Minnelli's television special "Liza With a Z," which received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Program - Variety or Popular Music. In 1975, the two wrote the Broadway musical Chicago, directed by Bob Fosse and starring Gwen Verdon, Chita Rivera and Jerry Orbach. The musical was successfully revived 20 years later at City Center ENCORES! and subsequently transferred to Broadway where it is currently the longest running revival in Broadway history. In 1977, the team collaborated with Martin Scorsese on the movie New York, New York; the title song was introduced by Minnelli and later recorded by Frank Sinatra becoming the unofficial theme song of New York City. The Minnelli Broadway vehicle The Act also opened that year. After a four-year absence, Mr. Ebb and Mr. Kander returned with Woman of the Year (1981), The Rink (1984), Kiss of the Spiderwoman (1985) and Steel Pier (1997). They were honored by the Kennedy Center with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. Miramax's 2002 feature film Chicago was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and won six, including Best Picture and was nominated for eight Golden Globe Awards and won three, including Best Picture, Musical or Comedy.

At the time of Mr. Ebb's passing, he and Mr. Kander were at work on several new musicals. Curtains, starring David Hyde Pierce and Debra Monk, debuted at CTG/Ahmanson Theatre in 2006 and came to Broadway in 2007, receiving a Tony nomination for Best Musical as well as a Best Score nomination for Kander & Ebb. In 2007, All About Us was staged at the Westport Country Playhouse. The Scottsboro Boys opened on Broadway in 2010 and received 12 Tony nominations, including Best Musical and Best Score, and in 2016 concluded a run in the West End at the Garrick Theatre. Rob Marshall and Sam Mendes's Tony Award-winning production of Cabaret returned to Broadway in 2014, with Alan Cumming reprising his role as the Emcee and Three-time Academy Award nominee Michelle Williams in her Broadway debut as Sally Bowles. The Visit, starring Chita Rivera and George Hearn, received a staging at DC's Signature Theatre in 2008, a concert staging in NYC in the fall of 2011, and a production in Williamstown, starring Chita Rivera and Roger Rees and directed by John Doyle. In the spring of 2015, The Visit opened on Broadway and received five Tony nominations, including Best Musical and Best Score for Kander & Ebb. New York, New York, the brand-new musical featuring a new score by John Kander and Fred Ebb, an original story by David Thompson and Sharon Washington, additional lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and choreography and direction by Susan Stroman, opened on Broadway in the spring of 2023 and received nine Tony Award nominations. Spring 2024 will bring a new Broadway production of Cabaret, directed by Rebecca Frecknall.

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