The award is presented by Tony nominees and Broadway couple Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley at a by-invitation-only ceremony in the Penthouse Lounge of The American Airlines Theatre.
The Fred Ebb Award, according to press notes, 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.” In addition to the $60,000 monetary prize, the Fred Ebb Foundation will also produce a one-night-only showcase of the winners’ work.
Past winners include John Bucchino (2005), Steve Lutvak and Robert L. Freedman (2006), Peter Mills (2007), Adam Gwon (2008), Marcy Heisler & Zina Goldrich (2009), Douglas C. Cohen (2010), Jeff Blumenkrantz (2011), Sam Willmott (2012), Michael Kooman and Christopher Dimond (2013), Chris Miller and Nathan Tysen (2014), and Stacey Luftig and Phillip Palmer (2015).
The selection panel comprised Foundation Trustee Mitchell S. Bernard; actor Andréa Burns; actor Brandon Victor Dixon; lyricist, writer, and composer Sheldon Harnick; music director David Loud; and theatre producer Arthur Whitelaw. Each year, the Foundation also makes a donation to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
Thomas Mizer and Curtis Moore are a music theatre writing team whose romantic mystery Triangle was originally commissioned by the Williamstown Theater Festival and premiered in 2015 at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley. It went on to receive six Theatre Bay Area Awards, including Outstanding World Premiere Musical. Their other stage collaborations include The Legend of Stagecoach Mary (NAMT Festival of New Musicals), The Bus to Buenos Aires (Ensemble Studio Theatre) and, with collaborators Amanda Green and Matthew Brookshire, For the Love of Tiffany (New York Fringe Festival). Recipients of a Jonathan Larson Grant from the American Theatre Wing, Mizer and Moore have been artists in residence at The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, The Johnny Mercer Writers Colony at Goodspeed Musicals, and the American Music Theatre Project at their alma mater, Northwestern University.
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