Singer-songwriter Shaina Taub was named winner of the 13th annual Fred Ebb Award, which is given each year to an outstanding musical theatre songwriter.
The award will be given November 27 by Tony Award winner Brian Stokes Mitchell in a private ceremony at the American Airlines Theatre in New York. The 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 award comes just weeks after Taub was named winner of the Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award for her songwriting. She previously won a Jonathan Larson Grant and the ASCAP Foundation Lucille and Jack Yellen Award.
Taub’s musical adaptations of Twelfth Night and As You Like It, both commissioned by The Public Theater, were seen on the Delacorte Theater stage as part of the Off-Broadway theatre’s Public Works initiative. As a performer, she was seen Off-Broadway in Hadestown and was a Lucille Lortel Award nominee for her role in the Off-Broadway staging of Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. She appeared as a co-star with Bill Irwin and Bill Shiner in their Off-Broadway show Old Hats, singing several of her comedy songs.
Taub’s concert work includes a Lincoln Center solo debut in the American Songbook series, as well as residencies at Ars Nova and Rockwood Music Hall. She has released two EPs and a full-length album titled Visitors, available at Shainataub.com.
Her songs have been performed by Audra McDonald at Carnegie Hall and Sutton Foster at Lincoln Center, and she wrote the theme song for Julie Andrews’ Netflix series Julie’s Greenroom, performed on the show by Sara Bareilles, as well as several songs for “Sesame Street.” She has received fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo and the Sundance Institute. She’s currently writing a new musical about Alice Paul and the American women's suffrage movement.
The award is named in honor of the late, award-winning lyricist Fred Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago, The Rink, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Visit). The $60,000 award from the The Fred Ebb Foundation is funded by royalties from Ebb’s catalogue of work. In addition to the monetary award, the Fred Ebb Foundation will produce a one-night-only showcase of the winners’ work. Each year, the Foundation also makes a donation to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
Past winners include John Bucchino (2005), Steve Lutvak and Robert L. Freedman (2006), Peter Mills (2007), Adam Gwon (2008), Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich (2009), Douglas C. Cohen (2010) ,Jeff Blumenkrantz (2011), Sam Willmott (2012), Michael Kooman and Christopher Dimond (2013), and Burnt Part Boys and Tuck Everlasting collaborators Chris Miller and Nathan Tysen (2014), Stacey Luftig and Phillip Palmer (2015), and Thomas Mizer and Curtis Moore (2016).
Brian Stokes Mitchell has been a special guest performer on Playbill’s Broadway on the High Seas cruises. Cabins are available for Playbill’s Broadway on the High Seas July 2018 cruise to Iceland, accompanied by Judy Kuhn, Christine Ebersole, Rob McClure, Jarrod Spector, Carmen Cusack, and Sierra Boggess.
Visit PlaybillTravel.com for booking and information.
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