Ceremony - SCL Award 2018 : Terence Blanchard and John Corigliano with the prestigious Ambassador Award

Par Mulder, 19 novembre 2018

The Society of Composers and Lyricists' Honors music icons’ Terence Blanchard and John Corigliano with the prestigious Ambassador Award in New York The SCL Holiday Gala on December 11th

The Society of Composers & Lyricists will honor composers Terence Blanchard and John Corigliano when they are each inducted as SCL Ambassadors. Also, legendary composer Elliot Lawrence will receive the SCL Award of Merit. The event will be held on Tuesday, December 11th at The NYIT Auditorium 1871 Broadway Avenue in New York City during the SCL annual holiday Gala. Past SCL Ambassador inductees include Dave Grusin, Burt Bacharach, David Shire, Johnny Mandel, Earl Hagen, James Newton Howard, Mike Post, Randy Newman, Alan Silvestri, Mark Isham, Paul Williams, Thomas Newton, Hal David and Diane Warren. A concerto highlighting some of the music of the honorees will also be included.

According to SCL President Ashley Irwin, “The SCL Ambassador Award was created to recognize and acknowledge a select group of composers and lyricists who have made significant contributions; through their creativity, our community would be lacking and without whose gift our society would be deprived of the wonderful music expressed by their expertise. Their achievements continue to set a high bar for future generations of media composers and songwriters.”

2018 USA Fellow and five-time Grammy-winning trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard has been a consistent artistic force for making powerful musical statements concerning painful American tragedies – past and present. From his expansive work composing the scores for Spike Lee films ranging from the documentary When the Levees Broke, about Blanchard’s hometown of New Orleans during the devastation from Hurricane Katrina to the epic Malcolm X; Inside Man starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster; 25th Hour (Golden Globe Nominee) starring Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman to the timely and latest Lee film, BlacKKKlansman, starring John David Washington, Adam Driver and Topher Grace, Blanchard has interwoven melodies that created strong backdrops to Lee’s stories.

Some of Blanchard’s other film credits include Black or White starring Kevin Costner and directed by Mike Binder; the Kasi Lemmons’ films, Talk to Me starring Don Cheadle and Chwitel Ejifor and Eve’s Bayou; George Lucas’ Red Tails; and Tim Story’s Barbershop. With his newest Blue Note jazz album, Live, Blanchard addresses the staggering cyclical epidemic of gun violence in this country. He delivers seven powerful songs recorded live in concert that both reflect the bitter frustration of the conscious masses while also providing a balm of emotional healing. With a title that carries a pointed double meaning, the album is an impassioned continuation of the band’s GRAMMY-nominated 2015 studio recording, Breathless.

Multi award-winning composer John Corigliano continues to add to one of the most widely celebrated bodies of over the last forty years. Corigliano received the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1999 for The Red Violin; other film scores include Altered States and Revolution. A prolific composer of concert music, including over one hundred chamber, vocal, choral, and orchestral works—have been performed and recorded by many of the most prominent orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians in the world. His 1991 opera Ghosts of Versailles was the Metropolitan Opera's first commission in three decades. He has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Grawemeyer Award, and four Grammy Awards. Corigliano serves on the composition faculty at the Juilliard School of Music and holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Music at Lehman College, City University of New York, which has established a scholarship in his name.

Elliot Lawrence is an American jazz pianist as well as a composer and conductor of film music. The son of broadcast pioneer Stan Lee Broza, he led his own big bands with such labels as Columbia and Decca until 1960. Afterwards he worked as a composer and musical director for approximately thirty films and numerous theatre productions on Broadway. He was twice nominated for Broadway's Tony Award as Best Conductor and Musical Director in 1961 for "Bye, Bye Birdie" and in 1962 for "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”

Among his many television credits, Elliot was the musical director and conductor for every Tony Award telecast from 1965 (its first year on T.V) to 2011. Other big gala shows include Night of the 100 Stars 1 (1982) and 2 (1985), the Bicentennial Celebration for the Statue of Liberty (1986 at Giants Stadium) and The Kennedy Center Honors (from 2000–2006C). Elliot's scoring credits include the television shows As The World Turns, Search for Tomorrow, and Edge of Night, as well as the feature film Network. As a musical director he has won 9 Emmy awards for musical direction and been nominated for many others.

The Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL) is a non-profit and primary organization for professional film, television, video game, and musical theater composers and lyricists, and those working in our industry such as orchestrators, arrangers, music supervisors, music agents, music attorneys, music editors, copyists, recording engineers, and related jobs, with a distinguished 70-year history in the fine art of creating music for visual media. Current SCL Members include the top creative professionals whose experience and expertise is focused on many of the creative, technological, legal, newsworthy and pressing issues of the film music, television music, game music, and musical theatre industry today.

For more information about the Society of Composers & Lyricists:
SCL website: www.TheSCL.com
Facebook: facebook.com/pages/The-Society-of-Composers-Lyricists/

(Source : press release)