The Board of Trustees of the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation have announced that this year awards will be presented to eight individual artists and one organization:  Matt Gould, Melissa Li and Abe Rybeck, Robert Maddock, J. Oconer Navarro, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and Mike Pettry are each recipients of an individual artist award, as well as an unrestricted cash gift ranging from $3,000 to $12,000.  St. Ann’s Warehouse is the recipient of an organization award in support of a musical theatre project in development (Must Don’t Whip ‘Um by previous individual winner Cynthia Hopkins).

The awards were presented at a luncheon at the 21 Club on Thursday, February 15, 2007.  This year’s event, sponsored in part by Adelphi University, the Law Offices of Joe Gagliano, and Music Theatre International, included performances of songs written by last year recipients Andrew Gerle and Eddie Sugarman, Lance Horne, Joe Iconis, Alison Loeb, Brian Lowdermilk and Kait Kerrigan, and Brendan Milburn and Valerie Vigoda.  Performers scheduled to take part in the presentation include Celia Keenan-Bolger, Michael Craig, Julie Danao-Salkin, Kristin Maloney, Amy Spanger, and Michael Winther.

This year’s recipients were selected from over 200 applicants.  Applications were judged with the assistance of a panel comprised of distinguished theatre professionals Tina Landau, David Loud, Stephen Schwartz, and Tim Weil.  The awards were selected on the basis of merit and need, with particular attention to a unique voice and a dedication to the performing arts profession.

Composer/Lyricist MATT GOULD received his BFA from Boston University and served two years in the Peace Corps where he founded an all-female theatre troupe in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. Matt has composed, written and collaborated on several original musical plays including his one-man show Mamadou, Desire: The Epic Fornication, and the Mauritanian national tour of Romeo and Juliet in Pulaar.

Composer/Lyricist/Bookwriter team MELISSA LI and ABE RYBECK met through The Theater Offensive's True Colors Out Youth Theater Troupe. Melissa, a 23-year-old singer/songwriter who has performed all over the Greater Boston area, is also a prolific filmmaker. Abe has created Pure PolyESTHER: a biblical burlesque and Blame it on the Big Banana.  He is the founding Artistic Director of The Theater Offensive, New England’s leading gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender theatre company, where Surviving the Nian, their collaborative work, will be produced. 

Lyricist ROBERT MADDOCK earned his MFA at NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program and his BA in English from BYU Hawaii. He is a recipient of a 2006 Daryl Roth Award for his musical PLASTIC!—a nerd-rock spectacular about a one-armed kleptomaniac and a buxom superstar (music by Joe Iconis and Reza Jacobs).  Other projects include Triumphant Baby and Women on Fire, a song-cycle that celebrates ladies, diet pills, and firearms. Additionally, Maddock is working with Iconis as the co-author of The Black Suits, in development with MCC Theater. Aside from his theatre ventures, Maddock has written a novel, “Clouds of Benjamin”, and is also an aspiring illustrator.

Composer J. OCONER NAVARRO recently earned his MFA from the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU, where he was the 2005 recipient of the Paulette Goddard Award.  His musical, Awakening (words by Joel B. New), is being further developed with Margo Lion, Ltd.  Jay has served in the music department of numerous NYC productions including Avenue Q, Mary Poppins, Ricky Ian Gordon’s Art/Song/Dance, Curtains, and The Flamingo Kid.  Regionally, he was music director for Travels With My Discontent at Barrington Stage Company, directed by William Finn.

Composer/Lyricist team BENJ PASEK and JUSTIN PAUL began their collaboration as freshmen at the University of Michigan and completed their BFA degrees in musical theatre in 2006.  Their revue Edges has been performed across the country and is now available for licensing through Music Theatre International. Pasek and Paul are writers for the Disney Channel television series “Johnny and the Sprites” and contributed music to Off-Broadway’s upcoming White Noise [A Cautionary Musical] which won Talkin’ Broadway’s 2006 Summer Theatre Festival Citation for Outstanding Original Score. They are currently developing several original book musicals, one with Alexandra Cunningham, a writer and producer of the hit ABC television series, “Desperate Housewives”.

Composer/Lyricist MIKE PETTRY has written music for The Time Travelers Convention, World Of Heroes, the punk-rock song cycle Long Distance, music for the film Rupture and was commissioned to write Sunday In Montgomery for Troy State University. He wrote book and lyrics for Flipside as well as a Requiem Mass for choir and strings. Pettry has a BA in piano and composition from Shepherd University, and an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Through its commissioning of new work for music theatre, the Obie winning Arts at St. Ann’s (now ST ANN’S WAREHOUSE) has played a major role in creating opportunities for concert and visual artists to “cross over” into theatrical presentation.  ASA has launched many new works of distinction, the most recent of which is Must Don’t Whip ‘Um by past Larson recipient Cynthia Hopkins.  Since opening the Warehouse in 2001, artists such as Laurie Anderson, Bill Frisell, the Wooster Group, Al Pacino, Joe Strummer, Lucinda Williams, David Bowie, The Tiger Lillies, and Jeff Tweedy have helped to establish St. Ann’s Warehouse as one of New York’s premier performance venues.

The Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation was created in 1996 to provide financial assistance and encouragement to emerging composers, lyricists and bookwriters, and to nonprofit theatres with a commitment to the development of new musical theatre works written in part or full by past individual Larson grant recipients.  The Foundation is one of the few places that individual creative artists in the performing arts can go to apply for direct financial support. Nancy Kassak Diekmann serves as Executive Director of the Foundation, which currently awards grants on an annual basis.

All inquiries regarding grant applications may be addressed to the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation, PO Box 672, Prince Street Station, New York, NY 10012 or online at www.jlpaf.org.

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