Recipient
Andrew Gerle and Eddie Sugarman
Jonathan Larson Grants - 2006
Andrew Gerle is the son of classical recording artists Marilyn Neeley and Robert Gerle, Andrew started his musical career as a classical pianist in the Baltimore area, appearing with local orchestras and on National Public Radio and Television. While attending Yale University, he won the Yale Symphony’s concerto competition and the National Symphony Orchestra’s Young Artists’ Competition, and appeared as guest soloist with both orchestras. During this time, he was also invited to participate in a private competition for Maestro Mstislav Rostropovich at the Kennedy Center.
After graduating magna cum laude from Yale, he moved to New York and began work as a musical director and accompanist. Over the past 15 years, he has worked with such distinguished artists as Kitty Carlisle Hart, John Raitt, Leslie Uggams, Jennifer Holliday, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Michael Rupert, and Liz Callaway. He was selected by the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization to create a complete re-orchestration of South Pacfic for a major regional production, and has worked on projects for composers including John Kander, Ricky Ian Gordon, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie.
As a musical theater writer, Andrew won a 2011 Richard Rodgers Award and the 2012 Kleban Award for outstanding librettist for his musical Gloryana. He also won three other Rodgers Awards (administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters) for The Tutor (book and lyrics by Maryrose Wood). He won a 2006 Jonathan Larson Award for Meet John Doe (lyrics by Eddie Sugarman), which had its world premiere production at the Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. in 2007 and was nominated for seven Helen Hayes Awards. He was also the first recipient of the Burton Lane Fellowship for Young Composers, awarded by the Theater Hall of Fame. His songs have been performed on Public Radio International, at Symphony Space, the Public Theater and the Lincoln Center Songbook series in New York, and on VH1’s Save the Music benefit. This September, he will have an evening of his work at the Kennedy Center as part of ASCAP’s “Songwriters: the Next Generation” series.
An accomplished orchestrator and arranger, Andrew’s symphonic orchestrations of Broadway standards have been performed by the Boston Pops and over a dozen other US symphony orchestras. He created an evening of new arrangements and orchestrations for the Baltimore Symphonyʼs Gershwin Centennial celebration, in which he also appeared as piano soloist. His work as a musical director has taken him from off-Broadway houses to regional theaters, from Texas to Cape Cod, and from Russia to Taiwan. At 26, he was one of the youngest conductors ever to conduct a major international orchestra when he led the Seoul Philharmonic Symphonic in a series of sold-out concerts at the 3,000-seat Sejong Cultural Center. He has been a writer in residence at the Eugene O’Neill National Musical Theater Conference, and a Fellow at the MacDowell Artists’ Colony in New Hampshire and the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming.
Andrew’s play, Renovations, based on the memoir by the same title, will be premiered at the White Plains Performing Arts Center in March of 2011, and his song cycle, Drink Well and Sing, based on ancient Greek love poetry, will be premiered by eminent American countertenor Lawrence Zazzo at London’s Wigmore Hall, also in March. His opera, The Beach (with librettist Royce Vavrek), will receive its premiere reading as part of New York City Opera’s prestigious VOX series in May. A CD of Andrew’s jazz arrangements of the songs of Maltby & Shire with vocalist Christa Justus was released in 2010 under the PS Classics Label. As an actor, Andrew appeared in the 2009 revival of Terrence McNally’s Master Class at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey starring Tony nominee Barbara Walsh, and has appeared in productions of Two Pianos, Four Hands. In 2010, he was heard as the “hands” of Coalhouse Walker Jr., in the Tony Award-winning revival of Ahrens & Flaherty’s Ragtime at the Neil Simon Theater.Andrew is the author of The Enraged Accompanist’s Guide to the Perfect Audition, which was published in 2011 by Hal Leonard (Applause Books). He is also on the faculty of Yale University, where he teaches musical theater songwriting.
Bio as of April, 2014.
Eddie Sugarman holds a BFA in musical theatre performance from the University of Michigan and is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the BMI-Lehman Engle Musical Theatre Writing Workshop. His musical Meet John Doe (written with Andrew Gerle) was produced and/or developed at GMI, ASCAP, NYMF, NAMT, TheatreWorks (Palo Alto), the Carousel Dinner Theatre, the Hartt School and Goodspeed Musicals. John Doe received its world premiere at the historic Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. for which it was nominated for Seven Helen Hayes Awards and won two. Eddie also collaborates with composers Jihwan Kim and Bruce Kiesling and is very grateful for the support and friendship of Ted Shen and his Foundation. Eddie is proud to be the Managing Director of the Jedlicka Performing Arts Center in Illinois where he lives with his wife Kara and his kids Sam and Lucy.Bio as of February, 2009.
