NEW YORK: Ziegfeld Club, Inc., one of the city’s performing arts charities dedicated to benefiting women, has announced November Christine, Carmel Dean, and Madeline Myers as the recipients of the 2021 Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award. Presented in partnership with New York Stage and Film, the award honors promising female musical theatre composers. Previous winners include Masi Asare, Julianne Wick Davis, Anna K. Jacobs, Rona Sidiqqui, and Shaina Taub.
“In a break from past practice, we decided this year to recognize the achievements of the three finalists from last year’s award process,” said Ziegfeld Club executive director Laurie Sanderson in a statement. “Our decision to confer this year’s award on three composers reflects the tremendous depth of talent among the community of female composers and lyricists.”
“We are honored to continue our partnership with the Ziegfeld Club,” said Chris Burney, artistic director of New York Stage and Film, in a statement. “The annual support of the Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award is very meaningful to the recipient. As theatres reopen, it is very exciting the committee agreed to support three incredible composers this year.”
Now in its sixth year, the Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award consists of a $5,000 grant and a year of professional mentorship awarded to one or more emerging female composer/lyricists who demonstrate artistic promise in musical theatre composition. The Ziegfield Club also awards the Liz Swados Inspiration Grant, a $5,000 award for a NYC-based female music educator.
November Christine produced her award-winning musical Mirror, Mirror at the 2015 Hollywood Fringe Festival. Christine’s historical hip-hop drama, Legacy the Musical, was showcased in London in 2017 and won “Best of Fest” at the 2018 New York Musical Festival. She was commissioned by Artistic Stamp Inc. to write her latest piece, Ida, a six-part epistolary play on the early years of Ida B. Wells. Christine is also a BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop lyricist and 2021 NYCLU Artist Ambassador.
Carmel Dean is an Australian-born, New-York based composer/lyricist, musical director, and arranger. Her compositional debut, Renascence, was produced Off-Broadway by Transport Group, and won the 2018 Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best New Musical. Her song cycle Well-Behaved Women premiered at Joe’s Pub in January 2020 to sold-out performances. She has been commissioned to write a new musical with Mindi Dickstein (Little Women) for New Works Provincetown/Mark Cortale.
Madeline Myers is a composer and lyricist in New York City whose musicals include Double Helix, Flatbush Avenue , The Devil’s Apprentice, and Masterpiece. She is a 2020 Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award Finalist, a 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017 Jonathan Larson Grant finalist, a 2019 York Theatre Company NEO Writer, a 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017 ASCAP Plus Award recipient, and a 2016-2017 Dramatists Guild fellow. Her musicals have been developed at the York Theatre, Goodspeed Musicals, the New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio, the Fingerlakes Musical Theater Festival, Musical Theater Factory, the NMI Disney Imagineering New Voices Project, the New York Theatre Barn, and the Johnny Mercer Songwriting Project.
