Sigma Alpha Iota

'variety and vitality' Joanna Eldredge Morrissey Photo Steven Sondheim (right) receives his Edward MacDowell Madal from Medal Committee memer Michael Chabon (left) in August. Sondheim Honored at the MacDowell Colony C omposer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim was the recipient of the 2013 Edward MacDowell Medal, awarded on Sunday, Aug. 11 at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH. Since 1960, The MacDowell Colony has awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal to an artist of enduring vision and creativity. Sondheim is the 54th recipient of the medal, and previous recipients include Elliot Carter, Leonard Bernstein, and Samuel Barber, to name a few. This is the first time an artist from the musical theater genre has been chosen to receive the Edward MacDowell Medal. Stephen Sondheim was born in 1930, and raised in New York City. He graduated from Williams College, winning the Hutchinson Prize for Music Composition, after which he studied theory and composition with Milton Babbitt. He is the winner of an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards, including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award. Some of his best known works include lyrics for West Side Story (1957), music and lyrics for Sweeny Todd (1979) and Into the Woods (1987), and lyrics for Gypsy (1959). In film, Sondheim composed the scores of Stavisky (1974) and co-composed Reds (1981). In 1983 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which awarded him the Gold Medal for Music in 2006. In 1990 he was appointed the first Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University and was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993. Sondheim is on the Council of the Dramatists Guild, the national association of playwrights, composers and lyricists, having served as its President from 1973 to 1981. In 1981 he founded Young Playwrights Inc. to develop and promote the work of American playwrights aged 18 years and younger. His collected lyrics with attendant essays have been published in two volumes: Finishing the Hat (2010) and Look, I Made A Hat (2011). In 2010 the Broadway theater formerly known as Henry Miller's Theatre was renamed in his honor. Sigma Alpha Iota has a long history with the MacDowell Colony. In1918, construction began on a cottage at a secluded New Hampshire artists' retreat where thousands of composers, writers and visual artists have come over the years to do their creative work in comfort and solitude. The idea for such a structure was proposed by Mary Christie of Delta Chapter. The SAI Convention body of 1916 (representing the 11 chapters then in existence) seized the challenge and agreed to raise the necessary funds. With the support of Marian MacDowell, widow of the famed American composer whose life and career inspired the founding of the Colony, the necessary resources were in hand in an astonishing two years. When the cottage was completed, it was given outright to the MacDowell Colony by SAI. That "cottage" is actually a handsome 3-story white house which can accommodate 12 artists, the largest residence facility at the Colony. It proudly bears the name "Pan's Cottage." The MacDowell Colony welcomes 275 composers, writers, visual artists, theatre artists, architects, filmmakers, and interdisciplinary artists from the United States and abroad each year. The sole criterion for acceptance is talent; a panel in each discipline selects Fellows. A SONDHEIM continued on page 10 sai-national.org Fall 2013 PAN PIPES 9

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