The invitation-only award presentation and cocktail reception will take place Nov. 26 at 6 PM at The American Airlines Theatre's Penthouse Lounge (227 West 42nd Street).
Five-time Tony Award nominee Scott Ellis will present Mills with his award. The award is named in honor of the late award-winning lyricist Fred Ebb, who died September 2004.
"The Fred Ebb Award recognizes excellence in musical theatre songwriting, by a songwriter or songwriting team that has not yet achieved significant commercial success," according to the foundation. "The award is meant to encourage and support aspiring songwriters to create new works for the musical theatre."
Mills' work has been seen Off-Off-Broadway, Off-Broadway and regionally.
The prize includes a $50,000 award. The Fred Ebb Foundation is funded by royalties from Ebb's vast catalogue of work. His Broadway shows include Curtains, Cabaret, Chicago, The Zorba, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Rink, The Act, Woman of the Year, The Happy Time, Steel Pier; Flora, the Red Menace and 70, Girls, 70. The award selection panel includes foundation trustee Mitchell S. Bernard, Sheldon Harnick, David Loud, Tim Pinckney, Arthur Whitelaw and Karen Ziemba.
Peter Mills received 2005 Drama Desk Award nominations for his show The Pursuit of Persephone (Best Music and Best Orchestrations), the 2003 Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and received a 2002 grant from the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation. Most recently, he wrote music and lyrics for The Rockae, a rock musical based on The Bacchae. Other recent projects include lyrics for Iron Curtain (music by Stephen Weiner, book by Susan DiLallo), and music and lyrics for The Alchemists, Illyria (a musical adaptation of Twelfth Night, which had its regional premiere at The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in fall 2004, with a cast album released in April 2005) and The Taxi Cabaret (published by Samuel French in fall 2004).
With Cara Reichel, he wrote The Flood, which was selected for the ASCAP Musical Theater Workshop (2001). Marco Polo, written with composer Deborah Abramson, was selected for the ASCAP Musical Theater Workshop in 2000, and the writers were chosen as 2000-01 Dramatists Guild Fellows. Mills holds an M.F.A. in Musical Theater Writing from New York University's Tisch School for the Arts and a degree in English/Dramatic Literature from Princeton University. He is a founding member of Prospect Theater Company.
For more information visit www.fredebbfoundation.org.
