Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley, the team responsible for the new musical Violet accepted the fifth annual Gilman Gonzalez-Falla Award for outstanding promise in musical theatre April 17 at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in New York. The award, from a foundation administered by Sondra Falla and Celso M. Gonzalez-Falla, comes with an unrestricted $25,000 prize. Composer Tesori also wrote dance music for The Secret Garden and the current revival of How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying on Broadway. Crawley (book and lyrics) is author of non-musical plays Radicals Equal Strangers and Ez in Pisa. The two collaborated on a previous musical, In the Kalahari Desert.
Commendations went to Andrew Lippa and Tom Greenwald (jon & jen), Polly Pen (Bed & Sofa), David Spencer (composer/lyricist of a children's adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera), Jason Robert Brown (Songs for a New World) , Doug Cohen (The Gig) and Ray Leslee (Avenue X).
