David Drew Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Awardee

Awarded 1996

Noted musicologist, critic, publisher, cultural historian, music publisher, editor, and record producer David Drew (1930-2009) was honored with the second Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award at a surprise post-performance reception in London’s Royal Albert Hall on 21 July 1996, immediately after the BBC Proms’ concert performance of Der Silbersee. Foundation president Kim H. Kowalke made the presentation “in recognition of Drew’s immense contributions over four decades to the understanding and dissemination of the music of Kurt Weill.” Among the 300 guests in attendance were composers Elliott Carter, Berthold Goldschmidt, and Alexander Goehr; heads of London’s major musical institutions; critics from its leading newspapers; and an array of eminent scholars. After deciding in 1956 to write a book about Weill, Drew collaborated with Lenya on what evolved into a global rediscovery of the full range of the composer’s oeuvre. As Richard Taruskin observed in reviewing Drew’s magnum opus, Kurt Weill: A Handbook (1987), the “Dean of Weill Scholars thinks and writes on a level far beyond that of most of his colleagues.”