Emerging Musical Theater Writers and Singers Combine Talents
The Kurt Weill Foundation is pleased to announce the release of the second volume of the Lotte Lenya Competition Songbook, a new collection of twelve contemporary theater songs by sixteen emerging writers. Each song in the volume is accompanied by a new audio recording performed by a Lenya Competition prizewinner. The Foundation funded all honoraria, recording, and administrative costs for the composers, lyricists, and singers. Recordings, sheet music, and the Preface to the Songbook Series can be found here.
The Lotte Lenya Competition Songbook was launched in 2020 as a response to the hardships imposed on musical theater professionals by COVID-19, including especially songwriters and past winners of the Lenya Competition. The Songbook also serves as a means to enrich the repertoire required in the Lenya Competition, specifically in the Contemporary Musical Theater category. To recognize and encourage performances of this new repertoire, a $1,000 prize for “Outstanding Performance of a Songbook Selection” was awarded in the 2022 Lenya Competition. Claire Leyden received the inaugural prize for her performance of “The Kettle Song” by Daniel Zaitchik.
The second volume’s twelve songs were selected from a pool of more than 150 submissions from writers across the US and Europe. Participating singers include several veterans of national and international tours, a West End Debut Award winner, and a 2020 contestant who reached the Lenya Competition finals at the age of just 19
The following songs and performances comprise Volume II of the Lotte Lenya Competition Songbook :
- “Sorry” by Harry Castle; performed by Andrew Polec
- “An Ocean Away” from The Family Resemblance by Masi Asare
- “Federico” from Shoot for the Moon by John-Michael Lyles and David Gomez; performed by Curtis Bannister
- “Not That Different” by Tim Rosser and Charlie Sohne; performed by Lindsay O’Neil
- “The Language Lesson” from On This Side of the World by Paulo K Tiról; performed by Laura Corina Sanders
- “Nothing More” from With the Right Music by Tim Rosser and Charlie Sohne; performed by Daniel Berryman
- “If I Didn’t Know Better” from The Luckiest Girl by Sonya Hayden; performed by Katherine Riddle
- “Catch Me” from She Reached for Heaven by Oliver Houser; performed by Lauren Senden
- “I Could Get Used to This” from Borders by Janine McGuite and Arri Lawton Simon; performed by Robert Ariza
- “The Second Time Around” from Women on Love by Katya Stanislavskaya; performed by Rebecca Jo Loeb
- “Put Me to Work” from Bread and Roses by Brad Alexander and Jill Abramovitz; performed by Paulina Villarreal
- “The Love of Two Parents” from Mother of FYRE by Elspeth Collard and Sam Rosenblatt; performed by Helen Zhibing Huang
