Opera singer Beverly Sills, chairman of the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in New York, will be awarded a lifetime achievement award at this year’s Pell Awards for Excellence in the Arts.
The event is a major fund-raiser for Trinity Reportery Theater, now in its 35th anniversary year, draws national attention to the Rhode Island arts scene, and honor’s former Senator Pell, who has been recognized as among the arts’ most ardent supporters in Congress.
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This year’s awards go to:
Pell Award for Lifetime Achievement -Sills, besides her chairmanship at Lincoln Center, has also served as National Chairman of the March of Dimes Foundation. She began her career as a coloratura soprano in 1953 and debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in 1975. She recorded 18 full-length operas and several solo recital discs. In 1980 she was named general director of the New York City Opera.. Other honors Sills has received include the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Kennedy Center Honors.
New England Pell Award – Gunther Schuller, a composer and conductor, who has received two Guggenheim fellowships, a 1994 Pulitzer Prize, and was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. Schuller’s career has spanned 55 years. In 1959 he gave up principal French horn positions with major symphonies to pursue his composing and conducting career.
Rhode Island Pell Award – Bunny Harvey, an internationally known painter, who came here in 1963 to attend the Rhode Island School of Design. Now an art professor at Wellesley College, she has also been a critic at RISD and a visiting professor of visual and environmental studies at Harvard University.
Rhode Island Pell Award – Eugene Lee, resident set designer for Trinity Rep since 1967, and production designer for the television show “Saturday Night Live.” A long-time Providence resident, Lee received two Tony Awards for set design of Broadway productions of “Sweeney Todd” and “Candide.” His work can now be seen in the current Broadway production of “Ragtime.”
Rhode Island Pell Award – David Macaulay, an author and illustrator who lives in Rhode Island. Macaulay came here from England to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, from which he graduated with an architecture degree in 1969. He received the 1991 Caldecott Medal, which is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children for an outstanding children’s picture book. Since 1974, when he published his first work, “Cathedral,” Macaulay has written and illustrated more than a dozen books.
The event is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on April 15 Tickets start at $250. For more information and reservations call at Trinity Rep, (401) 521-1100 ext. 237.
