Winners of the 2025 Kurt Weill Prizes:

Larry Wolff, Silver Professor of History at New York University, for his book The Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Hapsburg Monarchy (Stanford University Press).

Joseph Cadagin, Audience Education and Communications Manager at Houston Grand Opera, for his article “Liget’s Unfinished Alice in Wonderland,” published in Perspectives of New Music.

Drew Nobile, Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Oregon, for his article “Sondheim’s Dissonant Tonality,” published as a chapter in Here for the Hearing: Analyzing the Music in Musical Theater (University of Michigan Press).

The panel awarded special recognition to Masi Asare, Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at Northwestern University, for her book Blues Mamas & Broadway Belters: Black Women, Voice, and the Musical Stage (Duke University Press).

Titles first published in 2023 or 2024 were eligible for the 2025 Kurt Weill Prizes.

Winners of the 2023 Kurt Weill Prizes:

Liza Gennaro, Dean of Musical Theatre at the Manhattan School of Music, for her book Making Broadway Dance (Oxford University Press, 2021).

Amanda Hsieh, Assistant Professor of Musicology at Durham University, for her article “Jewish Difference and Recovering ‘Commedia’: Erich W. Korngold’s Die tote Stadt in Post-First World War Austria,” published in Music and Letters in 2022.

The Advisory Panels for both the book and article prizes also awarded Special Recognition to a second book, An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre: 1900-1950 by conductor and educator Sean Mayes and music theater historian Sarah K. Whitfield, and to a second article “Race and the Legacy of the World’s Columbian Exposition in American Popular Theater from the Gilded Age to Show Boat (1927),” by David C. Paul, Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of California Santa Barbara.

Titles first published in 2021 or 2022 were eligible for the 2023 Kurt Weill Prizes.

Winners of the 2021 Kurt Weill Prizes:

Ebright, Ryan. “Doctor Atomic or: How John Adams Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Sound Design,” published in Cambridge Opera Journal 31.1 (March 2019)

Magee, Jeffrey. “Whose Turn Is It? Where Gypsy’s Finale Came from, and Where it Went,” published in Studies in Musical Theatre 13.2 (June 2019)

Pistorius, Juliana. “Inhabiting Whiteness: The Eoan Group La traviata, 1956” published in Cambridge Opera Journal 31.1 (March 2019).

Past Prizes have generally recognized one book and one article per cycle. This year, after careful consideration, the Prize panel decided to award three article prizes and declined to award a book prize.

Titles first published in 2019 or 2020 were eligible for the 2021 Kurt Weill Prizes.

Winners of the 2019 Kurt Weill Prizes:

Harriet Boyd-Bennett, Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Nottingham, for her book Opera in Postwar Venice: Cultural Politics and the Avant-Garde (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Emily Richmond Pollock, Associate Professor of Music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for her article “Opera by the Book: Defining Music Theater in the Third Reich,” published in The Journal of Musicology in 2018.

The Kurt Weill Prize Advisory Panel also awarded Special Recognition to a second article, “Confronting Opera in the 1960s: Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy,” by Heather Wiebe, Senior Lecturer of Music at King’s College London.

Titles first published in 2017 or 2018 were eligible for the 2019 Kurt Weill Prizes.

Winners of the 2017 Kurt Weill Prizes:

Kara Anne Gardner for her book Agnes de Mille: Telling Stories in Broadway Dance (Oxford University Press as part of the Broadway Legacy Series, 2016)

Suzanne Robinson, an honorary fellow at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, for her article “Popularization or Perversion?: Folklore and Folksong in Britten’s Paul Bunyan,” published in American Music in 2016.

Titles first published in 2015 or 2016 were eligible for the 2017 Kurt Weill Prizes.

Winners of the 2015 Kurt Weill Prizes:

Alisa Solomon, Professor and Director of the Concentration in Arts M.A. Program at Columbia University School of Journalism, for her book Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof (Metropolitan Books, 2013).

Emily Abrams Ansari, Assistant Professor in Music History at the University of Western Ontario, for her article “‘Vindication, Cleansing, Catharsis, Hope’: Interracial Reconciliation and the Dilemmas of Multiculturalism in Kay and Dorr’s Jubilee (1976),”  published in American Music in 2013.

Titles first published in 2013 or 2014 were eligible for the 2015 Kurt Weill Prizes.

Winners of the 2013 Kurt Weill Prizes:

Stephen Hinton, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Music at Stanford University, for his book Weill’s Musical Theater: Stages of Reform (University of California Press, 2012).

Christopher Chowrimootoo, Assistant Professor of Musicology and Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, for his article “Bourgeois Opera: Death in Venice and the Aesthetics of Sublimation,” published in the Cambridge Opera Journal in 2011.

Titles first published in 2011  or 2012 were eligible for the 2013 Kurt Weill Prizes.

Winners of the 2011 Kurt Weill Prizes:

Larry Stempel, Professor of Music at Fordham University, for his book Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater (W.W. Norton, 2010).

David Savran, Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Vera Mowry Roberts Chair in American Theatre at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, for the chapter entitled “Fascinating Rhythm” in his book Highbrow/Lowdown: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle Class (University of Michigan Press, 2009).

Titles first published in 2009 or 2010 were eligible for the 2011 Kurt Weill Prizes.

Winners of the 2009 Kurt Weill Prizes:

Joshua Goldstein, Assistant Professor of Chinese History, University of Southern California, for his book Drama Kings: Players and Publics in the Re-creation of Peking Opera 1870-1937 (University of California Press, 2007).

Christopher Reynolds, Professor of Musicology, University of California, Davis, for his article, “Porgy and Bess: ‘An American Wozzeck’” (Journal of the Society for American Music, Volume 1, Number 1, 2007).

Titles first published in 2007 or 2008 were eligible for the 2009 Kurt Weill Prizes.

Winners of the 2007 Kurt Weill Prizes:

bruce d. mcclung, Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Cincinnati – College Conservatory of Music, for his book, Lady in the Dark: Biography of a Musical (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Elizabeth B. Crist, Assistant Professor of Music at Princeton University, for her article “Mutual Responses in the Midst of an Era: Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land and Leonard Bernstein’s Candide” (The Journal of Musicology, Volume 23, Issue 4, fall 2006).

Titles first published in 2005 or 2006 were eligible for the 2007 Kurt Weill Prizes.

Winners of the 2005 Kurt Weill Prizes:

Andrea Most, Professor of American Literature and Jewish Studies in the Department of English at the University of Toronto, for her book, Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical (Harvard University Press, 2004).

Also singled out by the Kurt Weill Prize Advisory Panel for honorable mention in the book category was Bill Egan, for his book Florence Mills: Harlem Jazz Queen (Scarecrow Press, 2004)

The panel did not award a prize in the article category.

Titles first published in 2003 or 2004 were eligible for the 2005 Kurt Weill Prizes.

Winners of the 2003 Kurt Weill Prizes:

W. Anthony Sheppard, Marylin & Arthur Levitt Professor of Music at Williams College, for his book Revealing Masks: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater (University of California Press, 2001).

The Kurt Weill Prize Advisory Panel also singled out Anthony Shay’s Choreographic Politics: State Folk Dance Companies, Representation and Power (Wesleyan University Press, 2002) for honorable mention in the book category.

Alan Lareau, Professor Emeritus of German at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, for his article “Jonny’s Jazz: From Kabarett to Krenek,” which appeared in Jazz & the Germans: Essays on the Influence of “Hot” American Idioms on 20th-Century German Music ( Pendragon Press, 2002).

Titles first published in 2001 or 2002 were eligible for the 2003 Kurt Weill Prizes.

Winners of the 2001 Kurt Weill Prizes:

Editors Lynn Garafola and Nancy Van Norman Baer for their book The Ballets Russes and Its World, edited by Lynn Garafola and Nancy Van Norman Baer (Yale University Press, 1999).

Lisa Barg for her article “Black Voices/White Sounds: Race and Representation in Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts” (American Music, Summer 2000).

Robert Fink for his article “‘Rigoroso (♪ = 126)’: The Rite of Spring and the Forging of a Modernist Performing Style” (Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 52, No. 2, 1999).

Titles first published in 1999 or 2000 were eligible for the 2001 Kurt Weill Prizes.

Winners of the 1999 Kurt Weill Prizes:

Jennifer Robertson for her book Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan (University of California Press (1998).

Michael V. Pisani for his article “A Kapustnik in the American Opera House: Modernism and Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges” (The Musical Quarterly, Winter 1997).

Titles first published in 1997 or 1998 were eligible for the 1999 Kurt Weill Prizes.

Winners of the 1997 Kurt Weill Prize:

Richard Taruskin for his book Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions (University of California Press, 1996).

Titles first published in 1995 or 1996 were eligible for the 1997 Kurt Weill Prize.

Winners of the 1995 Kurt Weill Prizes:

Stephen Banfield, Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals (University of Michigan Press, 1993)

Armond Fields and L. Marc Fields, From the Bowery to Broadway: Lew Fields and the Roots of American Popular Theater (Oxford University Press, 1993).

Titles first published in 1993 or 1994 were eligible for the 1995 Kurt Weill Prizes.