Benjamin Velez Benjamin Velez

Fred Ebb Award Ceremony

Kate Baldwin was there to introduce us with a beautiful speech about Fred Ebb.

Kate Baldwin was there to introduce us with a beautiful speech about Fred Ebb.

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I’m still reeling from Monday night when I had the privilege to accept the 2019 Fred Ebb Award and share some songs from my musical Borderline. Thank you to everyone who was there to share it with me and to my phenomenal performers Sarah Lynn Marion and Matt Dallal and my MD David Gardos for their extraordinary talents making me look good!! Nights like this don’t come often or at all when you’re an aspiring writer, so I’m feeling gobsmacked, grateful, and hella lucky that some stars aligned to make me this giddy and humbled on this snowy Monday evening :)

Thank you to Kate Baldwin for her beautiful speech about Fred and what he means to all of us, thank you to Mitch Bernard and the foundation for supporting new writers, and thank you to my co-winner Angela Sclafani for her talent!

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Benjamin Velez Benjamin Velez

Fred Ebb Award!!

I’m OVER THE MOON to be the 2019 winner of the Fred Ebb award, along with Angela Sclafani!!

Kate Baldwin will present the award at the Fred Ebb Foundation's ceremony December 2

Kate Baldwin will present the award at the Fred Ebb Foundation's ceremony December 2

Fred Ebb is an icon of the theater whose songs I’ve sung in my head, on the street, in my bedroom since I was a kid growing up in Miami. After living in New York for 12 years now, it still makes me tear up every time I hear “New York, New York” and hear the lyric “If you can make it there you’ll make it anywhere,” a mantra for aspiring artists in New York that rings so true and has been a guiding light for me during many dark moments of doubt. This is a very VERY difficult business to break into, and it takes years and years of trying and trying without results, many failures, many dead ends, and a lot of luck. And while I know things like this award are mostly luck, it’s wonderful to have that affirmation to keep going and keep writing. Thank you to the Fred Ebb Foundation for this honor!

Here is an article about the award from Playbill.

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