The Fred Ebb Foundation has announced that the winners of its 2021 Fred Ebb Award for aspiring musical theater songwriters are the team of Isabella Dawis (book and lyrics) and Tidtaya Sinutoke (music). The foundation will present this 17th annual prize, which includes a $60,000 award, in a ceremony at Birdland Jazz Club on January 3. Isabella Dawis is a Filipina-American writer and performer who holds a B.M. in piano from Univ. of Minnesota. Tidtaya Sinutoke is a Thai composer and musician who holds a B.M. from Berklee College and M.F.A. from NYU. Their collaborations include the musicals Half the Sky, the story of an Asian-American woman climbing Mt. Everest, and Sunwatcher, the real-life story of Japanese astronomer Hisako Koyama, who sketched the sun every day for 40 years.
Immediately below is Dawis singing “Outside” from Half the Sky as part of Reclaiming Our Time, an evening of work from Musical Theatre Factory’s People of Color Roundtable at Joe’s Pub on May 20, 2019. Below that is a 2020 music video of “Travel Song” from Sunwatcher, edited by Carol Ho from Koyama’s drawings, performed by Dawis as part of Weston Playhouse’s Songs for Today.