Tennessee Arts Academy Award Recipients

The Tennessee Arts Academy honors individuals and organizations each year in a variety of categories during the Bravo Awards Banquet and Performance and during the TAA Finale luncheon. Current and previous award winners are listed below, as well as descriptions of each award category.

Bill Haslam

Lamar Alexander Founder’s Award of Distinction
Bravo Awards Banquet and Performance
Curb Event Center
July 12 • 6:30 PM

On November 4, 2014, Bill Haslam secured the largest re-election victory in modern Tennessee history to become the forty-ninth governor of Tennessee.

Under his leadership, Tennessee is recognized as a national leader in education, economic development, efficient government, and fiscal strength.

Since 2011, Tennessee students have been the fastest improving in the country in academic achievement. High school graduation rates are at an all-time high, and Tennessee is the first state in the nation to offer high school graduates two years of community or technical college free of tuition and fees.

Just three years into the governor’s Drive to 55 initiative to increase the number of Tennesseans with a postsecondary degree or certificate to 55 percent by 2025, more Tennesseans are going to college, and fewer need remediation when they get there. In fact, first-time freshmen enrollment increased 25 percent at community colleges and 20 percent at technical colleges in one year, and the college-going rate in Tennessee increased to a historic high of 62.5 percent in 2015.

More than 375,500 private sector jobs have been created since Governor Haslam took office in 2011. Tennessee has been ranked number one for advanced industry job growth, number one for jobs created through foreign direct investment, and is the only three-time winner of “State of the Year” for economic development by Business Facilities magazine.

Working with the Tennessee General Assembly, the governor and his administration have cut more than $500 million in recurring spending, shrunk state government by 5 percent, balanced the budget every year, kept taxes low, ensured Tennessee has the lowest debt in the country, and more than doubled the state’s savings account. Tennessee has been ranked the third best managed state in the nation, and for only the second time in state history, has been awarded a triple, triple-A bond rating.

In 2003, Bill ran successfully for mayor of Knoxville and was re-elected in 2007 with 87 percent of the vote. As mayor, he balanced eight consecutive city budgets, tripled the Rainy Day Fund, focused city government on providing services in an efficient manner, helped found key education initiatives, and recruited and retained thousands of jobs to Knoxville.

He and his wife, Crissy, a native of Memphis, have been married for 35 years and are blessed with three children and six grandchildren. For more than three decades they have been members of Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church (EPC) in Knoxville where Bill serves as an elder.

Christopher Durang

Distinguished Service Award
Bravo Awards Banquet and Performance
Curb Event Center
July 12 • 6:30 PM

Christopher Durang is one of America’s most prolific and celebrated playwrights. His play Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike won the 2013 Tony Award for best play in addition to the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, Outer Circle Critics Award, and the Drama Desk Award. He received Obie Awards for his plays Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, and Betty’s Summer Vacation. Durang was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in drama for Miss Witherspoon and received a nomination for a Tony Award for best book of a musical for A History of the American Film. In 2010, he was presented with the very first Luminary Award from the New York Innovative Theatre Awards for his work off-off-Broadway. Durang won the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for Master American Dramatist in 2012. That same year, he was also inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Other works by Durang include Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge; the musical Adrift in Macao, with music by Peter Melnick and book and lyrics by Durang; Beyond Therapy; Baby with the Bathwater; The Nature and Purpose of the Universe; Titanic; The Idiots Karamazov, co-authored by Albert Innaurato and featuring Meryl Streep; Laughing Wild; ‘Dentity Crisis; The Actor’s Nightmare; The Vietnamization of New Jersey; Why Torture is Wrong and the People Who Love Them; and Naomi in the Living Room.

Durang is also a performer; he acted with E. Katherine Kerr in the New York premiere of Laughing Wild and with Jean Smart in the play’s Los Angeles production. He shared an acting ensemble Obie for The Marriage of Bette and Boo. Durang has performed his crackpot cabaret Chris Durang and Dawne with John Augustine and Sherry Anderson at the Criterion Center, Caroline’s Comedy Club, Williamstown Summer Cabaret, and the Triad. The show received a Bistro Award in 1996.

In the early 1980s, Durang and Sigourney Weaver co-wrote and performed together in their acclaimed Brecht-Weill parody, Das Lusitania Songspiel, and were both nominated for Drama Desk awards for best performer in a musical.

In 1993, Durang sang at the Manhattan Theatre Club with Julie Andrews in the five-person, off-Broadway Sondheim revue Putting it Together. He also played a singing congressman in the Encores’ presentation of Call Me Madam with Tyne Daly at City Center.

In movies, he has appeared in The Secret of My Success, Mr. North, The Butcher’s Wife, Housesitter, and The Cowboy Way, among others.

Durang has been awarded numerous fellowships and high profile grants including a Guggenheim, a Rockefeller, the CBS Playwriting Fellowship, and the Lecomte du Nouy Foundation grant. In 1995, he won the prestigious three-year Lila Wallace Readers Digest Writers Award; as part of his grant, he ran a writing workshop for adult children of alcoholics. In 2000, he won the Madge Evans and Sidney Kingsley Playwriting Award.

Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Durang has degrees from Harvard College and the Yale School of Drama. From 1994 to 2016, he and Marsha Norman were co-chairs of the Playwriting Program at Juilliard. He is a current member of the Dramatist Guild’s Council.

Margaret Campbelle-Holman

Joe W. Giles Lifetime Achievement Award
TAA Finale Luncheon
Curb Event Center
July 14 • 11:30 AM

For more than forty years, music educator Margaret Campbelle-Holman has been mentoring, composing, conducting, and consulting with students and teachers across the United States. She is an author of three kindergarten to eighth grade music book series published by McGraw-Hill Education. In 1996, she was the co-lyricist for the state of Tennessee School Song. In 1997, she founded the MET Singers. She currently serves as the executive director of Choral Arts Link, a nonprofit devoted to fostering choral legacies for middle Tennessee’s children and youth. In 1998, she created a community-arts partnership with Nashville Symphony. Since that time and for nineteen seasons, the MET Singers (appearing as the Celebration Youth Chorus) have performed with the symphony during the Let Freedom Sing concert.

In 2004, Campbelle-Holman served as artistic manager and choir mistress for the 100 voice children and youth chorus that premiered Nashville Symphony’s commissioned work Proud Music of the Storm. The work was composed by Bruce Saylor, conducted by Kenneth Schermerhorn, and funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.  She was the project director for the MET Singer’s premier of two commissioned works with the Nashville Symphony Chorus in 2015, as well as the Nashville Symphony in 2016.

In January 2017, she partnered with Kelly Corcoran’s contemporary music ensemble Intersection, as well as Fisk University and the Carl Van Vechten Art Gallery to present Upon These Shoulders. This program lifts up the deep heritage and strength of everyday people who lived and walked the civil rights movement, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In addition to the MET singers and Intersection, collaborating artists included Freedom Rider Ernest “Rip” Patton and the Fisk Jubilee Singers, along with soloists and spoken word artists. In April of this year, Campbelle-Holman collaborated with Intersection again to present Voices of Today.

Campbelle-Holman currently serves as program director for MET Academy in the Schools and MET Summer Academy.

Arts Leadership Award of Excellence

is presented to an individual or group who has achieved a unique milestone in the arts that deserves recognition and honor.

Distinguished Service Award

is presented to an American whose work stands as a monument to the importance of the arts in the lives of all people.

Joe W. Giles Lifetime Achievement Award

is conferred upon a Tennessee teacher, whose life's work is widely acknowledged to have positively influenced the role of the arts in education, thereby benefiting the students of Tennessee's schools.

Lamar Alexander Founder's Award of Distinction

is presented to an individual whose meritorious accomplishments in the fields of education and the arts have profoundly impacted American culture and life.

Lorin Hollander Award

is given to a Tennessean whose influence has benefited arts education in general and/or the Tennessee Arts Academy in particular. This award is named in honor of internationally renowned concert pianist Lorin Hollander, a special friend of the Academy.

Partner in the Arts Award

honors an individual or business whose generosity and support have contributed in sustained and significant ways to the success of the Tennessee Arts Academy's mission.

Spirit of Tennessee Award

recognizes an individual or group whose work exemplifies the highest standards of artistic endeavor and brings positive recognition to the place of the arts in the lives of Tennesseans.

Previous Recipients:

Joe W. Giles Lifetime Achievement Award		Lorin Hollander Award		Distinguished Service Award
1995   Joseph Edward Hodges, Crossville 1996   Freda Kenner, Bells 1996   Sue Blass, Jackson 1997   Elizabeth Rike, Knoxville 1997   Celia Bachelder, Kingsport 1998   James Charles Mills, Johnson City 1998   Gene Crain, Memphis 1999   Patricia Brown, Knoxville 2000   Robert Pletcher, Nashville 2000   Kathy Hawk, Kingsport 2001   Tommie Pardue, Memphis 2001   Tully Daniel, Memphis (awarded posthumously) 2004   Marilyn duBrisk, Greeneville 2004   Bobby Jean Frost, Nashville 2005   Nancy Boone-Allsbrook, Murfreesboro 2005   Sally Crain Jager, Cookeville 2006   Michael Combs, Knoxville 2006   Jean R. Thomas, Chattanooga 2006   Mitchell Van Metre, Knoxville 2007   David Logan, Johnson City 2010 2011 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017   James R. Holcomb, Memphis Flowerree W. (Galetovic) McDonough, Knoxville Joe W. Giles, Nashville Richard Mitchell, Knoxville Carol Crittenden, Nashville Fred Patterson, Knoxville Gregg Coats, Memphis Ted Rose, Lebanon Margaret Campbelle-Holman, Nashville		1994   Cavit Cheshier, education executive 1995   Steven Cohen, state senator 1996   Nellie McNeil, teacher and advocate 1997   Tom L. Naylor, music educator and administrator 1998   T. Earl Hinton, music educator 1999   Jane Walters, educator and arts advocate 2000   Martha McCrory, music educator 2001   Solie Fott, music educator 2008   Jeanette Crosswhite, arts education administrator  2013 2014    Pat and Thane Smith, arts patrons and philanthropists Cindy Freeman and Michael Meise, music educators and arts advocates		1994   Charles Strouse, Broadway composer 1995   Charles Fowler, arts educator, writer and advocate 1996   Jerome Lawrence, playwright 1997   Lorin Hollander, concert pianist and philosopher 2000   Scott Ellis, Broadway theatre director 2000   Mary Costa, opera singer 2001   Sheldon Harnick, Broadway lyricist 2001   Tina Packer, Shakespeare actor and director 2003   Bob McGrath, singer and host of Sesame Street 2005   John Simon, author and arts critic 2005   Dean Pitchford, songwriter, lyricist, screenwriter, and director 2006   Andre Thomas, choral conductor 2007   Joe DiPietro, Broadway playwright and lyricist 2008 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2016 2016 2017   Henry Krieger, Broadway composer Marvin Hamlisch, composer and pianist Richard Sherman, composer and lyricist Marc Cherry, Hollywood writer and producer Rupert Holmes, playwright, composer, and lyricist Richard Maltby, Jr., Director, Lyricist, Producer, Writer Audrey Flack, painter and sculptor Andrew Lippa, composer, lyricist, performer, and writer Doc Severinsen, musician and bandleader Christopher Durang, Broadway playwright
Spirit of Tennessee Award		Partner in the Arts Award		Arts Leadership Award of Excellence
2000   Wilma Dykeman, writer 2001   Jim Crabtree, theatre director and writer 2002   Alice Swanson, arts education administrator and advocate 2003   George Mabry, choral conductor 2006   Dolph Smith, visual artist 2009   George S. Clinton, Hollywood film composer 2009   Jackie Nichols, theatre administrator 2009   Michael Stern, symphony conductor 2010 2015   Cherry Jones, Broadway actress Charles Brindley, Visual Artist		2008   Steve Spiegel, president of Theatrical Rights Worldwide		2013 2015 2016   E. Frank Bluestein, Germantown Music Makes Us, Nashville Belmont University, Nashville Lamar Alexander Founder's Award of Distinction 2013 2014 2017   Senator Lamar Alexander, United States Senator Douglas Henry, Tennessee State Senator Bill Haslam, Tennessee governor