Eugene O'Neill Theater Ceneter Receives National Medal of Arts

Shoreline Arts Alliance is pleased and proud to share the news that the White House has just announced the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center will receive the 2015 National Medal of Arts! Their Executive Director Preston Whiteway will join The O'Neill Board Chairman Tom Viertel and Founders George and Betsy White to accept the award from President Obama on Thursday, September 22 in a special White House ceremony. The event will be live streamed at www.whitehouse.gov/live. Rarely has an American theater and educational institution received such an honor on a national platform. In sharing this news the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center says, "You're a vital part of our family - the community that makes us who were are, and our work possible."

President Barack Obama will present the 2015 National Medals of Arts in conjunction with the National Humanities Medals on Thursday, September 22, 2016, in the morning in an East Room ceremony at the White House. First Lady Michelle Obama will attend. The event will be live streamed at www.whitehouse.gov/live.

NEA Chairman Jane Chu said, “These National Medal of Arts recipients have helped to define our nation’s cultural legacy through the artistic excellence of their creative traditions, and I join the President in congratulating and thanking them for their contributions.”

The O’Neil is the only organization in the country with the National Medal and two Tonys.  And only the fourth theater to receive this in history. Preston Whiteway, the O’Neil’s Executive Director will be accepting the medal from the President next Thursday.

The full list of honorees can be found here: https://www.arts.gov/news/2016/president-obama-award-national-medals-arts

Congratulations to the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center on this prestigious award and for sharing the gift of theater with so many! 

About the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center

Founded in 1964 by George C. White, in honor of America's only Nobel Prize-winning playwright. 

The O'Neill is home to the National Playwrights Conference, National Music Theater Conference, National Puppetry Conference, Cabaret & Performance Conference, National Theater Institute, and National Critics Institute. 

Writers and directors, puppeteers and singers, students and audiences alike take their first steps in exploring, revising and understanding their work and the potential of the theater they help create.

All focus on the script, as it begins its journey to the stage.  Actors work with simply rendered sets, no costume design, and script in hand, revealing for the first time the magic of a new play or musical, puppetry piece or cabaret act.  

Work first performed at the O'Neill has gone on to regional theaters, Broadway, film, and television.  Students and professionals who have honed their skills at the O'Neill can be seen in these venues every day across the nation and world.  Others work behind the scenes as playwrights, directors, in stage management, publicity and a hundred other roles that the public never sees but are nonetheless essential to every production.

Collomore Concerts Open With Verona Quartet

On Sunday, September 25 at 5pm in the Chester Meeting House Collormore Concerts will launch its 43rd season of bringing quality performances to Connecticut. This opening concerts is the annual Barbara and Edmund Delaney Young Artists Concert. For more information or to purchase tickets click here.

The Verona Quartet was formed at Indiana University in 2013. Hailing from the USA, Canada and Singapore, they were the first Indiana Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence, which afforded them the opportunity to be mentored by the Pacifica Quartet. Winning top prizes in numerous prestigious international string quartet competitions such as the 2015 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh, the London International and the Osaka International Chamber Music Competitions has led to their performances on four continents.

In addition to their Lincoln Center Alice Tully Hall debut in 2016 under the auspices of the Juilliard School, they have performed at notable venues such as London’s Wigmore Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington and the Melbourne Recital Hall in Australia.

The Verona is currently the Graduate Resident String Quartet at the Juilliard School, where they work closely with members of the Juilliard String Quartet and teach during Juilliard’s academic year. They have also served as visiting artists and teachers at leading international institutions for music education including the Beethoven-Haus (Bonn, Germany), New York University-Abu Dhabi and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

Their strong passion for community engagement and education led them to establish a relationship with the city of Danville, Illinois, where from 2013 to 2015 they curated a concert series and gave outreach performances and master classes across elementary, middle and high schools, resulting in an increase in public school music class enrollment to almost double the average of the State of Illinois.

In less than three years, the Verona Quartet have established themselves as one of the most compelling young quartets in chamber music. The quartet consists of: Jonathan Ong-violin, Dorothy Ro-violin, Abigail Rojansky-viola and Warren Hagery-cello.

Chester native Robbie Collomore owned Chester’s local soda shop/general store. Located on Main Street in the center of Chester where the River Tavern is now, the soda fountain and the man behind its counter were often at the center of Chester life. You went there in the morning for your coffee and fresh gossip, and the Little League went there in the afternoon for celebratory ice cream cones.

Robbie was determined to help refresh another center of Chester life, the Old Meeting House, which dated back to the 1790s but had lost a lot of its fizz by the 1960s. He dreamed of restoring the building to its former glory days when chamber music concerts, barbershop quartets and even a visit from P.T. Barnum’s Tom Thumb brought refreshing entertainment to the town. Always upbeat, Robbie started drumming up plans to bring back musical events to the small building with the big acoustics. Robbie convinced Burton Cornwall, a New York City singer and noted voice teacher retired in Chester, to put on a concert to help raise funds to repair the Old Meeting House.

The proceeds of that 1961 concert featuring Burton Cornwall and friends was the cornerstone of a Chester Meeting House Cultural Series he and Robbie helped establish when they became founding members of the Chester Historical Society in 1970. The Cultural Series’ first musical concert in 1974 featured The Singing Editors.

Robbie Collomore’s dream for a refurbished Meeting House came true, and when he died in 1975, the Music Series was named in his honor. Burton Cornwall carried on Robbie’s dream, heading the series for five years, and endowing it as part of his estate when he died in 1980. Chester cultural stalwart Joan Matz carried on Robbie’s dream, leading the series for the next 20 years.