The Peter E. Kohler Scholarship in Cabaret Performance honors the memory of the man who introduced me to the music of Marlene Dietrich and in so doing, changed my life. Sadly, he passed away in 1987 and never got to hear me perform her songs. The formal announcement of the scholarship coincided with what would have been his 75th birthday.
The C.W. Post Campus, where I was a student and where I met and married my husband, Robert, hosts the Cabaret at Club T series at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts, and is the only college or university in the New York metropolitan area committed to professional cabaret performance.
As far we know, this is the only scholarship
in the world dedicated to the cabaret artform.
Each year the scholarship is awarded to a
junior, senior or graduate student with talent, interest and affinity
for the art and history of musical cabaret performance. To qualify, a
student will demonstrate financial need, have a grade point average of
3.0 or better and be enrolled as a student in either the Department of
Music or the Department of Theatre at the School of Visual and Performing Arts.
The scholarship recipient will produce a full cabaret program as their
senior recital or produce an original thesis or composition in the
form. The scholarship will award 5% of the total endowment and as the
total endowment grows through investment and gifts, awards to
recipients will increase.
Our first recipient for the 2009-2010
academic year was Joanna Durante
whom we introduced in a concert on December 1, 2011 in NYC.