Oscar Hammerstein Award years. Past recipients include Stephen Sondheim, Angela Lansbury, Betty Comden & Adolph Green, Harold Prince, Cy Coleman, Charles Strouse, Arthur Laurents, Jerry Herman, Stephen Schwartz, Peter Stone, David Merrick, John Kander & Fred Ebb, Terrence McNally, Sir Cameron Mackintosh, Carol Channing, Tony Walton, Joseph Stein, Thomas Meehan, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, Barbara Cook, Paul Gemignani, Lynn Ahrens & Stephen Flaherty. In December 2016, the 25th Oscar Hammerstein Award was presented to Joel Grey in a star-studded tribute evening. Oscar Hammerstein Award The Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre is named in honor of American lyricist and
Maria (Rodgers and Hammerstein song) song, and they allowed him to do so because "if you tell a story in a song, it's so much better." When writing the lyric, Hammerstein knew he needed adjectives for the nuns to describe Maria. He admitted that his vocabulary was never big, but the simple adjectives he used to describe Maria's character proved a success. Maria (Rodgers and Hammerstein song) "Maria", sometimes known as "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, "The Sound of Music." This song is sung by the nuns at Nonnberg Abbey, who