Oscar Hammerstein Award Oscar Hammerstein Award The Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre is named in honor of American lyricist and librettist Oscar Hammerstein, who helped shape American theater music through his collaborations with a number of different composers and writers. The award was created in 1988 by Janet Hayes Walker, the Founding Artistic Director of The York Theatre Company, and is presented with the endorsement of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization and the Hammerstein family. The Oscar Hammerstein Award Gala is the major annual fundraising event of The York, a mainstay of the Off-Broadway scene for more than 45
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