EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT

DATE: 5-6:30 p.m. Feb. 4, 2016

EVENT: George Shirley, the Joseph Edgar Maddy Distinguished University Emeritus Professor of Voice, is the recipient of the Women of Color in the Academy Project’s 2016 Shirley Verrett Award.

This award recognizes a University of Michigan faculty member whose work—teaching, performance, scholarship or service—supports the success of female students or faculty in the arts who come from diverse cultural and racial backgrounds.

With a career that spans more than 56 years, George Shirley is in demand nationally and internationally as a performer, teacher and lecturer. He has won global acclaim for his performances in the world’s greatest opera houses and has performed more than 80 operatic roles with many of the world’s most renowned conductors. He won a Grammy Award in 1968 for his role (Ferrando) in the RCA recording of Mozart’s Così fan tutte. In 2015, he received the nation’s highest public artistic honor, the National Medal of Arts.

The award ceremony will feature a performance by opera singer Marcia Porter (cousin and former student of Shirley Verrett). A reception honoring George Shirley will take place in the lobby immediately following the program.

The Shirley Verrett Award was established in 2011 by the U-M Office of the Senior Vice Provost in honor of the late Shirley Verrett, the U-M James Earl Jones Distinguished University Professor of Voice. She was an internationally acclaimed opera singer whose career spanned four decades and was one of the pioneering leaders in the generation of black singers after Marian Anderson’s historical Metropolitan Opera debut in 1955.

INFORMATION: The event is free and open to the public. Registration is requested at ShirleyVerrett2016. To avoid the problem of finding parking on North Campus, a Golden Limousine shuttle will leave Central Campus at 4:30 p.m. from the front of Hill Auditorium. The shuttle will return at 6:30 p.m. after the reception.

LOCATION: Stamps Auditorium, 1226 Murfin Ave., Ann Arbor (on North Campus)

SPONSORS: Women of Color in the Academy Project, Center for the Education of Women and TIAA-CREF