The National Association of Teachers of Singing is pleased to announce a new partnership with the Herman, Rebecca, and Gerald Ginsburg Foundation to establish a new prize at the 2026 National Student Auditions.

The Gerald Ginsburg Repertoire Prize, in honor of composer Gerald Ginsburg, will award $1,000 to a student in the Post High School Classical categories who performs at least one of Ginsburg’s compositions in the YouTube, semifinal or final rounds. The award is made possible through a $25,000 contribution from the Ginsburg Foundation to endow the prize, ensuring its continuation for years to come.

Ruth Rosenberg, trustee and president of the foundation, has been steadfast in preserving Ginsburg’s music and legacy.

“Gerald Ginsburg was a relentlessly creative artist with an original compositional voice,” she said. “He was a close friend as well as family to me.”

After his death in 2019, Rosenberg joined with singer Paul Lincoln to form the Ginsburg Foundation, with the mission of preserving, promoting and sharing his work.

“We’ve been busy with recording, archiving and concert projects since then,” she said. “At the end of his life, Gerry was strong in his conviction that his songs should outlast him : they might enrich people's lives with their beauty, emotional depth, and lyricism. I hope our collaboration with NATS will help make this possible by introducing young singers and their teachers to his music.”

To ensure Ginsburg’s repertoire is readily available to all NATS teachers, the association is expanding its partnership with the foundation to make Ginsburg’s songs available at nats.org. Thanks to the tremendous work of the Ginsburg Foundation’s trustees, Ruth Rosenberg and Paul Lincoln, NATS members will be able to access the scores in both PDF and Sibelius formats free of charge.

“We are grateful for this partnership with the Ginsburg Foundation that will make the solo vocal works of Gerald Ginsburg freely accessible to teachers and students of NATS members,” said Allen Henderson, NATS executive director. “These songs, preserved and engraved by the foundation, will provide a lasting legacy of access to countless performers in the future. A unique aspect is that the files will allow users to transpose them as needed. I look forward to performing some of them myself.”

NATS plans to launch this new repertoire library in late summer 2025. 

NATS would like to sincerely thank Ruth, Paul, and the Ginsburg Foundation for their incredible generosity in establishing this prize and looks forward to a strong partnership in the years to come!

About Gerald M. Ginsburg (1932–2019)

Gerald M. Ginsburg (1932-2019) was a prolific composer who set hundreds of poems to music in his 50 years of artistic output. He was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, on July 7, 1932. He earned a bachelor’s degree in composition from Oberlin and a master’s degree in composition the Manhattan School of Music. He studied piano with Rudolph Ganz, Jack Radunsky, Dora Zaslavsky, and composition with Roy Harris and Ludmilla Ulehla. His compositions have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the New School, and the Kennedy Center, among many other venues.

Ginsburg’s signature contribution was a style of song he called “Theater Lieder,” which brought together the lyrical elements of musical theatre and classical art song structure. Following his debut at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1974, his career highlights included a premiere of song settings based on the work of Willa Cather at the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Spring Conference (Nebraska, 1979); original song settings of Paul Verlaine's poetry (Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, 1998); An American à Paris (Merkin Concert Hall, 2000); a Heinrich Heine Tribute entitled Aus Schmerzen zu Lieder-From Sorrows to Songs (Weill Recital Hall, 2003), and many programs of original music with the composer at the piano at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Chelsea, NYC. In 2017, to mark his 85th birthday, Ginsburg’s life and music was celebrated in a concert The Music of Words, presented by Sounds of the City in Manhattan. An endlessly curious and evolving artist, Ginsburg’s primary aim was to celebrate the beauty of the world and bring enjoyment to his audiences.

Ginsburg passed away in New York City on April 12, 2019. In his final years, he envisioned The Herman, Rebecca, and Gerald Ginsburg Foundation (named after his parents) as a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to promoting and disseminating the music to which he dedicated his life. An album of newly orchestrated songs was released on the PS Classics label in 2024 with the title Parting Gift: The Songs of Gerald Ginsburg.

For more information about the Herman, Rebecca, and Gerald Ginsburg Foundation, please visit ginsburgfoundation.org.