News Release

Local angles:  Chapel Hill, Manteo, New York City

UNC to honor Adler, Griffith, Swalin with first
lifetime achievement awards for performing arts

CHAPEL HILL – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will present its first lifetime achievement awards for the performing arts to Richard Adler, Andy Griffith and Maxine Swalin during opening gala events Sept. 10 marking the official reopening of the newly transformed Memorial Hall.

Called the Carolina Performing Arts Lifetime Achievement Award, the new honor recognizes an alumnus or alumna, organization or other exceptional individual whose work in the performing arts has greatly contributed to life at the university and enriched American culture. Recipients are selected for their efforts to advance the arts locally and nationally; for accomplishments acknowledged by scholars, critics, professional peers and the general public; and because their work has stood the test of time.

Adler, of New York City, had a lengthy career composing for Broadway, ballet and orchestra. Griffith, of Manteo, is a legendary television and film star. Swalin, of Chapel Hill, with her late husband, Dr. Benjamin F. Swalin, revived the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra and built it into a national treasure.

The university will launch the new award during a gala opening weekend Sept. 8-11 celebrating the official reopening of Memorial Hall, which underwent a nearly $18 million renovation made possible by the Higher Education Bond Referendum approved by N.C. voters and private gifts to the Carolina First Campaign and other sources.

All three award recipients will be honored during a grand opening gala concert Sept. 10 titled "A Classical Opening." The evening features violinist Itzhak Perlman, violinist/violist Pinchas Zukerman and the North Carolina Symphony, led by Leonard Slatkin, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C.  This performance begins at 7 p.m. Tickets to the performance remain available, call (919) 843-6323.

Griffith was the honorary chair and Adler the honorary co-chair of the Memorial Hall Transformation Steering Committee, which helped raise more than $5 million for the public-private partnership that made the renovation possible.

Adler is best known as the composer and lyricist for "The Pajama Game" (1954) and "Damn Yankees (1955)," both co-written with Jerry Ross. "The Pajama Game" was one of the greatest successes in Broadway history. It was the eighth musical to achieve a run of more than 1,000 performances and later was made into a movie starring Doris Day. Jazz crooner Harry Connick Jr. will appear in a new version "The Pajama Game" scheduled to debut on Broadway next year.

Adler’s ties to the university run deep. The 1943 dramatic art graduate wrote for The Daily Tar Heel and was a member of the Carolina PlayMakers. In 1981, he received the university’s Distinguished Alumnus Award and in 1999, he received the PlayMakers Award for Lifetime Achievement. Adler composed "The University of North Carolina Bicentennial Suite," written for the Bicentennial Observance on University Day, Oct. 12, 1993. He has also been the William Neal Reynolds Visiting Partnership of Music/Artist-in-Residence at UNC, where he served on the Board of Visitors.

Among his many honors, Adler earned the Richard Rodgers Award for lifetime achievements in American musical theater from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

 Griffith is one of television’s most enduring star performers. A native of Mount Airy, Griffith graduated from UNC in 1949, earning a bachelor’s degree in music. He was president of the glee club and a member of the Carolina Playmakers and the music fraternity, Phi Mu Alpha. He received the university’s Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1978.

Griffith’s career highlights include starring in the Broadway hit, "No Time for Sergeants" and playing Will Stockdale, which he later reprised the role of in the movie of the same name in 1957. Also in 1957, he appeared in Elia Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd" playing Lonesome Rhodes, generally considered his greatest film performance. "The Andy Griffith Show" debuted in 1960, starring Griffith as Sheriff Andy Taylor and was on the air for eight years.

Griffith went on to do several movies, television specials, made-for-television movies and series including the long-running "Matlock" series, which began in 1986 with Griffith playing Ben Matlock, a criminal defense lawyer.

Martha Maxine McMahon graduated from the University of Iowa and received musical training at institutions including Radcliffe College and The Juilliard School. In New York, she met her future husband, Benjamin Swalin.

In 1935, the couple moved to Chapel Hill, where Ben taught in UNC’s music department. They learned that the N.C. Symphony Orchestra, created in 1932, was struggling. In 1937, the Swalins led a movement to revive the orchestra. The Swalins succeeded in 1939 in reorganizing the N.C. Symphony Society, with Swalin as unpaid director and Maxine as pianist and accompanist.

Under Ben’s conductorship and Maxine’s management, the symphony gained recognition and conducted thousands of concerts throughout North Carolina. A $1 million grant from the Ford Foundation in 1966 led to raising an additional $2 million, and when the Swalins retired in 1972, the state could boast of a national treasure. Maxine Swalin told her own story in her autobiography, "An Ear to Myself," privately published in 1996. The lobby of Raleigh’s Meymandi Concert Hall is dedicated to Ben and Maxine Swalin.

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Related links:  www.unc.edu/performingarts, www.unc.edu

News Services contact:  Mike McFarland, (919) 962-8593, mike_mcfarland@unc.edu