Association of Performing Arts Professionals Names 2024 Honors Awardees

Trumpeter Terence Blanchard received the organization’s flagship Award of Merit

The Association of Performing Arts (APAP) has announced the recipients of its Honors Awards for 2024, with the selected candidates to be given their awards at the APAP Honors ceremony on January 15, 2024.

The awards have been running for six decades, and celebrate the work of trailblazers and visionaries in the performing arts field.

Jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard was the recipient of the flagship Award of Merit. This honor is given to a candidate whose genius, energy, and excellence have defined or redefined an art form for today's audiences and who has had a profound and lasting effect on the performing arts.

Blanchard is an NEA Jazz Master and has been nominated for the GRAMMY Awards on six occasions. He is also a distinguished film composer and has been nominated for the Emmys — alongside two Oscar nominations. To date, he is only the second African-American composer to be nominated twice in the original score category.

In 2021, Blanchard’s opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones received its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera’s season-opener, at which point Blanchard became the first African-American composer to have a work premiered at the Met.

Honorees in disciplines other than music include Lisa Booth, Deirdre Valentine, Shanta Thake, Randy Cohen, and Ruby Morales.