Andrew Lloyd Webber Among 2006 Kennedy Center Honorees

Andrew Lloyd Webber will receive a 2006 Kennedy Center Honor, according to officials at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Other recipients of the 29th annual national celebration of excellence in the arts are conductor Zubin Mehta; country singer and songwriter Dolly Parton; singer, songwriter and producer Smokey Robinson; and film director and producer Steven Spielberg.

"Andrew Lloyd Webber has led a seismic change in our musical theater, becoming the most popular theater composer in the world," Kennedy Center chairman Stephen A. Schwarzman said in a statement. The Honors recipients recognized for their lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts—whether in dance, music, theater, opera, motion pictures or television—are selected by the Center's Board of Trustees. Lord Lloyd Webber will be among a small minority of honorees over the years who are not Americans; since 1990, recipients from the theater have included Julie Harris, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Mike Nichols, James Earl Jones, Chita Rivera, Julie Andrews, Angela Lansbury, Jason Robards, John Kander and Fred Ebb, Lauren Bacall, Edward Albee, Neil Simon, Harold Prince, Stephen Sondheim, Betty Comden and Adolph Green and Jule Styne.

The 2006 honorees will be saluted by stars from the world of the performing arts at a gala performance in the Kennedy Center's Opera House on Sunday, December 3, to be attended by President and Mrs. Bush and by artists from around the globe. The Honors Gala will be recorded for later broadcast on CBS for the 29th consecutive year as a two-hour prime time special. The Kennedy Center Honors will be bestowed the night before the gala on December 2 at a State Department dinner hosted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.