ASCAP Foundation Names 2026 Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award Winners
The ASCAP Foundation has announced the winners of its 57th annual Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Awards, which honour writing and broadcast work about music. The announcement was made on 21 October 2026.
The awards date back to 1967 and were set up to honour the memory of Deems Taylor, a composer, critic and commentator. They recognise books, articles, liner notes (the essays printed inside album packaging) and broadcast programmes. Each category is split into pop music and concert music, a term the awards use for classical and related work. Patricia Leonard is executive director of The ASCAP Foundation.
Two film and video winners stood out in the broadcast section. Directors Isaac Gale, Ryan Olson and David McMurry won the pop music broadcast and media award for Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, a 2025 documentary film. In concert music, Gail Wein won for Classical Gas, a podcast series produced by Classical Voice North America. Rick Beato received a Special Recognition Award for Everything Music, his 2025 YouTube series.
The book awards went to five authors. Gayle Wald won the pop music prize for This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children's Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement, published by University of Chicago Press. James O'Leary won the pop music prize for The Middlebrow Musical: Between Broadway and Opera in 1940s America, published by Oxford University Press.
In concert music, Lucy Caplan won for Dreaming in Ensemble: How Black Artists Transformed American Opera, published by Harvard University Press. Tim Greiving won for John Williams: A Composer's Life, published by Oxford University Press. Steven C. Smith received a Special Recognition Award in the same book category for Hitchcock and Herrmann: The Friendship and Film Scores that Changed Cinema, also from Oxford University Press.
The pop music article award went to Ben Sisario for "The Race Against Time to Save Music Legends' Decaying Tapes." The piece covers efforts to restore analog tapes, the magnetic recordings that can degrade over the years, by artists including Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan.
The Paul Williams Loved the Liner Notes Award, which honours the writing printed in record packaging, went to Ruth Komanoff Underwood. She was recognised for her personal essay in Cheaper than Cheep, a live box set by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. The award was established in 2016 and is funded by Paul Williams, president of The ASCAP Foundation.
For writers and broadcasters who want to enter next year, the foundation's entry window for this round closed on 21 May 2026. The awards continue a long run of recognising people who write and speak about music for a general audience, not only the people who make it.
