The Falls Church-based Choralis Foundation recently announced that it is renaming the award for Outstanding Contributions to Choral Music, the premiere award given out at its annual Greater Washington D.C. Area Choral Excellence Award. The award’s new name is The J. Reilly Lewis Award for Choral Excellence in honor and member of Dr. J. Reilly Lewis, who died on June 9.
Lewis was the inaugural recipient of the award that’s now named after in him June 2010 and was a perennial attendee at the award’s ceremony now known informally as the Ovation Awards, as he loved the opportunities for collegiality and camaraderie provided by the end-of-season gathering of D.C.’s choral community.
He also served as a member of the Advisory Board of the Choralis Foundation and, as such, contributed greatly, especially in the early years of the award ceremony. Choralis also plans to honor Lewis’s memory by denoting its annual high school singer scholarship as the J. Reilly Lewis Merit Scholarship. For more information, visit choralis.org.
