Booth is the first teaching artist to receive this award, having been on the faculty of Juilliard for 11 years and serving as a consultant for many organizations, cities, states, and businesses around the country. He has taught classes for every level from kindergarten through graduate school, including faculty positions at Stanford University, Tanglewood, and Lincoln Center Education (for 26 years), and led workshops at over 30 universities and 60 cultural institutions. Faculty Chair of the Empire State Partnership program, Booth held one of six chairs on the College Board’s Arts Advisory Committee. The founding director of the Teacher Center of the Leonard Bernstein Center (now on the Board of Directors), he is a frequent keynote speaker on the arts, and serves as a senior advisor to the El Sistema movement in the United States. 

 

An accomplished an author, Booth has had five books published. The Everyday Work of Art won three awards and was a Book of the Month Club selection, and The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible, was published by Oxford University Press. He has written dozens of magazine articles, for seven years wrote the education column in Chamber Music magazine, and was the Founding Editor of the quarterly Teaching Artist Journal. He is currently completing a 2016 book for W.W. Norton on the international growth of El Sistema. 

 

As an actor, Booth has performed in many plays on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and around the country, playing over 23 Shakespearean roles, directing and producing in New York, and winning acting awards on both coasts.

 

Booth and other honorees will be presented their awards at the Americans for the Arts 2015 Annual Convention in Chicago during the Opening Plenary session on Friday, June 12, 2015, from 12:00 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. 

 

For more information and to get free copies of a lot of Booth’s writings, go to ericbooth.net. Read his latest post on ARTSBlog here. 

 

To read more about other Leadership Award honorees at this year's Annual Convention, see the press release.