Two Alumni Win Tony Awards
Berklee College of Music alum Mike Morris (left) and Boston Conservatory alum Cedric Leiba Jr. (right) won awards for Best Orchestrations and Best Play, respectively.
At the 79th annual Tony Awards on June 7, Berklee College of Music alum Mike Morris BM ’83 was recognized in the category of Best Orchestrations, and Boston Conservatory at Berklee alum Cedric Leiba Jr. MM ’05 took home an award in the category of Best Play.
Morris received a Tony for his work on Schmigadoon!, which received four awards, including Best Musical. Three additional Berklee College of Music alumni were nominated in the category of Best Orchestrations: Adrianne Gonzalez BM ’99, Rob Giles BM ’97, and Kyler England ’00 of the Rescues were nominated for The Lost Boys. This is Morris’s first Tony nomination and win, which he received alongside Doug Besterman.
Leiba Jr. coproduced Liberation, which won the Best Play award. In 2024, he received a Tony nomination for Best Musical for his work as a coproducer on Alicia Keys’s semi-autobiographical musical Hell’s Kitchen and coproduced two Tony nominated productions in 2025. This year, Berklee College of Music alumni Brian Lee BM ’14 and Dayna Lee Bloom ’14 were also nominated in the category of Best Play as producers for Giant, and Berklee Online alum Paul Gavriani BPS ’17 received a nomination in the category of Best New Musical as a producer for Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across NYC).
In total, 10 college and conservatory alumni were nominated for Tony Awards this year, with several additional Berklee community members contributing to nominated productions.
