The 'Piano Man' launches endowment fund to assist in music educationPianist, singer/songwriter and campus lecturer Billy Joel has recently launched an ongoing initiative to provide gifts of seed money, musical scholarships, and endowments to a variety of East Coast colleges, universities, and music schools.
The awards, scholarships and endowments granted by the Billy Joel Endowment Fund will be announced at the discretion of the individual institutions.
Billy Joel, who has sold more than 100 million records over the past 25 years, has been an advocate for music education for many years. He first began holding "master class" sessions on college campuses more than 20 years ago, giving sessions at colleges across the country and around the world.
He has also held classes as a benefit for the STAR Foundation (Standing for Truth About Radiation) and to establish the Rosalind Joel Scholarship for the Performing
Arts at City College in New York City.
Joel first entered the charts in 1974 with his signature "Piano Man" single and album. He has also had much success with his return to classical music. "Fantasies & Delusions - Music for Solo Piano," an album of Billy Joel's classical piano pieces released in October 2001, spent 18 weeks at #1 on the Top Classical Albums chart.
The Broadway dance musical 'Movin' Out' based on 30 classic songs by Billy Joel, opened on Broadway to critical and popular acclaim and in 2003, Billy Joel won his first Tony Award for Best Orchestrations.
In 1990, he was presented with a Grammy Legend Award and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992. Joel was presented with the Johnny Mercer Award, the organization's highest honor, in 2001. In 1999 he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and has received the Recording Industry Association of America Diamond Award.
Joel has earned three Awards For Cable Excellence and has received numerous ASCAP and BMI awards including the ASCAP Founders Award and the BMI Career Achievement Award and, in 1994, was given the 1994 Billboard Century Award.
Among his many other awards and honors, Billy Joel has been given a Doctor of Humane Letters from Fairfield University (1991), a Honorary Doctorate from Berklee College of Music (1993), and a Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Hofstra University (1997) and a Doctor of Music from Southampton College (2000).
For his accomplishments as a musician and as a humanitarian, Billy Joel was honored as the 2002 MusiCares Person Of The Year by the MusiCares Foundation and the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.
