Alex Klaasen and Peter van de Witte Win 32nd Annie MG Schmidt Award for Drama Song ‘152W96TH STREET’

Alex Klaasen and Peter van de Witte have won the 32nd Annie MG Schmidt Award. They won the award for the song 152W96TH STREET. The song is part of the theater piece Well, Ponys from Claasen. He wrote the lyrics and Van de Witte wrote the music. The award was presented in the Kleine Komedie in Amsterdam.

“A musician and composer pushes the boundaries of what a Dutch theater song can be with bravado,” the jury said in the report. In the song, Klaasen sings about the panic attacks he suffered when he was in New York.

“Alex Klaasen plays his nightmare incomparably. His voice full of passion for life, then painful with sadness, then melancholic again. Every sentence with time as if the panic attack ‘happening now,’ said the jury.

Klaasen and Van de Witte have won the Annie MG Schmidt Award won before. In 2019 they received the award for the song Right again. They did so with Jurrian van Dongen.

The award is given each year to the lyricist, composer and performer of the best Dutch drama song of the past year. The award is an initiative from Buma Cultuur and the Amsterdam Kleinkunst Festival.

This year, Ellen ten Damme, Peer Wittenbols and Stanislas Mitrovic, Kiki Schippers, Peter van Rooijen, Yentl en de Boer and Joost Spijkers were also nominated. Past winners include Flip Noorman, Patrick Nederkoorn, Jan Beuving and Tom Dicke.