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Composer Charles Strouse falls ill while accepting award here

Broadway composer Charles Strouse, in Philadelphia yesterday to receive a lifetime-achievement award, fell ill onstage at the Arts Bank performing-arts venue after a musical performance of some of his works.

Broadway composer Charles Strouse, in Philadelphia yesterday to receive a lifetime-achievement award, fell ill onstage at the Arts Bank performing-arts venue after a musical performance of some of his works.

The 81-year-old Tony-Award winning composer, who wrote the music to Annie and Bye Bye Birdie, had just received the Gershman Y's first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award for Arts and Culture from Warren Hoffman, the Gershman's director of arts and cultural programming, Donna Katz, spokeswoman for the Gershman Y, said yesterday.

Katz said that Hoffman had begun interviewing Strouse on the intimate stage of the Arts Bank, at Broad and South streets, in South Philadelphia, when at about 3:30 p.m. Strouse began "shaking" and looked "visibly sick, visibly ill."

After an ambulance was called, Strouse was taken to Pennsylvania Hospital, Katz said. Katz said that Strouse was in stable condition, but was to be kept at the hospital overnight. He is expected to return home to New York today.

A hospital spokeswoman said that she could not confirm whether Strouse was a patient there.

From Thursday to yesterday, the Gershman Y was featuring a musical revue of Strouse's songs at the Arts Bank.

Strouse and his wife were in the audience for yesterday's final performance at 2 p.m., Katz said.

Strouse was supposed to perform some of his songs on piano at a reception after the interview, but that had to be canceled.