Alumni Awards: Professional Achievement Awards

2025 Winners

Professional Achievement in Music Award

Ezra Donner (BM ’08, composition)

Ezra Donner is an American composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher. He is the composer of approximately 100 works for large and small ensembles and the theatre, with performances at Carnegie Hall and throughout the world, by ensembles including the Chamber Orchestra of New York, New Voices Opera, and Akropolis Reed Quintet.

Donner has received awards from the American Prize, the Respighi Prize, and the G. Gershwin International Music Competition. He was a composer fellow at Brevard Music Center, John Duffy Institute for New Opera, and San Miguel de Allende Chamber Music Festival. His choral music is published by See-a-Dot Music, and he has released two commercial recordings.

As music director and conductor, Donner has led productions with Chicago Summer Opera, Horizon Performing Arts, and the University of Michigan Gilbert & Sullivan Society. He has served as a church and synagogue musician and a collaborative pianist at various institutions.

Donner has taught music at Indiana University and Washtenaw Community College, and he currently maintains a private piano studio of over 30 students. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Indiana University. He is also an avid visual artist and has created over 250 drawings and paintings.

Professional Achievement in Theatre Award

Jake Wilson (BFA ’07, musical theatre)

Jake Wilson is a director and writer based in New York. In music, he has directed artists including Lizzo, Jonas Brothers, Cher, LISA, Camila Cabello, Latto, Kacey Musgraves, Ava Max, and Saucy Santana. In comedy, he has written and developed TV shows at NBC, FOX, Disney, Bravo, MTV, Warner Bros., and Sony TV. Commercial clients include Amazon, Savage X Fenty, Dunkin’, Wendy’s, Maybelline, and e.l.f. Cosmetics.

Wilson was named one of AdWeek’s Creative 100 “Visionary Directors” for 2024 and is the winner of five Clio Awards for his work on Cann’s Taste So Good campaign. He created the groundbreaking musical web series The Battery’s Down, and his first feature, Are You Joking?, is streaming on Amazon. Wilson currently directs Celebrity Substitute, a digital series with Amazon, executive produced by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.

Professional Achievement in Dance Award

Sam Stone (BFA ’07, dance)

Sam Stone is a dance performance artist, teacher, community organizer, and creator. She is a professor of dance at Appalachian State University, a certified Axis Syllabus teacher of anatomy and biomechanics, and a dance education specialist.

Stone’s passion for learning, exchanging, and disrupting the status quo fuels her dance advocacy in local communities. She has founded several outreach programs, including Dance Class for Humans, a Salt Lake City-based contemporary class series offering affordable training for local freelancers; Peer Practices, a nationally recognized peer-exchange dance class model; and Free Up the Space, a guided improvisational space for artists of varying media to freely exchange.

Stone is responsible for choreographing over 50 original dance theatre works, often integrating her own musical and visual creations. She founded and danced in the vîv dance company, as well as for Bianca Cabrera’s Blind Tiger Society, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Joanna Kotze, Ashley Trottier, and Rosemary Hannon. She has performed and/or shown work at theatres including CounterPulse, Mission Theatre, Temescal Art Center, SAFEarts, Piano Fight, El Rio, Adeline Lab, Sunset Studios, Spyhop, and Hayes Christensen Theatre. As a guiding principle, Stone follows art’s potential to rebel and rouse.