A Look Back

The Gaudium Awards 2025

Celebrating distinguished achievement in the arts and public life while raising support for organizations doing important work.

October 20, 2025 6:30 p.m. The Lotos Club 5 East 66th Street, New York City

The 2025 Honorees

Lives that illumine the horizon

The 2025 Gaudium Awards recognized five extraordinary artists and public figures whose work has brought joy, insight and inspiration to audiences around the world.

The First Dual Gaudium Award

Jeff Harnar & Alex Rybeck

This was the first dual Gaudium Award presented since the award’s inception. Each honoree unquestionably merits individual recognition, but their joint work has filled cabaret venues with exceptional and memorable performances. Together, they are regarded as leading successors to the great cabaret stylists of earlier generations.

Educated in New York while dreaming of a musical-stage career, Jeff Harnar shifted into cabaret with bold success. His career has taken him to major cabaret rooms internationally, and he has recorded numerous celebrated albums showcasing his command of the great American songbook. He is also a respected director of other singers and their shows and has received nearly every major award presented to cabaret singer-directors.

Alex Rybeck, Jeff’s frequent collaborator, is a pianist, arranger and composer known for his work in theater, cabaret and the recording studio. In addition to his Broadway credits, he has coached a long list of prominent singers and actors, often for their cabaret debuts. His teachers have included Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, and Betty Comden and Adolph Green. A recipient of the MAC Award for Best Musical Direction, he is a member of ASCAP and the Dramatists Guild.

Theater, Dance & Service

Baayork Lee

If ever one could be called a Broadway baby, it is Baayork Lee. The Chinatown native appeared at age five in the original production of The King and I with Yul Brynner, beginning an association and friendship that lasted throughout Brynner’s life. A student of ballet, modern and Afro-Cuban dance, she also appeared in the original production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker.

While attending the High School of Performing Arts, she met fellow student Michael Bennett. She later appeared in his Broadway productions and began her own career as a choreographer while serving as dance captain for Promises, Promises. In 1975, she joined Bennett and the original cast of A Chorus Line, becoming part of Broadway history.

Since Bennett’s death, she has recreated the original A Chorus Line choreography in productions around the world and has directed many other productions in the United States and abroad. In 2017, she received the Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award for her charitable work. She is the founder of the National Asian Artists Project, which creates opportunities for Asian performers.

Broadcast Journalism

Jane Pauley

Indiana native Jane Pauley has been a familiar and trusted presence on American television since the 1970s. First widely known as Barbara Walters’ successor on NBC’s Today, she distinguished herself as a warm, engaging anchor across a series of major news programs.

After years alongside Bryant Gumbel and Stone Phillips, she moved from Dateline NBC to The Jane Pauley Show. She continued in special reporting and correspondence while also writing a memoir and a candid guide to midlife renewal.

In 2016, following a popular appearance on CBS Sunday Morning, she became the program’s permanent host, succeeding Charles Osgood. Her many honors include an Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement and induction into the Broadcast and Cable Hall of Fame.

Stage & Screen

John Douglas Thompson

Now recognized with a Tony nomination, two Drama Desk Awards, three Obie Awards, and Outer Critics Circle and Lucille Lortel Awards, John Douglas Thompson seems far removed from his beginnings as a computer salesman.

Born in Bath, England, to Jamaican parents, he studied business at a Jesuit college in upstate New York before earning an MFA at Brown University. His stage career grew through work with American Repertory Theater and Shakespeare & Company, followed by acclaimed New York performances in Othello and The Emperor Jones.

Brooklyn audiences saw him in BAM’s landmark production of The Iceman Cometh with Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy. His solo performance as Louis Armstrong in Satchmo at the Waldorf earned awards on both coasts. His screen work includes Till, Highest 2 Lowest, Law & Order and The Gilded Age. He maintains close ties to Theatre for a New Audience and resides in Brooklyn.

Benefitting

Organizations supported in 2025

Proceeds from the evening helped advance the work of three organizations serving people through housing, food access, music education and expanded opportunity in the arts.

Nazareth Housing / Louise’s Pantry

Supporting housing stability, family services and access to nutritious food for New Yorkers in need.

Opportunity Music Project

Providing young people with access to intensive music education and the confidence, discipline and community it fosters.

National Asian Artists Project

Creating performance opportunities and greater visibility for Asian artists in theater and the performing arts.

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