Lee Student Finalist in National Songwriting Competition

TYLER – Robert E. Lee High School senior, Fritz Hager III, has been named one of six finalists in the National Endowment for the Arts 2018 Musical Theater Songwriting Challenge. This is a national songwriting competition where the winner receives $25,000. The finalists, five individual composers and one pair, will each have their songs published by Samuel French. They will find out late next month who gets the top prize. The winner will be announced in New York during a weekend of workshops with well-known musicians, singers, songwriters and producers.

Hager says the song he submitted is actually part of a 14-song musical he has been writing over the past several months. A TISD news release quotes Hager as saying “the song is titled ‘If I Lie Here’ and is about an aspiring songwriter who tries to convince the love of his life to take him back even through all his past discrepancies, and that despite all logic, we still believe people will change. The full musical follows a relationship between two characters as one journeys through the ups and downs of fame.”