Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's foundation has donated a £100,000 grant to the Beacon Arts Centre.
According to BBC News, "When the Beacon opens next year, the cash will fund a youth theatre to encourage participation in the arts. The building will have a 500-seat main auditorium and 130-seat Studio Theatre. Rehearsal rooms and a cafe bar overlooking the River Clyde will also be part of the £9.5m theatre. When it opens next summer, the Beacon will replace the existing Greenock Arts Guild Theatre, which has served the Inverclyde area for 60 years."
Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre, and has been referred to as "the most commercially successful composer in history." Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass.
He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government for services to Music, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006.
Several of his songs, notably "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "You Must Love Me" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and "Memory" from Cats have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals.
