Obama to award Medal of Freedom to Barbra Streisand, Itzhak Perlman and Stephen Sondheim

Singer, actress and filmmaker Barbra Streisand and Itzhak Perlman, one of this era’s most honored classical musicians, are arts figures who will receive American’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in a Nov. 24 ceremony at the White House.

Stephen Sondheim will get an encore of sorts -- he was cited again in the White House’s announcement of the 17 medalists Monday, after having been tapped a year ago. Sondheim was unable to attend the ceremony last year and will receive his medal next week.

President Barack Obama said in the written announcement that his picks are “men and women who have enriched our lives and helped define our shared experience as Americans.”

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The citation described Streisand, who emerged as a Tony nominee in a 1962 musical called “I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” as “one of our nation’s most gifted talents [whose] body of work includes extraordinary singing, acting, directing, producing, songwriting, and she is one of the few performers to receive an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and a Tony.”

Streisand’s only two Broadway roles, Miss Marmelstein in “Wholesale” and Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl” (1964), earned her Tony nominations but no awards. But in 1970 she received a special Tony Award for her 1960s stage achievements.

Perlman’s medal citation begins by noting that he is “a treasured conductor and sought-after teacher,” before going on to note his achievements as a classical violinist and his role as “an important voice on behalf of persons with disabilities.”

Like Streisand and Sondheim, Perlman already has won the nation’s highest arts award, the National Medal of Arts. All three were named by Bill Clinton -- Sondheim in 1996 and Perlman and Streisand in 2000.

Sondheim’s Medal of Freedom citation says he is “one of the country’s most influential theater composers and lyricists. His work has helped define American theater.”

Filmmaker Steven Spielberg, the Miami-based husband and wife pop music team of Gloria and Emilio Estefan and singer-songwriter James Taylor also are among the medalists for 2015, with others chosen from politics and government, space science and struggles for civil rights.

Also to be honored are baseball greats Yogi Berra, who died at 90 in September, and Willie Mays. Berra and Mays were antagonists in many an All-Star game and in the 1962 World Series, then teamed up to return to the World Series with the 1973 New York Mets -- Berra as the team’s manager, and Mays in the last season of his long playing career.

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