Music Academy of the West Announces Winners of Fourth Alumni Enterprise Awards; Laureates Receive Cash Grants Totaling $85K and Attend Virtual Residential Program
Bottom: Cristina Cutts Dougherty; Composition of a City & Christina Giuca Krause; Rich Coburn’s BIPOC Voices library
A pioneer of thought leadership in music and the arts, Music Academy of the West is thrilled to announce the winners of its fourth annual Alumni Enterprise Awards. Open to all 7,000-plus alumni of the Academy’s Summer Festival, the program was launched in 2018 to support innovation in areas including artistic expression, audience development, education, community engagement, social justice and technology; to advance social entrepreneurial endeavors in classical music; and to generate positive learning outcomes. With projects originating from Chicago, Philadelphia, Montreal, Amsterdam, São Paulo and Cochabamba, Bolivia, this year’s six winners will collectively receive $85,000 in grants, taking the total value of grants awarded to $320,000, distributed among 26 alumni since the program’s founding. The 2021 winners will also receive robust creative support and mentorship from Beth Morrison and other key industry visionaries at the Academy’s online Innovation Residential on March 22-27.
Music Academy President & CEO Scott Reed explains:
“It is imperative for us to help give artists a voice to react to our complex world. These awards offer them investment in their vision for the future. Their projects will have an immediate impact on their communities and spark new thinking about how music is performed and presented globally.”
The Academy received a record number of applicants for the fourth annual 2021 Alumni Enterprise Awards. Ninety-eight projects were adjudicated by members of the Academy’s National Advisory Council, Board of Directors and administrators, as well as musical entrepreneurs from the past summer’s Remote Learning Institute. The six award-winners will receive $85,000 in grants to complete their projects this year. Addressing challenges caused by the pandemic, the call for social justice and the need for gender equality, these bold projects include music both written and performed by BIPOC composers and musicians.
The 2021 Alumni Enterprise Award winners will participate in the Music Academy’s online Innovation Residential on March 22-27. Industry visionaries including opera producers Beth Morrison and Jecca Barry and violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins will lead interactive workshops and panels focusing on entrepreneurial strategies for marketing, fundraising and audience engagement and interaction, as well as on today’s evolving musical landscape. Each winner will be partnered with a professional mentor whose expertise relates to their project, to serve as an ongoing advisor.
Clive Chang, a Music Academy Board member and Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, says:
“The winning projects represent incredible enterprise and ingenuity in the creative pursuits of Academy alumni. It’s thrilling to see the impact these musicians are having on peer artists and audiences, along with the education and legacy they offer the field of music.”
Further details about their projects are provided below, and details of past projects and winners are available here.
About the 2021 Alumni Enterprise Award winners and their projects:
Camila Barrientos Ossio, clarinet (2011, 2012)
Bruno Luiz Lourensetto, trumpet (2012)
Award: $20,000
Project: Mú∫ica para Respirar 24/7 (Music to Breathe 24/7)
Real-time, online video concerts for COVID patients across Latin America and beyond
Camila Barrientos Ossio is principal clarinet of the Orquestra Sinfônica Municipal de São Paulo and a former member of the Miami Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and The City of Tomorrow quintet. Bruno Luiz Lourensetto serves as guest trumpet of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and principal trumpet of the Bachiana Philharmonic, having previously served as principal trumpet of the Miami Symphony, Querétaro Philharmonic and Guanajuato Symphony. Based in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and São Paulo, Brazil, respectively, they are co-founders and co-artistic directors of La Sociedad Boliviana de Música de Cámara (The Bolivian Chamber Music Society).
Conceived and launched last August as a direct musical response to the COVID-19 crisis, Mú∫ica para Respirar 24/7 presents live classical music without geographical limitations by offering personal mini-concerts by means of video-calls, thereby cultivating new audiences around the world. Top international musicians representing major institutions have since performed online concerts – available 24 hours a day, free of charge – for COVID-19 patients, their relatives, healthcare professionals, seniors, children and others. The project has already presented 2,157 concerts for 5,538 listeners in 46 countries. This year, the winners will present four week-long editions of Mú∫ica para Respirar 24/7, culminating in a Bolivian in-person tour to connect with their online audiences. Learn more here.
Rich Coburn, vocal piano (2014)
Award: $15,000
Project: BIPOC Voices: The Library of Music for Voice and Orchestra by BIPOC Composers
Database of orchestrated vocal works by Black, Indigenous and other composers of color, featuring samples of many previously unrecorded works
Rich Coburn leads a dual career as a musician and educator. Musically, he works as a pianist, organist, vocal coach, music director and arranger. He teaches entrepreneurship at McGill University and helps musicians and entrepreneurs across Canada to collaborate, negotiate and better navigate the sometimes-tricky relationships between their lives and careers. This year, he will create a prototype of an online library with orchestrated vocal works by Black, Indigenous and other composers of color, featuring samples of many previously unrecorded works, with the goal of developing the library into a permanent resource for educational and artistic institutions. Learn more here.
Cristina Cutts Dougherty, tuba (2020, 2021 and a 2020 Fast Pitch Award Winner)
Award: $10,000
Project: The Resilience Project
Book that aims to secure the legacies of historic women in brass by detailing their orchestral careers and pedagogy from the 1940s to the present day
Cristina Cutts Dougherty has served as the principal tubist of the American Youth Symphony and New World Symphony, and as a fellow with the National Repertory Orchestra. She currently holds the position of principal tuba with Symphony in C. Her project will add the voices of heroes in our musical history to the educational narrative, highlighting 14 trailblazing women in brass. Active between the 1940s and today, these orchestral brass players are uniquely relevant to today’s aspiring musician, all being artists who have succeeded against the odds. This year, The Resilience Project will manifest as a book of biographies, pedagogies and testimonies with supplemental online resources for education and development. Learn more here.
Adanya Dunn, mezzo-soprano (2014, 2015)
Award: $20,000
Project: “InsideOut: Pop-Up Concerts & Walking Concert Tour (Red Light Arts & Culture)”
Range of indoor and outdoor, socially distanced concerts following a range of COVID protocols in Amsterdam’s Red Light District
The 2020-21 recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation Developing Artist Grant and District Winner of the 2020 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Adanya Dunn is “turning opera on its head and making the future bright for the art form” (Globe & Mail, Canada). Created as part of her organization Red Light Arts & Culture, her collaborative project consists of a series of indoor and outdoor, socially-distanced classical pop-up concerts, all following COVID protocols, in unconventional locations throughout Amsterdam’s Red Light District. The series culminates in a weekend of “walking concerts,” at which audience groups will rotate between different performance locations before coming together at the final one. The concerts also provide the opportunity for the district’s small business owners and local entrepreneurs to share their stories. Learn more here.
Christina Giuca Krause, vocal piano (2013, 2017)
Award: $20,000
Project: “Composition of a City: Digital”
Chicago-based musical education and mentorship endeavor, bridging classical music and hip-hop
A 2017 winner of the Music Academy’s Marilyn Horne Song Competition, Christina Giuca Krause is the Artistic Director of LYNX, a nonprofit art song organization that amplifies diverse voices through new song commissions, inclusive performances and innovative educational programming. She is currently on faculty at Hope College and Lutheran Summer Music Festival. LYNX’s initiative “Composition of a City” addresses the challenges facing youth on Chicago’s South Side by providing students with positive mentorship and a safe musical outlet to share their stories through a curriculum incorporating elements of both hip-hop and classical music. Learn more here.
The Alumni Enterprise Awards are generously supported by the Ladera Foundation.
About Music Academy of the West
Founded in 1947, Music Academy of the West offers year-round programming for the local community and talented musicians from around the world. Each year, 140 fellows aged 18-34 are selected by merit-based audition from more than 2,000 applicants worldwide to participate in an eight-week Summer School and Festival preparing them for 21st-century careers. At the Summer Festival, they receive opportunities for advanced study and frequent orchestral, chamber, recital and masterclass performances under the guidance of more than 70 internationally renowned faculty and guest artists. Each fellow receives a full scholarship for tuition, room and board. In 2018, the Music Academy began a partnership with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) that brings LSO musicians to Santa Barbara to teach and perform, and sends twelve Keston MAX Fellows to London for ten days of training and performance with the orchestra. Career-advancing opportunities for fellows and alumni are offered through the Academy’s Innovation Institute. Summer Innovation Seminars bring together industry leaders and cutting-edge artists to engage fellows and audiences in discussion about the present and future state of classical music, while the annual Fast Pitch Awards give fellows a platform to present their pioneering ideas. The Academy’s Alumni Enterprise Awards have provided $320,000 in grants for forward-thinking projects in artistic expression, audience development, education, community engagement, social justice and technology; recipients of the awards are also invited to attend a five-day Innovation Residential. Academy alumni create entrepreneurial careers in music and beyond and are members of major symphony orchestras, chamber orchestras, ensembles, opera companies and academic faculties throughout the world. Music Academy of the West also provides music education locally through Sing!, a free, after-school choral initiative for seven-to-twelve-year-olds from 28 schools in Santa Barbara County. The Academy presents more than 150 public events annually in four campus venues and in sites across Santa Barbara and online. For more information, visit musicacademy.org.
facebook.com/MusicAcademyoftheWest
For further information, contact:
Glenn Petry, 21C Media Group: [email protected]; 212-625-2038
Kate Oberjat, Director of Marketing and Communications, Music Academy of the West: [email protected]
# # #
© 21C Media Group, January 2021