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THE WALLACE ALEXANDER GERBODE FOUNDATION
Contact:
Stacie Ma’a, President
Gerbode Foundation
510-982-4788, [email protected]
For Immediate Release:
February 1, 2017
Gerbode Foundation Awards Six $50,000 Commissions for Composers
New Compositions Representing “today’s most influential composers” will Premiere for Bay
Area Audiences
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation and The William and
Flora Hewlett Foundation are pleased to announce the recipients of a $300,000 initiative to
support the creation and production of new music compositions by California composers. These
music composition awards are the final round of a three-year $900,000 initiative funded by the
Gerbode and Hewlett foundations to support the commissioning of individual artists and to
invest in their creative vision. In 2014, grants were made for new works by choreographers and
grants for new theater works were awarded in 2015.
The works will be commissioned and premiered by Bay Area nonprofit organizations. Each
organization will receive a $50,000 grant divided into two parts: $12,500 or more will be a
commissioning fee to a California-based composer, and the remaining funds will go to the
presenting organization for expenses related to the creation and world premiere of the
commissioned compositions. The resulting works will have their world premiere public
performances in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 2017 and June 2019. The grants
are made in partnership with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which also provided
funding for the commissions.
The recipients of the 2016 Music Commissioning Awards are (in alphabetical order by
organization):
Cultural Odyssey / Idris Ackamoor
WE LIVE HERE! will be an evening long musical theater production composed by Cultural
Odyssey’s founding Executive/Co-Director and resident composer, Idris Ackamoor. The score is
inspired by the musical movements that made San Francisco a welcoming and nurturing world
destination for musicians, tourists, and fans. WE LIVE HERE! will premiere in the Spring of
2019 as part of Cultural Odyssey’s 40th Anniversary Season.
Kitka, Inc. / Janet Kutulas
Iron Shoes, a contemporary, neo-feminist folk opera, will transform source material drawn from
Eastern European fairytales into a contemporary performance experience. Even after over 20
years of performing and composing music for Kitka, Iron Shoes will be Janet Kutulas’s first
large-scale composed work. Iron Shoes will premiere in the Spring of 2018.
Kularts / Florante Aguilar
Utom is a contemporary composition in five movements inspired by a mythical story of the deity
Boi Henwu and is informed by musical traditions and indigenous instruments of the T’boli
people of the Philippines. This work is an important continuation for musician and composer
Florante Aguilar to develop and build upon his “new found” genre and musical voice. Utom will
premiere in the Fall of 2018.
Other Minds / Brian Baumbusch
The Pressure will be a concert-length multimedia work based on themes of early German
expressionism that accompanied the rise of fascism. The scores will be performed by a mixed
ensemble including the Friction String Quartet and The Lightbulb Ensemble, a trailblazing group
of twelve percussionists that performs on a set of instruments that Brian Baumbusch designed
and built, and that were inspired by Indonesian gamelan instruments. The Pressure will premiere
in the Spring of 2018.
San Francisco Girls Chorus / Fred Frith
Fred Frith’s unique compositional process with the 45-member SF Girls chorus will result in a
new 20-minute work. Members of the chorus will participate in a series of workshops led by
Frith and Bay Area instrumentalists well versed in improvised and scored musical performance
practices. The new composition will take form and be developed based on a process of
interaction, suggestion, and creative collaboration. The premiere will take place in the Spring of
2019.
Women’s Audio Mission / Real Vocal String Quartet
Culture Kin is an innovative and cross-cultural musical suite that the Real Vocal String Quartet
will create with artists from San Francisco’s international sister cities. Culture Kin will explore
the intersection of classical and world musical traditions while using Women’s Audio Mission
professional recordings as a creative “instrument” in this new compositional process. Culture
Kin will premiere in the Spring of 2019.
“We are thrilled to be able to continue to support projects that promote and advance the work of
innovative California composers and presenters in this challenging fiscal environment,” said
Stacie Ma’a, the president of the Gerbode Foundation. “This year’s recipients represent some of
the most unique, ambitious, and exciting new musical works.”
“These grant recipients will create new music that challenges and inspires diverse audiences
around the Bay Area,” said John E. McGuirk, director of the Hewlett Foundation’s Performing
Arts Program, which provided funding for the grants. “We are pleased to support these
composers and organizations creating new work that is essential to maintaining a vibrant arts
community.”
The Gerbode Foundation was assisted in making these grants by an advisory panel composed of
the following nationally respected music experts:
•
Kate Dumbleton is the Artistic and Executive Director for the Hyde Park Jazz Festival
and an Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the MA
program in Arts Administration and Policy. Kate joined the Hyde Park Jazz Festival and
SAIC in the fall 2012 from the position of Executive Director of the critically acclaimed
Chicago Jazz Ensemble, resident at Columbia College since 1965. Her work in jazz,
improvised music and performance spans nearly two decades.
•
Walter Kitundu is an artist who creates kinetic sculptures and sonic installations,
develops public works, builds (and performs on) extraordinary musical instruments,
while researching and documenting the natural world. He is the inventor of a family of
Phonoharps, multi-stringed instruments made from record players that rely on the
turntable’s sensitivity to vibration. Kitundu has created hand-built record players driven
by the wind and rain, fire and earthquakes, birds, light, and the force of ocean waves. In
2008, he received a MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of his work in this field.
•
Miya Masaoka is a classically trained American composer, musician and sound artist. She is a
2016 Fulbright Japan fellow. Since the early 1990’s, she has used the computer and speaker
spatialization, video and performance. In her work with traditional Japanese instruments, she has
designed and built midi gestural interfaces and used data from insect movement, plant and
human brain response. She is considered a pioneer using new techniques and improvisation on
the 21 string koto. She has taught in the Bard MFA program in Music/Sound since 2003, has
taught m composition at New York University, and is currently the interim Director for Sound
Arts MFA at Columbia University.
•
Arturo O’Farrill is a pianist, composer, and educator, who was born in Mexico and
grew up in New York City. In 2007, he founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance as a not-forprofit organization dedicated to the performance, education, and preservation of Afro
Latin music. As a composer, he has received commissions from Meet the Composer, Jazz
at Lincoln Center, The Philadelphia Music Project, The Apollo Theater, Symphony
Space, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts. He
is on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and director of Jazz Studies at the
Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music.
About the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation
The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation is interested in programs and projects offering
potential for significant impact. The primary geographical focus is on the San Francisco Bay
Area and Hawaii. The Foundation’s interests generally fall under the categories of arts and
culture, environment, reproductive rights and health, citizen participation, building communities,
inclusiveness, strength of the philanthropic process and the nonprofit sector, and foundationinitiated special projects.
About the Special Awards Program
For more than twenty-five years, the Gerbode Foundation has made innovative grants through
its Special Awards Program to Bay Area arts institutions to commission new works from
choreographers, playwrights, and composers. The Special Awards Program has also supported
visual artists, poets, and multimedia artists.
In a time of cultural shifts and fiscal insecurity in the arts, these coveted, nationally respected
awards have helped underwrite culturally and aesthetically diverse, acclaimed new works by
prominent artists and emerging ones. These grants have supported artists at critical junctures in
their careers; enabled nonprofit local arts groups to develop and debut substantial, original
works; and enriched Bay Area audiences, readers, and viewers by giving them first access to
ambitious new creations.
About the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is a nonpartisan, private charitable foundation
that advances ideas and supports institutions to promote a better world. For 50 years, the
foundation has supported efforts to advance education for all, preserve the environment,
improve lives and livelihoods in developing countries, promote the health and economic
well-being of women, support vibrant performing arts, strengthen Bay Area communities
and make the philanthropy sector more effective.
The foundation’s Performing Arts Program makes grants to sustain artistic expression and
encourage public engagement in the arts in the San Francisco Bay Area, to give California
students equal access to an education rich in the arts, and to provide necessary resources to help
organizations and artists be effective in their work.
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