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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. ###