Announcing the Fall 2021 PRJC Grant Recipients

The Paul R. Judy Center for Innovation and Research is proud to announce five new projects that have been awarded funding through the PRJC Grant Program. The grant committee received a wealth of excellent proposals for innovative projects and researching surrounding the Center’s focus on the achievement of diversity, equity, and inclusion in all elements of our arts profession. The projects receiving funding for the Fall 2021 grant cycle include:

Dr. Ayden Adler – Houston, TX

• Orchestrating Whiteness: Arthur Fiedler, Serge Koussevitzky, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra– Research support to investigate how the split between a winter, “classical” season, and a spring “popular” season, that the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) institutionalized in the 1880s, contributed to the classical musical world existing as an overwhelmingly “white” space.

Kasia Bielak-Hoops & Vó·ce Veläta – Ypsilanti, MI

• Vó·ce Veläta 2021-22– Vó·ce Veläta (trans. “veiled voice”) was founded in Fall 2020 to actively address systemic racism within music education. Two separate innovative initiatives developed over the course of the year: a student-led ensemble following a creative youth development model; and resources for music educators, including the launching of a work-study group and a unique database to search the wealth of resources available online that celebrate, educate about and amplify the voices of BIPOC and women composers and artists.

Dr. Lisa R. Caravan and Dr. Alden H. Snell, II – Rochester, NY

• Expanding the Curriculum: Commissioning Diverse Repertoire for Intermediate Band and Orchestra-  This project will commission two new works by BBIA identifying composers for intermediate instrumental music ensembles: one band and one string orchestra. The project also includes the creation of standards-based activities, collaborations between the composers and music educations students, and the dissemination of learning materials to in-service music educators.

Kara LaMoure & WindSync – Detroit, MI

• Two Steppin’: a collaborative concert of professional chamber musicians, beginning youth orchestra and composer Mason Bynes- A collaborative multigenerational concert event on April 30, 2022, concluding an educational residency with the Houston Youth Symphony Coda Music Program and a composer collaboration with Mason Bynes, at Zilkha Hall at the Hobby Center in Houston, TX. The main goals of the project are to create an exciting capstone event to motivate and retain beginning music students, to help families who wouldn’t typically visit the concert hall feel welcome at one of the city’s premiere performance spaces, and to begin students’ musical lives with a sense of artistic representation, emphasizing Texas music and premiering a new work by a young Black composer from Houston.

Laura Metcalf & The Overlook Quartet – New York, NY

• If The Stars Align- A free, community-focused, mostly outdoor festival at the Morris-Jumel Mansion and other uptown cultural centers. In keeping with the ensemble’s standard programming, this three-concert festival will survey four centuries of string quartet music by Black composers, with a spotlight on living composers.