2020 Grantees
The Musical Fund Society granted $60,000 to 11 organizations for projects in the 2019–20 season.
| Curtis Institute of Music | Curtis and the Sphinx Organization, a Detroit-based national organization dedicated to addressing diversity in the arts, will partner in June 2019 to bring the Sphinx Performance Academy at Curtis Summerfest to Philadelphia for its second consecutive summer; this full-scholarship summer program is designed for Black and Latinx string players between the ages of 11-17. | $6,000 |
| Dolce Suono | Dolce Suono Ensemble's “At the Spring: Elephants, Donkeys, and Birds, Oh My!” features family concerts – for kids from age 5 to 105 – in a special project bringing together DSE’s acclaimed core artists, distinguished guests, and a celebrated actor as part of its season-long exploration of the word. The project includes two concerts, two school visits, and online components. The programs include music by Mozart, Saint-Säens, Copland, Fang Man, María Grever, and others. | $6,000 |
| Network for New Music | Network for New Music celebrates Jan Krzywicki’s 30th anniversary as conductor of the Network for New Music Ensemble. This project will include: 2 performances with a post-concert composer discussion, a major chamber work commission, two new works composed by Jan’s students, integrated educational components, and a masterclass and colloquium (both events are free and open to the public). | $6,000 |
| PRISM Quartet | PRISM Quartet will commission Martin Bresnick, George Lewis, Juri Seo, and Arturo O’Farrill to create works exploring the meaning of walls in contemporary society, each inspired by a text of their choosing. On March 21 and 22, 2020, PRISM will perform Mending Wall as staged concerts directed by Jorinde Keesmaat with lighting by Aaron Copp, copresented by the Bryn Mawr College Performing Art Series. | $6,000 |
| Temple Music Prep | Temple University Music Preparatory and Jasper String Quartet " Chamber Music is a Living Art". Students of Music Prep's Center for Young Musicians are immersed in a new work for chamber music by composer Patrick Castillo from inception, through rehearsals and performance, shared all the way, to the premier, with the Jasper String Quartet. | $6,000 |
| Astral Artists | Musical Roots is a program that envisions a new era for Astral’s critically acclaimed Center City Concerts in which chamber music is an adventurous and intimate experience where artists and audiences explore genres beyond classical music through improvisation, multimedia, and collaborations. Appalachian singing, fiddling, blues, and hip-hop inspire Musical Roots. | $5,625 |
| Bowerbird | Ghosts and Apparitions is a two concert survey of George Crumb's hauntingly beautiful music. The concerts will take place in October 2019 at the Chinese Rotunda and Woodlands Cemetery. These concerts will take place in the context of “George Crumb at 90,” an international celebration of the Philadelphia area composer’s 90th birthday. | $5,625 |
| Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia | This project commissions composer Andrea Clearfield and librettist Ellen Frankel to create a musical sequel to Karel Capek's hugely influential play, "R.U.R.," timed to coincide with that work’s 100th anniversary. Described as “a classic of technologically dystopian literature," and holding the distinction of being the first televised science fiction ever broadcast, "R.U.R." addressed prescient themes of artificial intelligence, and introduced the word "robot" into our modern vocabulary. | $5,625 |
| Tempesta di Mare | Tempesta di Mare’s core string, woodwind and continuo players, augmented by 5 singers and a pair of trumpets, perform Christmas in Moravia, a program of rarely heard 17th-century music by Czech, Italian and Central European composers collected by the archbishop-prince of Kroměříž. The program will also include baroque settings of Czech carols and Christmas hymns. Performances: December 6-8, 2019 | $5,150 |
| Ars Nova Workshop | Ars Nova Workshop will complete a major recording project, featuring Bobby Zankel & the Warriors of the Wonderful Sound performing a commission for 17-piece ensemble by the late Muhal Richard Abrams. | $4,225 |
| Lyra Society | Lyra Connect is the Lyra Society's outreach program, which brings student harpists to perform in retirement and healthcare facilities alongside professional mentors. Over the next school year Lyra Connect will visit fifteen locations to give free concerts featuring the Society's students as well as the professionals who teach them. | $3,750 |