The Music Academy of the West has announced the 2021 Alumni Enterprise Award winners. Six recipients will get $85,000 in grants that advance social entrepreneurship and seed the industry with new ideas and platforms.
Winning projects go global with multi-continent imprint, receiving creative support and mentorship from the Music Academy’s Innovation Institute. Total value of grants awarded since 2018 has reached $305,000 and has been distributed to 27 alumni.
The Music Academy’s mission expands exponentially as its more than 7,000 alumni are challenged annually to create projects that support innovation in areas of artistic expression, audience development, education, community engagement, social justice, and technology; advance social entrepreneurial endeavors/projects in classical music; and generate positive learning outcomes.
“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,” said Scott Reed, Music Academy president/CEO.
The academy received a record number of applicants for the fourth annual Alumni Enterprise Awards. There were 98 projects adjudicated by members of the Academy’s National Advisory Council, Board of Directors, and administrators, as well as musical entrepreneurs who were part of this past summer’s Remote Learning Institute.
The award winners’ project plans address challenges from the pandemic, the call for social justice, gender equality, and include music both written and performed by BIPOC composers and musicians. Projects originate from Chicago; Philadelphia; Montréal, Canada; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Cochabamba, Bolivia; and São Paulo, Brazil.
Winners will participate in an Innovation Residential online presented by the Music Academy, March 22-27.
Industry visionaries such as opera producers Beth Morrison and Jecca Barry, violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins, and 21C Media Group will lead interactive workshops and panels focusing on entrepreneurial strategies around marketing, fundraising, audience engagement and interaction, and the evolving musical landscape.
Each honoree will be partnered with a professional mentor with expertise connected to their project that will serve as an ongoing advisor.
“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,” said Clive Chang, Music Academy Board member and chief strategy and innovation officer for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
The 2021 Alumni Enterprise Award winners:
Camila Barrientos Ossio (clarinet) and Bruno Luiz Lourensetto (trumpet) will offer real-time, online video concerts for COVID patients across Latin America and beyond in Música para Respirar 24/7
Rich Coburn (vocal piano) is creating a BIPOC Voices: The Library of Music for Voice and Orchestra by BIPOC Composers, a database of orchestrated vocal works by Black, Indigenous, and other Composers of Color, featuring samples of many previously un-recorded works.
Cristina Cutts Dougherty (tuba) is heading The Resilience Project, a book that aims to secure the legacies of historic women in brass by detailing their orchestral careers and pedagogy from the 1940s to today.
Adanya Dunn (mezzo-soprano) will present InsideOut: Pop-Up Concerts & Walking Concert Tour (Red Light Arts & Culture). These will be a range of indoor and outdoor, socially distanced concerts in Amsterdam’s Red Light District.
Christina Giuca Krause (vocal piano, and a winner of the 2017 Marilyn Horne Song Competition) evolves Composition of a City: Digital, a Chicago-based musical education and mentorship endeavor bridging classical music and hip hop.
For information on all past projects and winners, visit musicacademy.org/alumni-enterprise-awards.
» Ossio is principal clarinet of the Orquesta Sinfónica Municipal de São Paulo, a former member of the quintet The City of Tomorrow, the Miami Symphony, and St. Paul Chamber orchestras.
» Lourensetto serves as guest trumpet of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and principal of the Bachiana Philharmonic. He has served as principal trumpet of the Miami Symphony, Queretaro Symphony, and Guanajuato Philharmonic.
Based in Cochabamba, Bolivia and São Paulo, Brazil, they are co-founders and co-artistic directors of La Sociedad Boliviana de Música de Cámara (The Bolivian Chamber Music Society).
» 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 of their careers and lives.
In 2021, Coburn 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 un-recorded works, with the goal to develop the library into a permanent resource for educational and artistic institutions.
» Dougherty has served as the principal tubist of the American Youth Symphony, with the New World Symphony, and as a fellow with the National Repertory Orchestra. She currently holds the position of principal tuba with Symphony in C.
This project will add to the educational narrative the voices of heroes in our musical history, highlighting fourteen trailblazing women in brass. Active between the 1940s and today, these orchestral brass players are relevant to today’s aspiring musician; they are artists who have succeeded against all odds.
» Dunn, the 2020-21 recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation Developing Artist Grant and district winner of the 2020 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, was featured in The Globe & Mail for “turning opera on its head and making the future bright for the art form.”
Her collaborative project series in Amsterdam’s Red Light District culminates in a weekend of walking concerts in which audience groups rotate between special location performances during their concert experience and come together at final location. The concerts also create a way for small business owners and local entrepreneurs of the district to share their stories.
» 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.