[NewMusic] Some folks we know got awarded some dough...

[Polly Moller]

See below.
P.

*THE WALLACE ALEXANDER GERBODE FOUNDATION**

THE WILLIAM AND FLORA HEWLETT FOUNDATION*

Contact: Thomas C. Layton, President

Moy Eng, Director

Gerbode Foundation

Performing Arts Program, Hewlett Foundation

415-391-0911, infoatgerbode.org <info at gerbode.org>

650-234-4500, artsathewlett.org <arts at hewlett.org>


*For Immediate Release:*
January 14, 2008

*$50,000 Commissions for Six Emerging California Composers **
Selected by The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation
and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation*

*SAN FRANCISCO** and MENLO PARK, Calif.* – The Wallace Alexander Gerbode
Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation are pleased to
announce six $50,000 grants for the creation and world premiere of six major
musical compositions by leading young California composers.

Half of each award will be given as a commission fee to a California
composer, aged 35 or younger at the time of application, for a new piece or
suite of new works.   The remaining $25,000 will go to the nonprofit
performing arts organization that nominated the composer, for expenses
related to the costs of presenting the world premiere of the composition in
the Bay Area.  All of the six commissioned works will premiere in the Bay
Area, sometime between September 2008 and June 2010.

These grants are part of a three-year $900,000 initiative by the Gerbode and
Hewlett foundations to support Bay Area performing artists and arts
organizations at a time when funding has been increasingly difficult to come
by.  In 2005 the initiative funded six $50,000 commissions for emerging
choreographers and in 2006 funded six $50,000 commissions for emerging
playwrights.

The six recipients of the 2007 Emerging Composer Awards are (in alphabetical
order by organization):

*The Crucible/Dan Cantrell:*  The Crucible, producer of the annual Fire Arts
Festival in Oakland, will commission Oakland composer-musician Dan
Cantrell's "The Rootabaga Opera," a narrative work with American, Chinese
and Eastern European musical influences, inspired by the children's stories
of the great American poet and folk musician Carl Sandburg.

*Musical Traditions (Paul Dresher Ensemble)/Ryan Brown:*   Berkeley's
contemporary creative music organization, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, will
underwrite the San Francisco–based composer and jazz-rock instrumentalist
Ryan Brown's new chamber work for Dresher's six-piece Electro-Acoustic Band.

*Other Minds/Catherine Lamb:*  The San Francisco new-music presenter Other
Minds will commission Catherine Lamb, of Los Angeles, to create "Dilations,"
a work in four movements for vocals, clarinets and cellos, which will
explore elements of pitch, harmony and timbre.

*ROVA Arts/Carla Kihlstedt:*  San Francisco–based ROVA Saxophone Quartet
will commission Oakland composer Carla Kihlstedt to create a half-hour work
based on texts about the impact of the Industrial Revolution.  The work will
be collaboratively developed for saxophones and such industrial
"instruments" as zippers, sheet metal and broken glass.

*San Francisco Chanticleer, Inc./Mason Bates:*  The world-famous men's
choral group Chanticleer will commission Oakland-based composer Mason Bates
to create a multipart, a cappella choral piece for twelve singers, based on
sacred themes drawn from biblical imagery.

*San Francisco Jazz Organization (SF Jazz)/Adam Theis:*  SF Jazz, the
producer of the annual SF Jazz Festival, will commission San Francisco
composer-performer Adam Theis to create an hour-long suite,  merging modern
jazz and symphonic instrumentation with hip-hop and electronic music.

The quantity, range and quality of applications for the Emerging Composer
Award program illustrate the vitality of the Bay Area's contemporary music
scene and the need to support and encourage it, according to Gerbode
Foundation President Thomas Layton.  "It is clear that there is a gifted new
generation of composers coming up, eager to explore and develop their
musical visions," says Layton.  "In the past we have offered major
assistance to such leading Bay Area composers as Pablo Ortiz, John Adams,
Lou Harrison and Miya Masaoka.  This program is a great opportunity to
invest in the next wave of Bay Area musical creators and the producing
organizations that are nurturing and presenting their work."

"We are pleased and excited to have the opportunity to support commissions
for young artists.  This program is helping to make the future of the arts
happen in the Bay Area," says Moy Eng, director of the Performing Arts
Program at the Hewlett Foundation.

The Gerbode and Hewlett foundations were assisted in making these grants by
an advisory panel composed of the following nationally respected music
professionals:

   - *Claire Chase*, a New York flutist who runs the respected
   International Contemporary Ensemble
   - *Paul Chihara*, an admired composer for films and dance companies
   (including the SF Ballet) and a professor of music at the University of
   California, Los Angeles
   - *Chuck Helm*, director of performing arts at the Wexner Center for
   the Arts, in Columbus, Ohio
   - *John Kennedy*, composer and conductor, and the artistic director of
   Santa Fe New Music and artistic associate of the Spoleto Festival USA
   - *Tania Leon*, a Cuban-American composer, conductor and educator and
   distinguished professor at City University of New York


*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 Foundation-initiated special projects.

*About the Special Awards Program*
For nearly twenty years, the Gerbode Foundation has made innovative grants
through its Special Awards Program to San Francisco Bay Area arts
institutions to commission new works from gifted individual artists:
playwrights (including Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize–winning "Angels in
America"), choreographers (such as Alonzo King and Margaret Jenkins),
composers (John Adams, Paul Dresher and Tony Williams among them), as well
as 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. The 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.


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