MAP Fund Awards Over $1.2M to Support 41 Live Performance Projects
For the 2012 Map Fund awarded Carbon Song Cycle, a work which is in part inspired by ongoing changes and upheavals in the earth’s ecosystem, media artist Christina McPhee (left) will create layers of interactive, projected video and Pamela Z (right) will create music for voice and electronics, cello, viola, clarinet, and found percussion.
The MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has announced its 2012 grants. The Fund will underwrite 41 new projects in the disciplines of dance, theater and music, all works that in some way explore the boundaries of contemporary performance practices. A panel of peers selected the grantees from more than 800 submissions and the projects will be supported with grants ranging from $10,000 to $45,000. In addition to project grants, each MAP grantee also receives unrestricted general operating support to address their organizations’ day-to-day fiscal health beyond individual productions. Gen-op support—this year in amounts from $2,500 to $12,000—was implemented in 2008 in response to the global financial crisis. The 2012 grantees include: Harvestworks (NYC) for Hans Tammen’s Apheresis, a piece for 15 laptop/electronics performers using a score that’s rearranged every time it’s played; Circuit Network (San Francisco, CA) for the performance of Pamela Z’s Carbon Song Cycle created in collaboration with media artist Christina McPhee, The Educational Alliance (NYC) for the performance of Yoav Gal’s “hybrid opera” 3WEEKS; Music at the Anthology (NYC) for the production of Corey Dargel and Andrew Sean Greer’s music-theatre work The Three Christs; and the Department of Music at the University of California San Diego for Cuatro Corridos, an hour-long multidisciplinary music-theater collaboration between soprano Susan Narucki and writer librettist Jorge Volpi featuring music by Hilda Paredes, Arlene Sierra, Lei Liang, and Hebert Vázquez Sandrin that looks at human trafficking across the U.S.–Mexican border. For a complete list of the 2012 grantees, please visit the MAP Fund site.
“The projects supported this year by the MAP Fund represent an incredible range of topics and formats that will both thrill and challenge audiences,” says Ruby Lerner, President and Executive Director of Creative Capital. “The MAP Fund’s long-standing commitment to supporting such a diversity of projects helps ensure the continued vitality of the field.” Ben Cameron, Program Director for the Arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, added, “The MAP Fund has a long legacy of supporting some of the most innovative contemporary performance projects in the country. We are honored to support the work of this year’s talented roster of artists, and we look forward to seeing their exciting and ambitious projects come to life.”
Hans Tammen conducting an orchestra performing on laptops and other electronic devices. His 2012 Map Fund awarded Apheresis, involving a total of 15 musicians, will use a score that is rearranged every time it’s performed.
Panelists who served the MAP Fund this year included Rob Bailis (independent consultant, San Francisco); Daniel Banks (DNAWORKS, Santa Fe, NM); Ron Berry (Fusebox Festival, Austin, TX); Georgiana Pickett (Baryshnikov Art Center, New York); Ann Carlson (visiting artist, Stanford University); Kristy Edmunds (UCLA Live, Los Angeles); Okwui Okpokwasili (indpendent artist, New York); Judd Greenstein (composer, curator Ecstatic Music Festival, New York); George Lewis (Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University, New York); and Peggy Monostra (G. Schirmer Music Publishers, New York).
With the exception of the NEA, the MAP Fund is the largest annual open submission grant to support contemporary performance projects in the United States in both applications reviewed and dollars awarded. Since 1989, the Fund has disbursed more than $24 million to upwards of 900 performing arts projects. The program is well known for its broad geographic reach, as well as for its support of cutting-edge performance practices. This year’s grantees represent artistic communities in Minneapolis, San Diego, Austin and Marlboro, VT, among others.
The MAP Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The program, which was established by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1988, has supported innovation and cross-cultural exploration in theater, dance and music for more than two decades. To date, MAP has disbursed over $24 million dollars to more than 900 projects. Since 2001, the program has been administered by Creative Capital, a national nonprofit organization founded in 1999 which is dedicated to providing integrated financial and advisory support to artists pursuing adventurous projects in five disciplines: Emerging Fields, Film/Video, Literature, Performing Arts and Visual Arts.
(-from the press release)