Pew Center Announces 2010 Philadelphia Music Project Grant Recipients

The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage has announced $1,141,900 in grants from the Philadelphia Music Project to 18 local music organizations. This year’s grantees include three first-time recipients and represent a broad range of musical genres, supporting programming in classical, blues, jazz, opera, and world music. In addition to exposing Philadelphia audiences to significant musical works, project grants also support the artistic development of area composers and musicians.

According to Matt Levy, Director of the Philadelphia Music Project, “This year’s grants will support an extraordinary series of projects, ranging from Beijing opera to progressive jazz, newly discovered early music to newly created symphonies. Some reinterpret conventional forms, and others explore new aesthetic terrain. Taken as a whole, these projects remind us yet again that Philadelphia is a dynamic hub for music, one that connects communities, artists, and cultural traditions throughout the region.”

Among the projects funded:

• The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe will receive $100,000 to assist in the presentation of Philadelphia’s first Bang on a Can Marathon in September 2010.
• The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society will receive $75,000 for The Next Generation Project, a series of concerts which aims to connect the world’s preeminent chamber musicians with the next generation of classical music audiences. The program will feature the premieres of new works by distinguished composers, including a new work by 101-year-old Elliott Carter.
• The Dolce Suono Chamber Music Concert Series will receive $65,900 to help fund a two-season commissioning project, “Mahler 100/Schoenberg 60,” initiated in commemoration of the deaths of two composers who profoundly impacted 20th- and 21st-century music.
• The Philadelphia Art Museum will receive $60,000 to fund the commissions of two new works by jazz saxophonists and composers Joe Lovano and Chris Potter based on one of the museum’s most recent acquisitions: the 1951 painting Seine, an important early work by American abstract minimalist Ellsworth Kelly and one of the earliest to embrace abstraction. Lovano and Potter will each perform a program of recent original music along with their new works.
• The Dave Holland Big Band, one of the pre-eminent large jazz ensembles, has yet to perform live in Philadelphia. The Painted Bride Art Center, home of the longest running, continuous jazz series in Philadelphia, will receive $60,000 in order to present the Grammy Award-winning group’s long overdue Philadelphia debut.
• Montgomery County Community College’s “Blues at the Crossroads” concerts will receive $56,000 present musical and educational programs designed to engage and entertain audiences, drawing in new listeners as well as devotees of this quintessential American musical genre.
• The Philadelphia chapter of the American Composers Forum will receive $45,000 to help them bring renowned composer Steve Reich to the city for a three-day residency. Reich will oversee workshops for local composers, and his visit will culminate in a public concert of two of his works, including his Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet.
• Network for New Music has been awarded $45,000 for the commissioning of four new chamber works by Andrea Clearfield, Shih Hui Chen, Dai Fujikura, and Eric Moe which will be premiered as part of a three concert series, SOUND/LIGHT/COLOR: Asian Influences in New Music, alongside contemporary and traditional music from Tibet, China, and Japan.

For the complete list of 2010 grantees and full descriptions of each funded project, visit Philadelphia Music Project’s 2010 Grant Awardees page.

Proposals are evaluated through a competitive process by a panel of internationally recognized artists, scholars, and music presenters with a broad collective range of knowledge in the field. In addition, a group of artistic advisors, specialists in various genres and periods of music, provided supplemental reports. For a full list of panelists, advisors, and their respective credentials, download the 2010 Grantee Roster PDF

(—Condensed from the press release)