About the Alumni Enterprise Awards: 2021 Winners Announced
This award funds innovative ideas in areas including artistic expression, audience development, education, community engagement, social justice, and technology.
This award opportunity is available to all Music Academy alumni. Proposals must align with or challenge the Academy’s mission to further classical music education while cultivating discerning, appreciative, and adventurous audiences. Awards granted for alumni projects range from $2,500 to $20,000 based on scope and scale.
26 alumni have received Alumni Enterprise Awards over the past four years, for a total of $320,000 to support their proposed programs. Please learn more about each winner and proposed project below.
The winners will be mentored individually on their projects by a selected leader in their industry in addition to receiving coaching sessions on their business plans. This includes coaching from Music Academy Chief Advancement Officer Jonathan Bishop on raising funds and cultivating investors.
During the Summer School and Festival fellows have the opportunity to develop and pitch innovative ideas through the Fast Pitch Awards competition.
The Alumni Enterprise Awards are generously supported by the Ladera Foundation.
2021 Alumni Enterprise Award Winners
About the 2021 Winning Projects
Música para Respirar 24/7: Camila Barrientos Ossio & Bruno Luiz Lourensetto
Award: $20,000
Based in Cochabamba, Bolivia and São Paulo, Brazil, Camila and Bruno are co-founders and co-artistic directors of La Sociedad Boliviana de Música de Cámara. La Sociedad conceived and launched a direct musical response to the COVID-19 crisis last August. Top international musicians representing major institutions have since performed online concerts – available 24 hours a day, free of cost – for COVID-19 patients, their relatives, health care professionals, seniors, children, and others. As of January 2021, the project has already presented 2,157 concerts for 5,538 listeners in 46 countries. In 2021, the winners will present four week-long editions of Música para Respirar 24/7, culminating in a Bolivian in-person tour to connect with their online audiences.
InsideOut: Pop-Up Concerts & Walking Concert Tour: Adanya Dunn
Award: $20,000
Adanya’s collaborative project as part of her organization Red Light Arts & Culture consists of a series of indoor and outdoor, socially-distanced pop-up concerts (following a range of COVID protocols), in unconventional locations throughout Amsterdam’s Red Light District. The series culminates in a weekend of “walking concerts” in which audience groups rotate between different special location performances during their concert experience and come together at final location. These concerts also create the opportunity for the small business owners and local entrepreneurs of the district to share their stories.
Composition of a City: Digital: Christina Giuca Krause
Award: $20,000
Christina 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. 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.
BIPOC Voices: The Library of Music for Voice and Orchestra by BIPOC Composers: Rich Coburn
Award: $15,000
In 2021, Rich 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. This project is in partnership with Amplified Opera, Black Opera Productions, the Association for Opera in Canada (formerly Opera.ca), and the Canadian Music Centre in British Columbia.
The Resilience Project: Cristina Cutts Dougherty
Award: $10,000
The Resilience Project will add to the educational narrative the voices of heroes in our musical history, highlighting fourteen trailblazing women in brass. Active between the 1940’s and today, these orchestral brass players are uniquely relevant to today’s aspiring musician – these are artists who have succeeded against all odds. During 2021, The Resilience Project will manifest as a book of biographies, pedagogies, and testimonies with supplemental online resources for education and development.
How to Apply
Application & Selection Timeline
The 2021 Application process was open from August 10, 2020 until October 30, 2020.
Updates were recently shared with all applicants and can easily be viewed in the APPLICATION PORTAL
Purpose
- Support innovation in areas including but not limited to artistic expression, audience development, education, community engagement, and technology.
- Advance social entrepreneurial endeavors/projects in classical music – bold and diverse initiatives developed and implemented by Music Academy alumni.
- Provide funding and mentorship that generates positive learning outcomes for Music Academy alumni.
Criteria
- Open to all alumni of the Music Academy of the West. Applications submitted on behalf of multiple individuals or ensembles must have at least one Academy alumni in a leadership role.
- Supportable activity includes proposals that align with or challenge the Academy’s vision to make a unique and enduring contribution to the world of music by advancing the development of the next generation of great classically trained musicians and cultivating discerning, appreciative, and adventurous audiences.
- Non-supportable activity includes proposals that request funding for private instruction, audition expenses, or tuition costs that are solely related to advancing the musical skills of the applicant. Any charges related to purchasing equipment or instruments must significantly impact more than just the alumni’s career.
- Completed applications must include a formal project title and general categorization, a project narrative, a timeline for implementation, a proposed budget, value and impact metrics, and any other details to describe the vision and breadth of the initiative.
- 2021 winning projects are required to be completed within the 2021 calendar year.
Receive Award Updates
Send us your up-to-date contact information to receive 2022 award application details as they are announced.
About the 2020 Winning Projects
Bernardo Bermudez ('11): Musical Make Believe
Industry Mentor: Lisa Mitchell
The digital program uses classical music, guest musicians, characters, puppetry, and animation to tell stories about music, musical instruments, and the performing arts with the potential to reach millions of kids. The first 10 episodes will be streamed via YouTube. Musical Make Believe will also promote The Enchanted Tail and other Opera4Kids productions.
Andy Zimmermann ('19): Opera Jukebox
Industry Mentor: Ty Johnson
An opera jukebox musical will be created to showcase opera’s greatest hits in a medium better suited to the 21st century audience, using English lyrics and new arrangements. Hosted by Zimmermann, 60 minutes of music with a nine-piece band will be presented at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City, featuring leaders in Broadway, modern dance, and opera.
Clara Lyon (‘03, '04), Doyle Armbrust ('01,'03): Enigma
Industry Mentor: Luke Ritchie
Spektral Quartet will record and release an immersive, 360-degree format visual album of Enigma by composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir and video artist Sigurdur Gudjonsson. A dome video will be adapted for personal viewing devices such as a VR headset, to be released in November and featured on a New York City premiere.
John Popham (‘05, ‘06): States of Listening
Industry Mentor: Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim
Critically acclaimed trio Longleash will curate and produce five pilot episodes of States of Listening, a music podcast that offers a guided listening experience through mindfulness practices. An introductory conversation between a musician and a meditation, spirituality, or music therapy expert will guide the listener throughout.
2020 Industry Mentors
2020 Innovation Award Winners & Fast Pitch Winners
2020 Innovation Award Winners & Fast Pitch Winners
About the 2019 Winning Projects
John Popham ('05, 06): The Resonant Lens
This vibrant videography series brought musical works to life, presented in Brooklyn, NY and Louisville, KY. A modular project structure was used to reach audiences virtually, through interactive content online; person-to-person, in live performance paired with videography; and remotely, via screenings and gallery exhibits.
Brenda Patterson ('00): Ready.Set / Armida
The Director of Music of Victory Hall Opera [VHO] sought to invent a modern, modular stage set that was affordable, transportable, and reconfigurable. With the Ready.Set Competition, designers and architects were challenged with creating that set design. The winning set was used in VHO’s production of Haydn’s Armida, a Virginia Premiere.
Steve Perdicaris ('86): Crescendo 2020
Mr. Perdicaris co-founded Music Mission San Francisco which provides free after-school music instruction that culminates in public performances at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The award will support funding additional teaching artists with the goal of establishing a chamber orchestra.
Bernardo Bermudez ('11): The Enchanted Tail
The Enchanted Tail is an original children’s fairytale opera set to music from traditional opera repertoire. In May 2019, 5,000 elementary school students watched the orchestral debut of the opera in San Diego’s Balboa Theater. All 42 San Diego School Districts attended with 64% of participants qualifying as Title 1, low-income schools.
2019 Innovation Award Winners & Fast Pitch Winners
2019 Innovation Award Winners & Fast Pitch Winners
2018 Enterprise Award Winners
Ben Bliss ('12): MESS Core Ensemble
Under the leadership of stage director Paul Curran, the group spent five days preparing operatic scenes for a Manhattan performance on the final day of their Initial Ensemble Session, geared toward a millennial demographic.
Evan Shinners ('09): The Bach Store
A pop-up storefront in NYC where those walking by can see and hear musicians play Bach every day, for five hours a day, over 30 days. Learn more in the New York Times feature article by Michael Cooper: A Pop-Up Shop That Offers Bach Preludes, Fugues and Condoms
Brenda Patterson ('00): The Forgotten
A Halloween double-bill that interweaves Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel with Menotti’s The Medium, The Forgotten explores American poverty, economic anxiety, and teenage gender identity.
Molly Carr ('07) & Anna Petrova ('17): Novel Voices
This debut album for the Carr-Petrova Duo premiered this fall as part of their “Refugee Awareness” concert in Carnegie Hall, mounted to raise awareness about the lives and struggles of refugees across the globe.
Theresa Kim ('06): International Music Sessions
The founding director of International Music Sessions launches Social Integration Workshops, offering 5-weekend musical workshops to young people from diverse communities.