Program

New Music Creator Fund

The Creator Fund offers grants to individual music creators working in any genre who need support to get to the next stage of their creative practice.

Programs
Program

New Music Creator Fund

The Creator Fund offers grants to individual music creators working in any genre who need support to get to the next stage of their creative practice.

Connect with Us

Funders

Support for New Music USA and its many programs and activities is provided by foundations, corporations, government agencies, and hundreds of individual contributors. The Creator Fund is funded in part by The ASCAP Foundation Bart Howard Fund, BMI Foundation, Inc., Cheswatyr Foundation, and the Howard Gilman Foundation. Grants to artists in New York are made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and with public funds form the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

New Music USA acknowledges and is grateful for the support of its endowment donors, including the Mellon Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, Baisley Powell Elebash Fund, Hewlett Foundation, Fidelity Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts.

(Pictured above: Firas Zreik,  photo by Salah Daoud)

The New Music Creator Fund offers grants to individual music creators working in any genre who need support to get to the next stage of their creative practice, with collaboration as a central element. The program supports costs that relate to the development of new and existing ideas and projects, collaboration with other artists and practitioners, and any activities that help creators realize their goals, including childcare costs, technical assistance/skills building, and more. Our aim is to enable music creators to take the lead in the development of new and existing ideas and projects. We support and represent a broad range of individuals across the country and musical spectrum.

For the 2024 cycle, we made some minor changes to the Creator Fund to streamline our application process. The application review was split into two stages: the first stage was an artistic review of applicants’ music samples, and the second stage involved the full application. 

Additionally, to be more transparent in separating out New York-based funding, we collected applications through two program strands: Creator Fund New York and Creator Fund National. 

Review the Creator Fund FAQ here. 

Read the Program Guidelines here.
  

Equity and Inclusion   

New Music USA is committed to inclusive and equitable treatment across all of our activities. We serve a diverse community of applicants and grantees and we welcome the unique contributions that all artists bring in terms of their education, opinions, religion, culture, music style, ethnicity, race, gender, gender identity and expression, nation of origin, age, dis/ability, sexual orientation, languages spoken, religious beliefs, and geography. We encourage applications from all people including Black, Indigenous, People of Color, LGBTQIA+ artists, and artists with dis/abilities. 

61% of the 2024 New Music Creator Fund Awardees identify as women, non-binary, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, or transgender, and 58% identify as BIPOC.

Applications were reviewed by a sizable pool of independent peers from our community who help us in our ongoing efforts to dismantle bias. For this round, which attracted 1,553 applications, New Music USA engaged 65 artists, composers, musicians, and administrators from locations around the country to build a panel with 61% of people identifying as women, non-binary, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, or transgender, and 64% identifying as BIPOC.

Congratulations to the 2024 Awardees!  

Read the awardee announcement  here.  

Discover the awardees’ work through their profiles below and via the following playlists: 

2024 Creator Fund Grantees: National

A’Jon Jones

Philadelphia, PA

For You is a project that uses sound and meditation to heal breakthroughs. The music pours emotions onto melody lines, making the cup half empty and telling a story about self-deaths and their connection to past memories of love, grief, pain, and exhaustion. The song will be performed by A'Jon in collaboration with Nazir Ebo.

Alyssa Wang

Roslindale, MA

"Parallel Lines" is a true duet between violinist/composer and dancer/choreographer, where both artists will be equal players on the stage and in the creative process. This new work considers the parallel lives of musicians and dancers, the physical demands of producing art, and the inextricable ties between sound and motion.

Aurora Nealand

New Orleans, LA

The Book of Communal Howling (BOCH) is an hour long composition by Aurora Nealand written for the Instigation Orchestra, an evolving collective of some of the most adventurous cross-genre-performers, composers and improvisors hailing from Chicago & New Orleans. The Book of Communal Howling is rooted in elements of collective improvisation and classical chorales and explores societal sampling.

B.K.Zervigón & Luca Hoffmann

Jefferson, LA

Composer/photographer duo B.K.Zervigón and Luca Hoffmann create multimedia experiences exploring the sights and sounds of the Gulf South. In this iteration, "Night People," attention is turned to the secret world of tug boat captains, shrimpers and spirits along the Mississippi River. Utilizing recording as a means of orchestration as well as photographic alternative processes, the duo hopes to share their world with the nation.

Brent Birckhead

Baltimore, MD

The "Charm City Jazz Exchange" is a three month creative residency orchestrated by Brent Birckhead featuring some of Baltimore's finest jazz artists. The culmination of this residency with feature a live compilation album of all of the artists featured in the residency to showcase Baltimore rich Jazz landscape and our collaborative community.

Cecilia Kang

Baton Rouge, LA

The 2024 New Music Creator Fund will be used to commission clarinet works to be featured on the Han & Heung Album. Inspired by stories of conflict, resolution, hope, and celebration surrounding human experiences, this project aims to compile newly commissioned works that explore humanitarian sentiments that stem from global social issues beyond borders.

Dai Wei

Lawrenceville, NJ

Composed and performed by Dai Wei, Taò Wá is a one-person acapella piece that symbolizes the strength of women, the celebration, and the reproduction of lives, featuring a collaboration with four/ten Media.

Dina Maccabee

Brandeis, CA

Roses Are Blue is a new, genre-mixing musical work for a cappella vocal sextet, based on Gertrude Stein’s 1939 book for children, The World Is Round, whose narrative playfully explores the challenges of self-discovery, identity, and growing up. A live studio recording with the ensemble will be created in July, 2024.

Divinity Roxx

West New York, NJ

Divinity Roxx Presents Divi Roxx Kids: World Wide Play Date is an album of original bops for kids of all ages, and the kid in all of us. The album features up-tempo, fun, and engaging hip-hop/pop songs that personify play for people of all ages. Play connects us and encourages us to engage with one another on multiple levels. This album focuses on the power of play to supplement learning and strengthen the social and emotional bonds between people of different cultures. ... edited to fit: World Wide Play Date is an album of original bops for kids of all ages, and the kid in all of us. The album features up-tempo, fun, and engaging hip-hop/pop songs that personify play for people of all ages. This album focuses on the power of play to supplement learning and strengthen the social and emotional bonds between people of different cultures.

Dustin Dale Gaspard

Abbeville, LA

Gaspard's 'Avec Le Courrant' is a banjo driven, Cajun bilingual, story album, retelling the tragic factual events of his Acadian ancestors and their exile from their home Acadie (Nova Scotia) in the 1700s. The music fuses Trad, Americana, Roots and Cajun genres, while interludes are narrated by Gaspard's French teacher, actress and co writer Becca Begnaud.

Edward Simon

Emeryville, CA

“When the Dogs Howl: The Migrant Soundscapes of Venezuelan Refugees” is a multi-disciplinary work for jazz big band, Afro-Venezuelan percussion, dance, and storytelling through video projections. The compositions are inspired by the experience of Venezuelan migrants, refugees and immigrants trek spanning 3,000 miles across 8 countries. The video projections portray real stories from this emigrating population.

Elisabet Curbelo

Steilacoom, WA

"Ululations and Gurgles of the Invisible" by Elisabet Curbelo is an interdisciplinary work for percussion, soprano, piano, and 4 to 6 dancers. Inspired by Federico García Lorca's poetry, it is a profound surrealist piece that connects visual and auditory experiences using wearable motion-sensor controllers and is performed using American Sign Language.

Ethan Soledad

Houston, TX

“Legacy: Songs of Unity," is a work for SATB choir, piano quintet, and percussion commemorating the immense impact of my former choir director, Shanpatrick Davis. Commissioned by him, this piece will be premiered by a choir of his alumni and acts as a love letter to music and a celebration of its incredible power to bring people together.

Fahad Siadat

Los Angeles, CA

SAMĀ is a new multidisciplinary piece that explores the trance state through voice, dance, projections, and light. Conceptualized as an immersive audio-visual experience, SAMĀ is performed by one vocalist (Fahad Siadat) and one dancer (André Megerdichian), accessing the trance state through movement, voice, percussion, live electronic processing, projected animations, and light.

Halley Elwell

Medford, MA

Spontaneous Mutation is a collection of songs that aims to reclaim the narratives around facial difference. Written from the personal experiences of Halley Elwell and in collaboration with producer and drummer Dave Brophy, the album will span jazz, rock, and folk genres with the lens of spontaneous mutation, a repurposed medical term applied to Elwell's medical condition, neurofibromatosis.

Hannah Juanita

Madison, TN

Tennessee Songbird is a collection of songs written by Hannah Juanita and produced by Mose Wilson. Building upon the styles of traditional country, soul, funk, and ultimately the blues, this full length album aims to honor and progress country music and stand against the mainstream music industry's dilution of it.

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha’ Tate

Oklahoma City, OK

The Talking Leaves, by Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate, is a new opera sung entirely in the Cherokee language. This award will fund the Cherokee translator and tribal language specialist, Roy Boney.

Jeoffrey Arrington

Chicago, IL

These funds will support 'Fool's Croon Live', a fully orchestrated, live performance adaptation of Jeoffrey's first full body of composition work, a 6 track EP entitled Fool's Croon, which was recorded in collaboration with his fellow Chicago vocalist Kiéla Adira. The funds will help compensate the 16+ performers and collaborators required to produce this performance!

John Driscoll & Cecilia Lopez

Littleton, CO

Gestures/Mumurations is a self-running sound installation collaboration by John Driscoll and Cecilia Lopez utilizing robotic rotating loudspeakers and rotating drum speakers creating a rich spatial sound environment. These speakers use sound materials tailored to their movement for an immersive sonic user experience.

José G. Martínez

Waterville, ME

Voces Olvidadas is a multimedia work for choir, ensemble, video, and electronics about the Colombian internal conflict between the leftist guerrillas and the government during the ‘90s. The project explores tragedy, sadness, politics, and hope through a wide palette of sounds, texts, and video excerpts strongly based on primary sources.

Joshua Kohl

Seattle, WA

Anima Mundi - Amnesia is an immersive exploration into the profound amnesia that has estranged humanity from the intricate tapestry of the natural world. Rooted in a sense of urgency fueled by the existential climate crisis, this project seeks to explore the complexities of our disconnection and inspire transformative reconnection.

Juliette M. Jones

Los Angeles, CA

Passing the Crown is an innovative performance-based initiative that merges cinematic orchestration with the vibrant energy of Hip-Hop, centering the contributions of female emcees. Through a curated playlist–our love letter to the Queens of NYC Hip-Hop–we celebrate their impact, from local to global, in an unprecedented fusion of orchestra, DJ, and B-girls.

Juraj Kojs

Miami, FL

DJ Apollo contemporary dance project interweaves decades of queer musical anthems, musical reflections on Stravinsky’s score to the Apollo ballet, and spoken text generated from the lived experiences of the performers. The project aims to create a powerful intergenerational reckoning with the wisdom and innocence, strength and fragility, physical and spiritual beauty we contain as individuals and as a community.

Kurt Rohde

San Francisco, CA

A BowerHaus for the Post-Anthropocene World is a live musical work embedded with sculptural elements, video, lighting, and a scientific narrative, focusing on the realities of habitat fragility, reflecting the urgency of remediation and protection. The work will be made up of two connected musical chapters. CHAPTER 1: Adaptation & Mutation centers the intimate, intricate and ritualistic behavior of the bowerbird. CHAPTER 2: Ferality & Loss delves into exploration of habitat on a global scale.

Laura Strickling

Racine, WI

AGAIN is the second album of recordings of 40+ new art songs commissioned by soprano Laura Strickling for her landmark 40@40 Project, which endeavors to spotlight composers dedicated to exploring the expressive capabilities of the human voice. The first album, 40@40, with pianist Daniel Schlosberg, received a 2024 Grammy nomination.

LuFuki

Detroit, MI

Led by LuFuki and Destiny Muhammad, Detroit Red is a multidisciplinary performance art production fused with the sonic expression of "jazz" inspired by the life and legacy of Malcolm X. It highlights the significance Malcolm X had not only on Black liberation but also on musicians who composed the sounds of Black liberation movements and their contemporaries.

Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol

Belmont, MA

This project will first premiere a new 20 minute long piece, featuring Blue Heron (Vocal Ensemble) and DÜNYA (classical Turkish music ensemble), by Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol. And then this new piece and an older a cappella piece (also by Sanlıkol) entitled "Devran" will both be recorded as a new album which would be released by Blue Heron. Both pieces combine Renaissance polyphony and several Middle Eastern musical elements into an artistic whole.

Mel Hsu

Philadelphia, PA

[deciphering the knots in the pine beams] is a love note and an elegy, a patient exhale and a quiet reckoning. This soundscape series is a playground for Mel’s exploration of the textural worlds made possible by interwoven strings, winds and voices.

Molly Joyce

Charlottesville, VA

I Live in the Woods of My Words is a song-cycle project featuring text by poet Hannah Emerson, music by composer Molly Joyce, performed by soprano Mikaela Bennett, and produced by INTERIM Corporation. The project highlights disabled/nondisabled collaboration, specifically with disabled artists Emerson (non-speaking autistic poet) and Joyce (physically-disabled composer) with nondisabled artist Bennett, and will be produced into a concert and video series.

Molly Pease

Los Angeles, CA

LA-based composer and voice artist Molly Pease's “Waterways and Dwellings” explores the culture of the Los Angeles Ballona Creek, from its Indigenous and ecological history to its real estate developments and pollution today. The recording of this work with words by poet Molly Bendall will feature the sounds of Brightwork newmusic, experimental vocal ensemble HEX, and electronic music group People Inside Electronics.

Richard K Thomas

West Lafayette, IN

Inspired by Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R., Entropics is a 1950’s science fiction that explores a future world 100 years later, a world enhanced by humans created with AI. A music-drama infused with rap, trip hop, post rock, reggae, and industrial elements, Entropics challenges how we are mediated, and resonates in the science, politics, religion, and cultural malaise of our present.

Salar Ansari

Dearborn, MI

Led by Salar Ansari with Ian Fink and Rafael Leafar, the trio's improvisational flair showcases diverse musicality. Utilizing drum machines, samplers, and synths, they craft dynamic soundscapes. Drawing on each member's musical heritage and Detroit's live music ethos, DMVND's sound is both rooted and innovative, emerging from a passion for electronic music and sonic discovery.

TJ Cole

Louisville, KY

TAROT, led by composer TJ Cole and cellist Gabriel Cabezas, is a collaboration merging Louisville's genderqueer community with Tarot readers. Including audio stories from genderqueer individuals, the project explores identity through the visual inspiration of Tarot cards. Supported by the Creator Fund from New Music USA, the project will delve into the intersection of music, storytelling, and gender dynamics.

Tyler Taylor & Adam Sadberry

Louisville, KY

"Waves of Voices" is a new multi-movement concerto for flute and chamber orchestra to be written for Adam Sadberry. The concerto memorializes the life and actions of L. Alex Wilson, Alex's grandfather and civil rights era journalist. Alex and I look forward to sharing this story with audiences far and wide featuring Alex's virtuosic, sensitive, and colorful performing against a dynamic and emotionally-charged pallet of orchestral textures.

Weston Olencki & TAK Ensemble

Spartanburg, SC

'when the great fires were lit on the other side of the ocean' is an evening-length work devised by Weston Olencki with NYC-based TAK ensemble. Borrowing its title from the psychogeographical wanderings of W.G. Sebald, the project journeys into real and fictionalized histories of electrical force, re-enchanting its paths throughout American industrial, spiritual, and vernacular pasts.

2024 Creator Fund Grantees: New York

alexa dexa

Long Island, NY

dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams is a year-long crip ritual opera created + led by alexa dexa centering responsive accessibility + radical inclusion in a live participatory remote setting made by, with, and for Disabled folks dreaming together from bed. Together, we’ll dream futures with us in them in direct resistance to ableist systems of oppression/eugenics that celebrate our Disabled deaths.

Charlene Jean

Brooklyn, NY

BRICKS is a traveling, site-specific, musical anthology which follows a young girl, Maelle, who can see the spirits of Black demolished enclaves until gifted Spirit-Blockers by her fearful mother, Colette. The story is centered around the theme of overcoming fear, which is explored through Maelle's fear of choosing a path outside her mother's control, and Colette's fear of embracing her spiritual practice fully.

Danae Greenfield

Queens, NY

Danae Greenfield is thrilled to be working on her debut album with her jazz fusion quintet, based in Queens, NY. She hopes to break genre barriers with this record, focusing on elements of jazz combined with hip-hop, funk, and electronic music. Danae is wholeheartedly committed to creating an album that will inspire women-identifying instrumentalists to be bandleaders in the jazz industry.

Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei

Ithaca, NY

I will be collaborating with Switzerland-based Ensemble Proton Bern on a new commission for their Spring 2025 event Erinnern und Vergessen (Remembering and forgetting). This new work will reflect on cultural memory & detritus of immigrants and their children that accumulates across oceans and centuries of dispersal, specifically investigating the Iranian diaspora and experience(s) since the Revolution.

Erini

New York, NY

Erini creates “Greek Refugee Songs', in collaboration with composer Gonzalo Grau. It is a collection of traditional melodies of the Asia Minor-Greek refugees, for voice and symphony orchestra. Erini’s inspiration derives from the history of her great grandparents, who were Greek refugees from Asia Minor. She aims to introduce these refugees’ story globally, while promoting inclusion and diversity.

Firas Zreik

Brooklyn, NY

"Sketches of Galilee" is a new instrumental suite inspired by Palestinian folkloric themes, incorporating and extending the vocabulary of Maqam and featuring a traditional Arab Takht ensemble in a modern organic compositional context, with the Kanun at its core. Composed and produced by Firas Zreik, the project is set to be launched in 2025.

Immanuel Wilkins

Brooklyn, NY

AFTERLIFE RESIDENCE TIME is a music video inspired in part by Christina Sharpe’s book “In the Wake” as well as being a part of a larger work entitled BLUES BLOOD. The piece fits into a larger narrative about immaterial cultural heirlooms, or things that have been passed down from generation to generation through oral tradition. The film explore ideas of memory and the archive, as it pertains to the body and other elements.

Iwo Jedynecki

Brooklyn, NY

The rare and fascinating classical accordion takes center stage in this solo commission coming up from the Grammy and Pulitzer nominated composer Andy Akiho. Iwo Jedynecki - once described as „Glenn Gould of the accordion” aims to change the common notion about his instrument in the US showcasing classical accordion’s endless possibilities in contemporary music.

James Budinich

Binghamton, NY

Sound through Movement will use motion sensing technology to create a generative electronic score for movement artist Waeli Wang. The interactive nature of the score will provide new paths of exploration in our practices, allowing the movement to create sound in real time. Our collaboration will include both a workshop and performance, giving us time to fine tune the movement and score ahead of the premiere.

Jamie Baum

New York, NY

Creating a commentary of our current communal socio-political experience with her recently released Sunnyside Records recording “What Times Are These” featuring The Jamie Baum Septet+, Baum chose 5 women poets including Adrienne Rich, Marge Piercy, Lucille Clifton, Tracy K. Smith and Naomi Shihab Nye, and composed music using their poems for lyrics and spoken word. The tracks are all quite different with the poems and their underlying concept being the unifying thread. This grant will provide funds to document this project with a live video.

Jennifer Williams

Brooklyn, NY

Dis/Inform is a devised opera about the global disinformation crisis told through an intimate, human perspective. Created and performed in New York in collaboration with PROTESTRA, the immersive, devised opera installation illuminates the relationship between depression, extremism and disinformation. Dis/Inform challenges opera's traditional values and pushes the definition of opera and composer.

Jhoely Garay

New York, NY

“Suite to the End of the World” is an Eco-social work for jazz orchestra that uses the sonic palette of the natural world to raise awareness about conserving and protecting natural resources and offers a woman’s perspective on environmental activism. Jhoely highlights her diverse musical inspirations in this work by combining through-composed and improvised music with strong Latin American music and contemporary jazz influences.

Jo Whang

Port Washington, NY

This project embarks on a profound musical journey, illuminating the hidden truths of modern-day slavery. Cellist Jo Whang and composer Frank Horvat synthesize their vision and artistry to raise awareness, challenge perceptions, and amplify the voices of survivors. Together, we aspire to ignite a global conversation and inspire change through the transcendent language of music.

John Popham

Brooklyn, NY

"espacio absoluto" is an album of six new works by two long-time collaborators: cellist John Popham and composer James Díaz. Drawing inspiration from Colombian psychedelia and experimental narrative forms, the project explores the real and artificial through studio-based experimentations, open-form composition, extended string techniques, instrumental improvisation, and unconventional recording and post-production techniques.

Lachi

New York, NY

"Out of the Dark" is a Dance/Electronic anthem celebrating the freaks, geeks, and those who don't like it neat! Part of a larger content series "Mad Different", a 6 part high-production unplugged concert series and accompanying fully-plugged studio album by award-winning artist/activist Lachi in collaboration with notable / celebrated counter-culture co-artists intersecting with neurodivergence, disability and queer-disabled identities.

Laura Elkeslassy

Brooklyn, NY

Paris-born, Brooklyn based artist Laura Elkeslassy is a singer of Judeo-Arab music. Her work draws inspiration from her Sephardi and Moroccan roots exploring North-African folk, Andalusi nubas, Ladino canciones and Maghrebi Jewish liturgy. In 2025, Laura will partner up with master oud player and multi-instrumentalist Rachid Halilhal. Together, they are developing a repertoire of North African folk (Chaabi) and Matrouz. Al Matrouz (from Arabic: المطروز, literally: the embroidered) is a Maghrebi musical style that references to the artistic embroidery of ancestral Arabic and Hebraic poetry, performed to the tune of classical Andalusian melodies.

Ludovica Burtone

Brooklyn, NY

"Migration Tales" is a collection of musical stories about female-identifying NYC immigrants. The focal point of this new project revolves around narratives of migration, with the primary objective of raising awareness regarding the challenges and resilience immigrant women exhibit. Its core purpose is to cultivate empathy and serve as a source of inspiration to anyone. Six original tunes and one arrangement for violin, flugelhorn, tenor saxophone, piano, bass, and drums.

MESAFA\\مسافة

Brooklyn, NY

MESAFA\\مسافة is a Sudani trip hop project comprised of Sudanese sisters Alsarah & Nahid and Baltimore based producer Sarah FM, in a musical conversation exploring the intimate spaces, both small and infinite. Connecting the musical dots across genres and borders, this project explores the power of radical softness in the face of this world.

Michael R. Dudley Jr. & Arnie Sainz

Hannawa Falls, NY

NewMusic USA funding will help establish the ASMR Jazz Orchestra, a new collaborative cohort of musicians who are interested in remediating musical and social conventions, as well as cultivating a multi-gender, multi-national communal thought space through jazz. The ensemble will be led by Michael R. Dudley Jr., Arnie Sainz, and produced by Eunha So.

Oscar Peñas

Brooklyn, NY

Do you ever wonder why some people perceive borders between the five New York boroughs? I have, and I've tried to understand why. My quest led me to write "Remote Hoods" to reflect, through music, the stark reality that some ethnic groups refrain from venturing into other boroughs, labeling them as 'remote neighborhoods.' Five instruments representing the five New York boroughs.

Piper Hill

Brooklyn, NY

"Small Dragon" is a musical RPG video game about constructing a retroactive trans boyhood through found objects. It's also friendship and dress-up games. In it, you play as a small dragon who touches objects that transport him to fantastical and spooky mini-universes, unlocking new truths and befriending magical creatures as he goes along.

Queen Esther

New York, NY

With Wayne Tucker & The Bad Mothas as her backing band, songwriter/producer/vocalist/musician Queen Esther's album All Cats Are Beautiful infuses her soulful original country music with a jazz vernacular, deconstructing well-worn societal mores in America by dedicating each song to a victim of police violence. This album is part of a larger interdisciplinary body of work.

Raymond Pinto

Brooklyn, NY

The project centers on the music of Florence Price, aiming to breathe new life into her work by delving into archival documents and transposing fragments of her compositions into a fresh, original score. This new music will be performed live and accompanied by a specially created choreography for two dancers, blending historical reverence with contemporary creativity to celebrate and reinterpret a legacy of black ingenuity.

Sonya Belaya

Brooklyn, NY

“The Beaks” is a multidisciplinary piece by Sonya Belaya, featuring new media artist Jiangnan Hou, and transdisciplinary fashion designer Weijing Xiao. At the intersection of live music performance, projection mapping, movement, and video, “The Beaks” examines the broken communication immigrants experience when engaging with the dominant vernacular of American English.

Stephanie Chou

New York, NY

Stephanie Chou and INTERWOVEN will produce a studio recording of "Dragon", a 6-minute piece for erhu and string trio celebrating the Year of the Dragon.

Veena Chandra

Latham, NY

ANMOL is recording of Indian Classical Music by Veena and Devesh Chandra. The mother-son, Sitar and Tabla duo presents a heartfelt tribute to the musical heritage and cultural tradition they share. The anticipated recording aims to present the rich heritage and enduring beauty of India’s musical traditions to a wider audience.

Vicki Leona Nguyen

New York, NY

Vicki Leona Nguyen's newest work – "Ginger Flavored Bubblegum" – explores the multiplicity and transcendence of grief through poet, filmmaker, and artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's seminal and last published work, "Dictee." Using its select poems, the piece explores a becoming with Unheard-of Ensemble, accompanying electronics, and videography by Phong Tran.

Past Awardees 

2023 Creator Fund Grantees

Akenya Seymour

Chicago, IL

Moon in the 4th is a sonically eclectic and deeply personal work that explores the nuance of identity, spirituality, esotericism, and love.

Alphonso Horne

Bronx, NY

THE OSCAR MICHEAUX PROJECT is an original jazz / musical theater crossover project. It is inspired by research into the life of the first major African-American film director, writer and producer, Oscar Micheaux, who lived from 1884-1951. The project aims both to honor Micheaux’s legacy and critically examine the context in which his work was created.

Arson Fahim

Newton Highlands, MA

Writing and recording of a piece for Piano, Tabla, and the national instrument of Afghanistan, the Rubab.

Asuka Kakitani

Northfield, MN

Japanese-born, Minnesota-based composer Asuka Kakitani will collaborate with Israeli-born, Brooklyn-based singer Tammy Scheffer to compose and record a 20-minute electroacoustic solo voice piece using excerpts from the 1001 original Japanese text, Makura no Soshi (The Pillow Book) by Seisyonagon.

Austin Yip

San Jose, CA

"The Dialects" researches on the Cantonese speaking communities of San Francisco Chinatown and Chicago Chinatown, where field recordings will be used as source materials to compose a new work for violin and electronics.

Avram Fefer

Brooklyn, NY

Avram Fefer is a New York-based composer, improviser, bandleader and player of multiple woodwinds. As a jazz musician son of a Jewish immigrant born in a Siberian labor camp, much of his work involves reconciling cultural influences, and his own jazz groups often reflect a wide global perspective.

Badie Khaleghian

Houston, Texas

"The Sounds of Freedom" project will commission eight new compositions—four by Iranian composers in North America and four by composers in Iran—that will premiere at an Asia Society Texas Center event in January 2024.

Berta Moreno

New York, NY

“La Troupe” is a new jazz quartet composition blending contemporary jazz, world music, and Afro-Latin elements with effects and loops. The piece, written in collaboration with Maksim Perepelica, explores the concept of identity and the struggle of being yourself in a world that fears and rejects those who are “different.”

Braxton Taylor

Bushwick, NY

Field Service documents our DIY approach to organizing underground events in Summer of 2021, that celebrates culture on the ground floor.

Carla Kihlstedt

Woods Hole, MA

X AMENDMENTS is an immersive improvised musical structure for an orchestra of electric guitarists/bassists, a vocalist, and an ambisonic audio engineer, using The Bill of Rights as its text. It is an experiment in individual and collective freedom, an exploration of rights, agency, responsibilities and restrictions.

Cary L. Morin

Fort Collins, CO

A collection of songs inspired by the famous Western painter Charlie Russell, and my life in Great Falls, Montana. “ Cary has created a body of work that goes far beyond what he set out to achieve, through the songs, I was able to visualize these unseen paintings with uncanny clarity and feel the powerful emotions that would surely be inspired were I to see Mr. Russell’s paintings firsthand.”

Charles Burnham

Brooklyn, NY

Pitch Rhythm Consciousness will record a song cycle the lyrics of which will be drawn from sutras, psalms and scriptures.

Coco Elysses

Chicago, IL

Book of Elysses, an Afro-futuristic work, spoken through the voice of an ancestor weaves the individualized and collective karma of her family's lineage though voice and sound. This interdisciplinary work is experimental in nature and is part of a larger cross genre work.

Coco Peila

Brooklyn, NY

The project is filming, editing, and releasing a music video for the reproductive justice anthem ‘I Am Jane Roe’. The goal is to create a visual motion picture component that will help raise awareness, empower, and engage our community and key stakeholders around abortion access, reproductive justice, and the U.S. Supreme Court's recent overturning of the landmark ruling Roe v. Wade.

Colin McLaughlin

Saint Louis, MO

Northview is a new musical by Colin McLaughlin about people power, solidarity, and hope for change. A collaboration between some of the most accomplished theater makers and jazz musicians in St. Louis, this new work would not have been possible without the New Music Creator Fund.

DaEun Jung

Los Angeles, CA

Norri is an interdisciplinary group dance project that interlaces Korean folk dance steps, gestural movements, pansori (Korean folk opera) singing, odd meter rhythms, microtonal tunes, and electronic beats in a playful structure.

Danielle Jones – Tylynn

Omaha, NE

"You don't know the 1/2" is a nine song album detailing the journey of a young woman who learned to overcome obstacles she was faced with growing up in inner cities, triumphing over the trauma and using those lessons to inspire others.

David Leon

Brooklyn, NY

Led by saxophonist-composer, David Leon, and trumpeter-composer, Adam O’Farrill, Locomotive is a double trio of winds, guitars, and hand percussion creating an experimental sound rooted in a mix of folkloric musical traditions.

Edisa Weeks

Brooklyn, NY

3 RITES: Life is an interactive performance that integrates music by LaFrae Sci, choreography by Edisa Weeks, a game show with audience contestants, and an immersive installation of plastic to question America’s dependence on fossil fuels and ask how we can be better stewards of the earth.

Ehsan Matoori

Sherman Oaks, CA

The Bright Voices is written based on the heartbreaking stories of women refugees; why they are forced to leave their homelands and what happens to them during this unbearable journey. The Bright Voices follows the tragic stories of two women refugees who lose their lives. Composed by: Ehsan Matoori Vocals: Maliheh Moradi, Mina Deris

Elisa Harkins and Kalyn Fay

Tulsa, OK

"Rugged Boy" is a genre-blending electronic/country Cherokee language song by Elisa Harkins and Kalyn Fay that highlights Indigenous language and culture.

Emily Pinkerton

Albany, NY

“Ephemera Ballads” is a chamber-folk song cycle that reimagines 18th and 19th century broadside ballads. Songwriter Emily Pinkerton will partner with fivebyfive chamber music to craft original songs in folk verse that explore bodily autonomy and gender equity.

Eric Kennedy

Baltimore, MD

For Lisa, will be an original composition and music tribute in honor of my late wife and dear friend, Lisa Weems Kennedy.

Eunmi Ko

Tampa, FL

Meaning quiet, soft, and indistinct, MUTED is an interdisciplinary and autobiographical project by pianist Eunmi Ko who delves into her identity as an Asian woman –who is muted–and a professional musician by performing three solo piano works that extensively use the muting technique and theatrical effects.

Gabriel Globus-Hoenich

Bronx, NY

Members of People of Earth will collaborate to compose a 50 minute suite for 13 member timba band and string quartet.

Garrett Arney

Seattle, WA

A marimba solo from Juri Seo, potentially inspired by piano works with multiple, short, movements. Piece to be composed through some element of collaboration.

Jacinta Clusellas

Brooklyn, NY

AZUL is a Latin American bilingual musical about artistry and the immigrant experience.

Jake Charkey

Brooklyn, NY

Rasika is a collection of music that explores hybridity, the overlapping spaces between Western music and Indian music, points of tension or commonality, and new ways of using Indian techniques and musical grammar.

John Hodian

Saugerties, NY

“Songs from a Stranger” is a new collaborative project between John Hodian and several leading musical figures in the Armenian-American diaspora community to create, record and perform new work that embraces Armenian folk and spiritual music, new classical music, improvisation, jazz, and new technology.

Jonathan Suazo

Quincy, MA

RICANO is an Afro-Caribbean experience that presents themes of exploration, fusion, integration, community, and self-acceptance. The project shares and celebrates the coexistence of Afro Puerto Rican and Afro Dominican styles of music by bringing the audience into a cross cultural fusion container of Suazo's roots and many musical influences. Both of these traditions are beautiful in every way, they contain uplifting chants, captivating lyrics, as well as dance and improvisational elements that are deeply connected to the unique ancestry of each island (Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic).

Jordan Bak

Winston Salem, NC

"stillness echoing" by renowned composer Jeffrey Mumford is a new music character piece for viola and harp, inspired by natural elements such as cloud imagery and gradations of light, and exploring the unique registral and timbral relationships of both instruments.

Jordan Munson

Indianapolis, IN

Residuals is a concert-length work for solo voice, amplified pipe organ quartet, live electronics, and interactive lighting that explores our complex relationship to breath in a post-pandemic world.

Josh Evans

Jersey City, NJ

I've always envisioned a trumpet duo book/playalong cd that is at a higher level musically and harmonically then what currently exists. The two best things about this book/playalong is that Theljon and I are writing our parts, so it's basically lessons in our style/harmony.

Juana Luna

Brooklyn, NY

Songs about travelers, about taking chances. Songs that look like old photos and sound like another time. Songs about immigrants; about you and me.

Judd Greenstein

Gill, MA

“Where do you like to go?” is a collaboration between composer Judd Greenstein, Classical Uprising, and the families of Reiche Elementary School that uses the title’s question as a writing prompt to explore place, identity, and the future of Maine.

Julie Herndon

Los Osos, CA

Julie Herndon and [Switch~ Ensemble] collaborate on a new piece exploring modes of tactile interaction and embodied intelligence.

Julien-Alexandrre Yves Guichard – Jimi Lucid

Glendale, NY

Jimi is a Trans Non-Binary musician based in NYC, As Jimi Lucid is creating genre bending music pulling from Rock, Drum and bass, and Electronic music.

Kal Sugatski

Portland, ME

Kal Sugatski presents Vigorous Tenderness, an immersive outdoor fall equinox concert in Maine with six ensembles nestled into the landscape and featuring a new work in collaboration with the Burnurwurbskek Singers, a Maine-based indigenous drumming group.

Kayla Briët

Cypress, CA

「追憶:catching memory」 is a multi-movement piece composed by Kayla Briët exploring the rupturing, re-retrieval, and re-weaving of memory as an act of hope. Created in collaboration with artists Denzel Boyd and Anissa Amalia.

Kian Ravaei

Bloomington, IN

This collaboration between composer Kian Ravaei and choreographer Annie Kahane is a suite of four dances for solo violinist and solo dancer that responds to seasonal rituals from our respective Persian and Jewish cultures.

Lea Bertucci

Kingston, NY

My Words Came Out Slow and Odd is a new text-based composition for voice, electronics and instruments by Ben Vida and Lea Bertucci.

Leyla McCalla

New Orleans, LA

Found in Translation: The Classical Guitar Works of Frantz Casseus, Interpreted by Marc Ribot and Leyla McCalla

Lisa DeSpain

Jackson Heights, NY

The Albany Garbage Wars: The Opera. In 1908, the city of Berkley, California had a problem; a plague, rats, and lots of garbage. Their solution? To turn Albany, a small neighboring town into a garbage dump. This is the true story of how the women of Albany took up arms, and babes in arms, to save their community.

Lou Carrig

New Orleans, LA

Vocalist/accordionist Lou Carrig of Blato Zlato will be collaborating with Grammy-award winning composer Willa Roberts to compose and arrange a cycle of songs inspired by both traditional lyrical songs of the Balkans.

Lyndon Harewood

Jersey City, NJ

Gengis Don & The Empire blend elements of jazz, R&B, Hip Hop & Afrobeat, to create a unique sound cemented in groove!

Marion T Hayden

Highland Park, MI

A collaborative project, creating and recording original music by bassist/ composer Marion Hayden with poetry by author Melba Joyce Boyd, in response to a sculptural work by artist M. Saffell Gardner, entitled Gateway to Black Eden, which is dedicated to the Black resort town of Idlewild, Michigan.

Megan Conley

Honolulu, HI

‘The Queen’s Songbook for Harp’ is a project to commission five Hawaii-based composers, each of whom will arrange two songs by Queen Lili’uokalani. These arrangements will be performed and recorded by harpist Megan Conley, making the music and legacy of this beloved Hawaiian monarch more widely known and accessible.

Melinda Faylor

Forest Hills, NY

Composer/pianist Melinda Faylor brings to life Christina Newhard's Sari-Sari Storybooks, a stunning collection of children's tales from across the Philippines, through the use of live actors and an electro-acoustic soundscape featuring extended piano techniques as well as sounds local to the regions of the Philippines in which these stories take place.

Nala Duma – Lamb

Brooklyn, NY

Lamb's major stage debut — co-directed by Ava Elizabeth Novak — follows five characters who encounter a mysterious portal door while living on an unnamed cape in the southernmost region of early 16th century Africa.

Mai Khôi

Pittsburgh, PA

“Bad Activist” is Mai Khôi’s multimedia autobiography—a stage show that combines original music, projections, archival footage, and storytelling to interrogate the relationship between art and activism.

Rod Wallace

Farmington Hills, MI

Social Studies: A Music Project For Black Male Educators is constructed by African-American teachers and school administrators to share their experiences and dreams in the hopes of recruiting the next generation of great Black educators.

Ryan Cohan

Chicago, IL

Composed by pianist Ryan Cohan, Brothers Beyond Borders is a new project dynamically integrating jazz, Arabic and Western European impressionistic music featuring a collaboration with oudist Ronnie Malley.

Shamiqua Wilson

Staten Island, NY

With a focus on self-discovery and empowerment, this project delves into themes of identity, sorrow, and mysticism and through a combination of personal experiences and storytelling, this project aims to inspire listeners to embrace their true selves and celebrate their unique identities.

Sirintip Phasuk

New York, NY

"Mycelium" is a research and creation project resulting in a 90-minute original interdisciplinary musical suite. With interactive visuals, dancers, and a 12-piece ensemble, the goal is healing the audience from climate despair and inspiring sustainable action through a scientifically informed experience where microorganisms show us how we’re interconnected.

Sonny Mehta

Friendswood, TX

Collaborative recordings between two Houston groups, Riyaaz Qawwali and Jones Family Singers, who represent Qawwali and Gospel music. Interfaith collaborations through music will allow the recordings to explore Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism and Christianity.

Taína Asili

Albany, NY

An ode to Mother Earth and a plea for climate justice, "One Mother" weaves material from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Stabat Mater into dynamic new songs composed and performed by Taína Asili and arranged for chamber orchestra by Aaron Grad.

Tracy Yang

Elmhurst, NY

Tracy’s debut album "OR" is a jazz odyssey, tracing her decade-long evolution from aspiring to work as an Operating Room professional to finding a calling as a jazz composer. Featuring a 17-piece orchestra, it reimagines her dreams, passions, and cultural identity.

Trey Makler

Sacramento, CA

Waiting Rooms is a walk-through music theater piece that considers the AIDS crisis and its current state through the perspective of survivors, archival documents, and community contributed materials.

Whitney George

Brooklyn, NY

IN THE THROES OF DEATH is a live presentation of HOME, AXEMAN, and PAPER DAUGHTER: three 30-minute, pandemic themed cautionary tales. Illuminated with music, immersive theater, and puppetry, composer and librettist team George & Goodwin are interested in retelling a past that is relevant to current day audiences who are living in the wake of post-pandemic life.

Yuhan Su

Brooklyn, NY

A film project combining Dance, Poetry, Visual Arts for an original composition by Jazz Vibraphonist Yuhan Su

2022 Creator Development Fund Grantees

Abraham Brody – EYIBRA

Brooklyn, NY

Music for MUXX, an EP of music written and produced by EYIBRA and NNUX for their performance piece 'Bigiridiribela' in collaboration with artists Lukas Avendaño and Oswaldo Erreve, which will premiere in September 2022 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Adam Levin

Ashland, MA

Duo Mantar, comprised of Israeli mandolinist Jacob Reuven and American classical guitarist Adam Levin, commissioned Israeli composer Ziv Cojocaro to compose a double concerto for mandolin, guitar, and orchestra to be premiered and recorded at the Israeli Music Festival in late September 2022.

AhSa-Ti Nu Tyehimba-Ford

Oakland, CA

AhSa-Ti Nu in collaboration with Latriece Love-Goodlett will work to create music that will give voice to women of color who are extremely marginalized, overwhelmed, overworked, and overlooked.

Alaina Ferris

Brooklyn, NY

Simone de Beauvoir at the Museum is a fantastical and absurd chamber opera that follows the story of Evelyn, an aspiring writer from Brooklyn struggling with PTSD and her life as an artist, after she accidentally summons a feminist vampire named Gustave while visiting the Musée D’Orsay in Paris.

Alex Peh

New Paltz, NY

Burmese Sandaya Piano is a multi-modal ethnographic film and live performance that explores parallel piano worlds from around the globe, featuring Burmese Sandaya piano, Persian piano, and Greek Laiko styles.

Alexis Cuadrado

Brooklyn, NY

Midwood Movie Film Score. The first movie studio in the US was built in, what is today, a predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn. Midwood Movie (directed by Melissa Friedling with music by Cuadrado) is an experimental documentary that explores the historical layers of this continuously repurposed site, unearthing the anti-Semitism and racism of one of the studio’s co-founders which reverberates uneasily here.

Alysia Lee

Baltimore, MD

A new choral work that integrates the perspectives of young people, models mutual transformative artistic collaboration, and explores youth-led approaches for action and allyship in support of environmental justice.

Amir ElSaffar

Brooklyn, NY

A multi-media creation featuring electro-acoustic music by Amir ElSaffar on trumpet, voice, santur, and modular synthesizer accompanied by animated oscillographic visual art created by musician, producer, filmmaker, and visual artist Devin Greenwood.

Andrew Algire

Valley Cottage, NY

Recording of three compositions by Andy Algire for the group Sound Bridges.

Arthur Flowers

Syracuse, NY

A Modest Exhortation is a satirically flavored prophetic warning about threats to the American experiment of democracy in coming elections in these uniquely challenging times.

Ashni Dave

Brooklyn, NY

This project explores what we inherit through generations of women before us: shame and trauma responses, how they’re stored in the body, and how they’re met with resilience - to reflect on and heal generational pain and to uncover resources.

Billy Dean Thomas

Boston, MA

My new work in collaboration with MICHIYAYA Dance is a reclamation of intimacy that processes how a group of queer nonbinary folx and femmes take ownership of their sensuality without societal pressures and stigmas placed onto our bodies.

Bobby Ge

Baltimore, MD

Nanjing West Road is a new 20 min. work for soprano, chamber ensemble, and electronics that themes of memory, loss, and Westernization in 21st century Shanghai through the blurred lens of a lost friendship.

Borahm Chay

New York, NY

Ritual of Le Sac is a story telling music of our journey - it is an attempt to remember our very first life stage in uterus, and the journey of shifting from water to air when we come out of mother's womb.

Brandon Rolle

Los Angeles, CA

Glitch Portraiture is an immersive new electroacoustic chamber concerto for violinist Mari Kimura, featuring her original interactive performance-sensor technology, MUGIC®.

Brian Nelson

Houston, TX

Big Chief Brian Harrison Nelson presents “Nouveau Bounce” is an innovative project that merges ancient West African song forms and percussive rhythms of the Mardi Gras Indian(MGI) tradition with the contemporary rhythms and beats of New Orleans Bounce and Hip Hop with a touch of New Orleans Jazz, R&B, and African Afrobeat music.

Carmina Escobar

Los Angeles, CA

Carmina Escobar and Ron Athey roame the vocality of the mystical body and landscape in a trilogy of ritual vocal recordings exploring the transcendental landscapes in California rich ecology.

Caroline Cabading

San Francisco, CA

Sugilanon is a filmed Filipino-American epic poem inspired by the Kalinga epic, “di Ullaim” and featuring a suite of original music and verse compositions that fuse jazz with indigenous pre-colonial Philippine musical motifs, instrumentation and dance as it follows four generations of a San Francisco family’s heroic history from 1904-2005.

Carter Hogan

Austin, TX

"Creekbed Carter" is a self-titled album about saints, grief, rural Oregon, trans joy, and laughing at the edge of the end of the world.

Cecilia Kang

Baton Rouge, LA

The mission of Project H2 is to bring awareness and encourage dialogue on contemporary social issues that promote human connection and acceptance by commissioning chamber works inspired by global diasporas.

Chari Glogovac-Smith

Seattle, WA

Indeterminate Bodies, a sound, movement, and technology project, explores the concept of embodiment through experimental soundscapes and performance.

Chelsea Randall

Brooklyn, NY

A performance and commissioning project in collaboration with kora player Malang Jobarteh, which will explore the interrelationship between West African kora music and classical piano repertoire from the 20th century to the present. The concert will feature a newly commissioned piece for piano and kora reflecting on this juxtaposition, by Jobarteh.

Christopher Nicholas

Oakland, CA

Nicholas is commissioning composer pianist, JooWan Kim and Edward James (aka Sandman) to write music and rap lyrics for a new work called Parangsae 파랑새 (meaning “Blue Bird”). It’s an ambitious work that samples hip-hop, classical, and a Korean folk song, Parangsae, which originated from Donghak Peasant Revolution of 1849, Korea. It will premiere as part of the Hip-Hop Orchestra Experience at Asian Art Museum in collaboration with SF Arts Commission on Nov 10, 2022.

Clara Latham

Brooklyn, NY

Betty the Mom is the second installment in a series that radically imagines the lives of historical women who were also mothers.

Concetta Abbate

Glendale, NY

A 45 minute Narrative Chamber Suite depicting the story an underwater shadow ghost. Highlighting themes of catharsis and trauma the music follows the life cycle of a tortured creature emerging from the deep sea. Written by Concetta Abbate for 10 piece orchestra.

Damon Davis

St. Louis, MO

Ligeia Mare is a sci-fi electronic fantasy opera written and composed by Davis. It tells the story of Cosmo, an awkward adolescent who can astral project while dreaming. Ultimately it is a story that explores how myths can be doorways to reclaiming our identity.

Daniel Corral

South Pasadena, CA

Composer Daniel Corral, director Alexander Gedeon, and choreographer DaEun Jung will collaborate on a new dance opera.

Danny Degene

Seattle, WA

DONNA DESTROYA is a collaboration between three queer and BIPOC artists- Danny Denial, Nicolle Swims of Black Ends, and R.J. Crow, a multi-media project that combines music with comics to tell a coming-of-story that touches on race, sexuality, religion, gender identity and drag. The project aims to release the illustrations and music alongside one another in 2022, championing black queer voices from black queer artists in a way the community hasn't seen before.

David Fiuczynski

Redding, CT

Screaming Headless West African MicroJamz!....:Exploring heritage through music and dance, the Screaming Headless Torsos will embark on a musical journey backwards and forwards in time by engaging with traditional percussionist and dancer Joh Camara from Mali.

Edem K. Garro

Omaha, NE

African Body, Soul & Movement, surrounds the topic of ’Sound'. The way sound has influenced and shaped humanity, and the way it will continue to do so until humanity’s end.

Elisabeth Remy Johnson

Atlanta, GA

Estrelas for solo harp will be composed by Clarice Assad and performed by harpist Remy Johnson, accompanied by visuals created by Xuan. The project illuminates and celebrates the roles of women in astrophysics by using archival images of the “computers” at Harvard Observatory and modern-day research of astroparticle physicist Dr. Angela Olinto.

Emily Koh

Norcross, GA

Koh (composer), Mo Zhou (stage director), and Guerilla Opera (producer) are creating and developing a new chamber opera titled HER|alive.un.dead, a surrealist family drama about three generations of Chinese women who are immigrants to the US. The NMUSA grant will allow us to workshop HER|alive.un.dead (focusing on the technology-heavy scenes in the Afterlife) over one week this summer. We will have musical workshops, and technical workshops throughout the week to experiment with technology needed for video mapping, live information capture and real-time visual manipulations, and end the week with a fully-staged performance of the scenes in the Afterlife for an audience-creator feedback session.

Erika Dohi

New York, NY

'Myth of Tomorrow' is the second installment of Erika Dohi's debut album 'I, Castorpollux', released in May 2021 under label 37d03d. Based on the Japanese artist Taro Okamoto's mural of the same name, 'Myth of Tomorrow’ will feature compositions by Dohi, and will be produced by composer William Brittelle.

Everett Reid

Detroit, MI

‘888’ is a journey through kinetic compositions, highlighting the performance and sonic identity of the Nova Portals — a touchless instrument designed by Nova Zaii — as well as the ethereal contributions from a host of visionary artists.

Frances White

Princeton, NJ

Upon Reflection is a chamber opera for soprano, recorders, viols, and electronic sound that explores the transformative empathy that art inspires. After a searing encounter with Schubert's "Winterreise", a young photographer confronts her alienation from her art and searches her work, longing for others to find her there by seeing as she sees.

Freddie Bryant

Bronx, NY

“UPPER WEST SIDE LOVE STORY” is an extended, full-concert length composition for nonet featuring 8 haiku and 8 longer poems as lyrics documenting the multi-racial history of the famous NYC neighborhood and the changes that have happened since the mid-1900s when Lincoln Center was constructed after demolishing much of the neighborhood.

Gabriel Brenner

Norwalk, CA

Embers is a continuation/iteration/transmutation of Brushfire, my debut album, in which I rework several of the album's songs and create new ones with collaborators to explore how grief isn’t a single instance but instead a constantly mutating relationship with an end.

Gilad Cohen

Ridgewood, NJ

A musical-theatrical piece with Ronvé O’Daniel for a rappers/vocalists and orchestra that explores the impact of recent worldwide events on our future as a society, in a hybrid of the classical concerto and hip hop’s concept EP.

Gwen Laster

Beacon, NY

Cosmogram is new music inspired by A Hero's Journey from the lens of the African Diaspora . Utilizing the readings from Clyde W. Ford's "The Hero with an African Face", musician/composers Damon Banks, Trina Basu and Arun Ramamurthy will join Gwen Laster in composing and recording new works based on these readings and their personal journey as Black and South Indian Classical musicians and composers.

Harry Allen

Washington D.C.

harbanger is collaborating with legendary production honcho DJ Johnny Juice because of his decades of studio practice, and reputation as a turntablist: His landmark, temperamental performance on the "Terminator X Getaway Version" of Public Enemy's 1987 "You're Gonna Get Yours" retains its feral, unhinged energy 35 years after release.

Hezekiah Davis III

Philadelphia, PA

Hyeyung Yoon

Jersey City, NJ

Violinist and composer Yoon and hanji artist Aimee Lee will create a collection of sound and visual pieces to be performed and shared inspired by a letter written by a Korean mother in 1795 to her deceased 10-month-old daughter. Titled Uhmuhni, the work will traverse the landscapes of Korea and the USA through the memories of generations of Korean women before them.

JayVe Montgomery

Brentwood, TN

Working with Ben Lamar Gay and chatterbird ensemble’s Maya Stone and Joshua Dent, as well as community participants, to perform a site-specific score by Montgomery, entitled "Nobody Knows The Trouble I Hear"; based in the plantation soundscape memory of Charley Williams, a Louisiana Black man born enslaved in 1843.

Jeff Fairbanks

Beacon, NY

Echo is a new multicultural composition for a mix of Korean and European instruments, inspired by a farmer drumming pattern called Chilchae.

Jessica Ackerley

Honolulu, HI

Breaking Boundaries to Broaden Horizons: Sonically, Socially, Culturally, Politically. This is a diverse quartet of performers reimagining the idea of a conventional concert by breaking sonic and cultural boundaries through the merging of jazz, experimental noise, Brazilian and traditional Japanese music.

Jim Rea

Springfield, MO

Rea will create a collaborative, multi-generational album titled Ozark Cross Generation Songwriter Collaboration, featuring musicians and songwriters that are native to the Ozarks region in hopes of continuing the rich musical tradition they have there.

Joe Horton

Minneapolis, MN

TWIN is an in-development evening length piece of music from composer Joe Horton and violin/viola duo AndPlay.

Joey Chang + Damian Norfleet

Brooklyn, NY / Minneapolis, MN

Rajanir is a 30-40 minute opera incorporating improvisation and live processing electronics in development by composer-vocalist Damian Norfleet and composer-pianist Joey Chang.

Jordyn Davis

Brooklyn, NY

Recording Jordyn Davis & Composetheway, the title of Davis' debut album featuring a mixed chamber ensemble that includes jazz octet, strings, harp & vocals.

Jose Soto

Boston, MA

This project consists of studying the musical and social philosophy of the Costa Rican indigenous community Bribri, using sung poetry from this community to compose new music and do a virtual performance.

Jose Veliz

Miami, FL

Featuring new works by various composers and multidisciplinary artists, Artasis will be a series of performances and installations that explore how technology developments are changing the way we experience and interact with music and art.

Joshua Hill

Glendale, CA

Song Cycle is a multimedia project that illuminates the powerful connection between music and dementia, through the intimacy of once family's story this project aims to reveal the universal challenges of dementia and the need for self expression.

Joshua Henderson

New York, NY

This project is the Album recording of a new Chamber composition, "One More Night", a contemporary examination of the infamous "Day the Music Died", by Josh Henderson for Nonet of Vocalist, Saxophone, Electric Guitar, Drum set, synths and string quartet; featured artists will be the Desdemona Quartet, Caroline Davis, Brendon Randall-Myers, Rick Martinez and Sylver Wallace.

Joshua Graham

Chicago, IL

As we reconstruct after the pandemic, F-PLUS has a number of new works to prepare and premiere in the coming season, with rehearsal blocks and travel being assisted by a grant from New Music USA.

Joshua Musikantow

St Paul, MN

"Yiddish is My Homeland" is a new art song for mezzo soprano, baritone, and string quartet, setting American Yiddish language poetry.

Joyce Kwon

Glendale, CA

Future History is an album rooted in Jungian thought in which singer/composer/gayageum player Kwon reminisces on the "deep time" of Richard Rohr, recreates "the sound that broke the back of words" from Toni Morrison, and imagines Zhuangzi in love—inviting you to usher the numen back into your life through song.

JP Merz

Los Angeles, CA

Salvaging Birds is an EP for flute and AI-generated electronics featuring Alex Sopp and Yoshi Weinberg. An extension of a research project of the same name led by Maya Livio, this interdisciplinary collaboration investigates the logics of environmental data, speculatively queers birdsong datasets, and complicates datafied approaches to conserving what and who is left of our world.

Juantio Becenti

Farmington, NM

The Glittering World is a collaboration between A Far Cry and Performance Santa Fe to commission a new work from Navajo composer Juantio Becenti. The goal is to perform the work in several venues including on the Navajo Nation.

Juhi Bansal

Altadena, CA

Bringing together community participation, shared story-telling, and cross-stylistic collaboration in Hindustani and Western classical music, Juhi Bansal and Ranjana Ghatak spearhead Amplifying Women's Voices, an album and digital space on music about women's stories.

Julian Otis

Chicago, IL

Mad Myth Science is an electro acoustic quartet sustained throughout the pandemic as a collaborative effort to keep the music going in our isolation. Our goal is to share this cumulative work with audiences through a recorded album and live performances in 2022.

Julian Caldwell – JSWISS

New York, NY

Rapper JSWISS collaborates with producer Michael Leonhart on their dynamic debut album "Bona Fide" after a successful run of JSWISS featuring on live performances with Leonhart's orchestra in 2019.

Julián Muro

Brooklyn, NY

Julián Muro, the Bergamot Quartet, and a band of highly accomplished jazz players will be workshopping, performing, and recording a set of original compositions titled An Idea of Truth based on Julián's distinctive approach to Argentine styles such as Tango, Folklore, and Rock Nacional, with production by acclaimed musician Dave Douglas.

Kahlil Cummings

Los Angeles, CA

Kahlil Cummings Album "Extra Ancestral" With the support of Music USA Kahlil Cummings will be able to complete his debut album with his creation band/ensemble Extra Ancestral

Kai Custodio

Brooklyn, NY

Through music and ritual, mirrorscene is a sonic odyssey to celebrate QTBIPOC identities and reflect diasporic ancestral magic.

Kamau Pendergrass

Oak Park, MI

Pendergrass will use field recordings as well as composing music to capture the sounds and the feeling of Detroit as he has known it in his life to this point in a work titled Detroit Future City.

Kimia Hesabi

College Park, MD

"Neera: a play" is a multimedia piece telling a story about real and fictional women from Iran, taking inspirations from Farsi literature, myths, and poetry, as well as Iranian and western classical, contemporary, and folk music traditions.

Kirsten Volness

Portland, OR

"The Stories We Live By" is an evening-length song cycle written for Tis Kaoru Zamler-Carhart and Verdant Vibes comprised of songs based on myths from around the world that center strong non-binary characters.

Lea Anderson

New York, NY

I have three REMIXES from GHANA’s own DJ Bass that need vibrant visualizations. I mashed them up and would like to make one epic music video for. I believe that it could help take my career to the next level while honoring my ancestors that where “supposed to be” from Ghana.

Maritza Garibay

Hamtramck, MI

Cleansed is an operetta on the theme of ceremonial bathing in the intersectional cultural community of Detroit's North End, one that is focused on the role of cleansing, both as public ritual and within the soul and spirit.

Marvin Diz Aballi

Astoria, NY

Percussion is a foundation within music. It is a spiritual starting point that connects us with a past, a root; a cultural context. There is a whole musical world to explore starting from percussion.

Mary Ellen Childs

Minneapolis, MN

DrumRoll is a music-video installation with 5 video projections and surround sound, filmed with GoPro cameras on the drummers’ foreheads. Entering the gallery, the viewer has the experience of entering the inside of the performance, watching the motion from 4 performers’ points of view simultaneously.

Matthew Ryals

Brooklyn, NY

A collaboration between people, software, and modular synthesizers focused on developing processes for generating varied musical structures.

Megan Lanz

Aurora, CO

Megan Lanz (flute) and Cayla Bellamy (bassoon) have joined composer Frank Horvat to create a new work exploring the psychological framework of metaphorical ghosts that haunt us all through the human experience - struggles with control, trust, and the sense of being “enough.”

Meghan Bennett

Fresno, CA

Homecoming is an audiovisual art piece featuring works by Allison Loggins-Hull and Nathalie Joachim. It shares my varied perspective on my hometown of Charleston, SC, which I deeply love. As a Black woman, an artist, and a descendant of Gullah people, Homecoming represents me.

Mendi + Keith Obadike

Montclair, NJ

RingShout is a musical satellite that will orbit the earth and transmit a radio broadcast of original music and audio interviews. Taking inspiration from Octavia E. Butler’s early writing, our piece will be an original piece of music referencing the African American folk song “Watch the Stars” that includes the voices of Black girls named Star.

Michael Charette

Bayfield, WI

Tales of Laughing Fox is a multicultural album combining indigenous flute with western style compositions. Laughing Fox leads in this Indigenous fusion of musics. Covid put us in positions where we have to reach out letting our circle fly wide, and that it has. Collaborating with musical talents of composer Severin Behnen (CA) and recording engineer and producer Julio Montero (NY), we strive to create a truly unique listening experience, in hopes of bringing cultures together.

Michael Blume

Montclair, NJ

Weaving synth soundscapes and pop vocal stylings with sensitive lyricism, Word to the Trees is a love song to the Earth and to the self, lamenting the harm that's been caused, while reaching toward an ever-present glimmer of hope.

Michael Echaniz

Santa Clarita, CA

Stage IV cancer survivor leads debut concept album of original compositions and arrangements for jazz trio, vocal layers, and special guests. This eighty-minute LP ambitiously explores through-composition, rhythmic virtuosity, thematic symmetry, Basque ancestry, and a deeply personal emotional connection to personal tragedy and resilience.

Midori Larsen

Forest Hills, NY

Communicating a message to women and girls to explore the world and pursue their goals under any circumstances, Larsen’s project “Crossing the Seas” is a series of original chamber music compositions featuring the Japanese and Western musical elements, based on the migration journeys of herself and her late grandmother.

Moira Smiley

Bristol, VT

Song Cycle starting from a smartphone as the new Narcissian gazing pool, and spiraling through modern refractions of the ancient characters: Narcissus, Nemesis, Echo and Tiresias

Monique (BL) Shirelle Mull

Philadelphia, PA

The Die Jim Crow EP II features justice-impacted artists from across America and examines incarceration from multiple perspectives through R&B, hip hop, and rock & roll.

NANí

Brooklyn, NY

"Cowboy Song // mythology" is a queer folk(loric) journey into alternate universes, queer love, and trans boihood. These seven musical myths, original and adapted, search for happy endings and ask: what happens when you fly too close to the sun?

Nava Dunkelman

Brooklyn, NY

IMA is the electro-percussion project of percussionist Dunkelman (JP) and electronic sound artist Amma Ateria (HK) based in New York and California. Through restraint and release, IMA depicts expressionistic noise music of Japanese poetry with the meticulous industrial and serene.

Nehemiah Luckett

New York, NY

Triple Threats is a new musical by Tracey Conyer Lee and Nehemiah Luckett set in 1981 that examines the intersection of race and being an artist in the US.

Nicolas Lell Benavides

Los Angeles, CA

Benavides' debut album Canto Caló explores the cultural themes and sounds of the often-overlooked Southwestern United States, focusing on Nuevomejicano culture and history in particular.

Niloufar Nourbakhsh (Partnership Grantee)

Vernon Rockville, CT

Nourbakhsh directs the Composition Residency program at the Afghanistan’s National Institute of Music (ANIM), which provides composition workshops to young female creators in Afghanistan. Funded by a New Music USA Partnership Grant.

Nirmali Fenn

Forest Hills, NY

The Muslim call to prayer, the adhan is written into this piece for Bassoon and String Quartet. I am treating the bassoon’s call to prayer as an exhalation that is being ‘inhaled’ by the strings as they respond to the prayer. In amplifying the sound of the adhan, this piece uses prayer as a tool of resistance.

Noah Preminger

Mansfield, MA

Through their mutual focus on pushing the boundaries of instrumental virtuosity toward innovative uses of rhythm and harmony, Preminger and Cass' strong connection through their THUNDA project continues to move the artists’ compositions and improvisations into new territory.

Nyokabi Kariuki

Potomac, MD

A multi-movement work on the physical and emotional experience of being sick; particularly drawing from the experiences of Black writers & musicians on their own dealings with pain and reckonings of mortality.

Odean Pope

Philadelphia, PA

ReSounding Progressions is a composing/performance project, a collaboration between two accomplished saxophonist/composers, Odean Pope and Immanuel Wilkins, to create an integrated, evening-length composition inspired by the content and unique structure of the poem Progressions, written by jazz poet and cultural scholar Herman Beavers.

Paris Benford

Austin, TX

Soulful songstress Paris Aryanna delivers her highly anticipated second EP, Flow State in 2022.

Paul Steven Ray

Brooklyn, NY

Deceleration 2, a Live installation for voice, guitar, percussion, digital/electronic sound, visuals, and physical performers is one chapter of an extended work addressing themes of fragility, parallel realities, and protective love.

Rema Hasumi

Brooklyn, NY

Rema Hasumi Trio Concert Series: Randy Peterson (drums) and Adam Lane (bass) will join Hasumi (piano, synthesizer, voice) for a series of performances presenting a soundscape with a blend of free jazz, experimental, dub, esoteric and spiritual ambiance.

Roshni Samlal

Elmont, NY

Tabla player, Roshni Samlal envisions a percussion-forward ode to her familial Trinidadian musical history and to song forms born out of indentureship, influenced by the mythos of exile, Bhojpuri folk songs, chutney music, sound design contextualized tabla solos and the narrative waters of memory in carrying stories to new lands.

Russell Scarbrough

Rochester, NY

Featuring 40+ musicians worldwide, Russell Scarbrough remotely recorded 10 original pieces during the 2020-21 pandemic, over 60 minutes of music for 18-piece jazz orchestra, culminating in the record "FUN TIMES" to be released late in 2022.

Sakari Vanderveer

Redlands, CA

Sakari Dixon Vanderveer composes a solo piece for Chester Englander’s album Chrysalis, a collection of new cimbalom works by American composers that will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the invention of the concert cimbalom.

Samantha Rise

Philadelphia, PA

Remembrance is a work of communal music making, honoring our grief for the world, and the hardship of loss, separation and inaccessibility during the Coronavirus pandemic. Collectively brought to life with audience collaboration during its performance, artists will create a ritual-container, leveraging music as a technology for community care.

Seong Ae Kim

Bayside, NY

Seong Ae Kim composed a new work "2 Folk songs for soprano and chamber ensemble (2022)" to promote #StopAAPIHate and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble who commissioned the work and will give the premiere performance in San Francisco, CA.

Shanan Estreicher

Jackson Heights, NY

A Concordance of Leaves is a cantata for baritone, choir, and piano that will be premiered by James John and the Queens College Vocal Ensemble, and recorded for a release on Composers Concordance Records.

Shara Nova

Detroit, MI

Featuring double choral and brass ensembles, vocal soloists, and an animated film created by Ritchie, Infinite Movement finds connections between disparate images and sound, and imagines what might exist in the space between them.

Sofia Rei

Brooklyn, NY

Folklore & Futurism will be a series of collaborations between Rei and other female Latinx artists that explore the connection between traditional Latin American folk culture, alternative genres and digital technologies.

Spirit Paris McIntyre

New Orleans, LA

Spirit Paris McIntyre's Don’t Speak Over Me is a multi-dimensional soundscore with poetry, music, and the interviews of Transgender, Gender-Non-Conforming and Gender-Variant+ people. It is a creative response to the experience of having relative strangers speak gender, gendered expectations, and gendered ignorance over us.

Sugar Vendil

Brooklyn, NY

Antonym is a multimedia memoir of a Filipinx American childhood. If nostalgia is a yearning for the past, Antonym longs for forward motion and envisions the future as an escape from pain.

Suzanne Kite

Tulsa, OK

Suzanne Kite will be using these funds towards a performance on June 5th in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario where she will bring five other improvising musicians to create a new experimental composition, based on Lakota geometric forms.

Svetlana Shmulyian

Pound Ridge, NY

Swing Makes You Sing EP is a collection of high quality original jazz songs for kids to experience authentic connection to fundamentals of jazz and the values and social skills that jazz embodies - through topics that are relevant to young people (e.g. conversation, listening, friendships, food, school, feelings).

Trevor New

Brooklyn, NY

Cohere "Touch" is a piece and a virtual installation that allows in-person and virtual participants to both see and been seen, participate sonically in the performance, and have everyone together shape a visual canvas and sound FX with movement. It is about taking everyone involved in the piece, performers and audience, and having their presence echo across the performance.

Veena Chandra

Latham, NY

VeenaChandra and Sanchita Bhattacharya come together to portrait the image of women in Indian history through their mesmerizing performance on Sitar and Odissi Dance.

Victor Márquez-Barrios

Kirksville, MO

Dance Lessons II (for wind quintet) is a collaboration with Quinteto Latino, consisting of the decomposition and subsequent (free) recomposition of a selection of Latin American dances for wind quintet.

Victoria Machado – DJ Vicky Casis

Brooklyn, NY

Casis World is a sonic and visual representation of Music Producer/DJ Vicky Casis's mind and experiences during the rise of Covid-19.

Yayoi Ikawa

Brooklyn, NY

Pianist/Composer Yayoi Ikawa collaborates with musicians based on her experience during the Pandemic in healing, hope, and love.

Yongyun Zhang

La Jolla, CA

Collaboration with composer Rachel C. Walker and writer Autumn Tsai on a new work for speaking percussionist and electronics connected to the life of twentieth century Taiwanese novelist San Mao

Yozmit Kwon

Carson, CA

“Effervescent” is a multimedia presentation of music centered around the gathering, training, and performance of my original song, “Effervescent” by a choir of transgender/non-binary/gender non-conforming/gender fluid individuals from Los Angeles. The workshop has begun with 5-members in traditional Korean singing, meditation, movement, and costuming for the group to generate materials.

Funders

Support for New Music USA and its many programs and activities is provided by foundations, corporations, government agencies, and hundreds of individual contributors. The Creator Fund is funded in part by The ASCAP Foundation Bart Howard Fund, BMI Foundation, Inc., Cheswatyr Foundation, and the Howard Gilman Foundation. Grants to artists in New York are made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and with public funds form the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

New Music USA acknowledges and is grateful for the support of its endowment donors, including the Mellon Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, Baisley Powell Elebash Fund, Hewlett Foundation, Fidelity Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts.

Funding transparency  

Both the New Music Creator Fund and the New Music Organization Fund are made possible by the generous funders who either donated to our endowment or generously donate to New Music USA annually. Some of these funders had or have specific requests regarding the kinds of work we support because of their geographical location or specific area of interest. We are providing the facts and figures below so that all applicants have a better insight into these restrictions, which influence the applications our advisors select. Please note that applications may cover a number of the categories listed below; others may not fit with any. 

  • Award rates are generally between 5% and 10% of the overall applicant pool (this means we support around 1/10 of the applications we receive each year) 
    • Roughly 25% of the applications we fund must include the creation of new work (e.g. commissions and facilitation of brand-new pieces of music) 
    • Roughly 25% of the applications we award must include creation or programming of live music for dance (creation, performance, choreographer, and dancer fees) 
  • Geographical restrictions are as follows: 
    • 54% of our grants budget is available without geographical restriction  
    • 37% is restricted to New York City based artists/organizations 
    • 7% is restricted to New York State based artists/organizations 
    • 2% is restricted to California Bay Area based artists/organization