SAN FRANCISCO and MENLO PARK, Calif. — The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation are pleased to announce the 2010 Composer Collaboration Awards Program. The foundations will provide up to six grants of $75,000 each for the creation and production of new music works by California composers, in collaboration with other artists.
These composer collaboration grants are part of a three-year $1,350,000 initiative by the Gerbode and Hewlett foundations to support fresh, dynamic collaborations in contemporary music, dance, and theater. In 2008, grants were made for choreographer collaborations, and grants for playwright collaborations were awarded in 2009.
Grants will be aimed at innovative and highly gifted California composers, each working in close collaboration with other California artists of their choosing (choreographer, composer, digital media artist, playwright, filmmaker, designer or other). The resulting works will have their world premiere public performances in the Bay Area between December 2011 and December 2014.
Proposed commissions in any genre will be accepted. Applicant organizations must be nonprofit and based in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Monterey, Napa, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Solano, and Sonoma.
“We are delighted to be able to make funds available to deserving composers and presenters for new works in this challenging fiscal environment,” says Tom Layton, president of the Gerbode Foundation. “Now, more than ever, we need gifted musical and other artists to share their fresh, inventive ideas and create new musical worlds for us.”
In conveying his vision for this awards program, John McGuirk, director of the performing arts program at the Hewlett Foundation, says, “We hope this grant opportunity will enable dynamic new works to be created locally that will be particularly relevant to diverse community audiences throughout the region.”
Applications for the 2010 Composer Collaboration Awards Program are currently available online at http://www.fdncenter.org/grantmaker/gerbode. Completed applications must be submitted to the Gerbode Foundation no later than 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, August 26, 2010. An advisory panel of music experts from around the U.S. will review all the proposals, and final selections will be made by the Gerbode Foundation. Grantees will be announced in January 2011.
For questions regarding the program guidelines and application, please contact The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation’s Manager of Special Awards, Olivia Malabuyo, 111 Pine Street, Suite 1515, San Francisco, CA 94111, 415-391-0911, omalabuyo@gerbode.org.
About The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation
The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation is interested in programs and projects offering potential for significant impact. The primary geographical focus is on the San Francisco Bay Area and Hawaii. The Foundation’s interests generally fall under the categories of arts and culture, environment, population, reproductive rights, citizen participation, building communities, inclusiveness, strength of the philanthropic process and the nonprofit sector, and Foundation-initiated special projects.
About the Special Awards Program
For over 20 years, The Gerbode Foundation has made innovative grants through its Special Awards Program to San Francisco Bay Area arts institutions to commission new works by gifted individual artists: playwrights (including Tony Kushner of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Angels in America”), choreographers (such as Alonzo King and Margaret Jenkins), composers (John Adams, Paul Dresher, and Lou Harrison among them), as well as visual artists, poets, and multi-media artists.
In a time of cultural shifts and fiscal insecurity in the arts, these coveted, nationally respected awards have helped underwrite culturally and aesthetically diverse, acclaimed new works by prominent artists and artists who are up-and-coming. The grants have supported artists at critical junctures in their careers, enabled local nonprofit arts organizations to develop and premiere substantial new works, and enriched Bay Area audiences, readers, and viewers by giving them first access to ambitious, original creations.
About The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been making grants since 1967 to help solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. The Foundation concentrates its resources on activities in education, the environment, global development, performing arts, philanthropy, and population, and makes grants to support disadvantaged communities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Foundation’s Performing Arts Program is founded on the premise that the experience, understanding, and appreciation of artistic expression give value, meaning, and enjoyment to people’s lives. Its goals are to ensure that exceptional works of art are created, performed, and preserved, and to provide more opportunities for participation in arts experiences. The program supports artistic expression and its enjoyment through grantmaking to a wide range of high-quality arts organizations in one of the most culturally diverse regions in the country. The Hewlett Foundation currently supports over 200 organizations throughout the Bay Area. Both the scale of funding and the singular nature of multiyear general operating support have made the Hewlett Foundation a key investor in the cultural life of the Bay Area.