Individual Artist Project Grant

The community benefits by engaging with two musical performances to enhance its overall perception of the region's natural environ. There are many studies that show that the ability of a community to engage with live music of all genres contributes to the overall health of the community. Additionally, I will invite regional students to each performance in hope that the performance and question session about the compositional process inspire them to more fully engage in their school music programs or broaden their creative abilities in general. It is a performance like this followed by a candid conversation that inspires youth to believe in the potential of their own creative process. The creation of a new body of work to add to my portfolio and two performances (one recorded live) to add to my concert history and discography are meaningful ways of charting the progress I am making in terms of evolving my musical storytelling and place-based creative activities. The outcome, measurable by noting the size and make-up of the audiences and the count of regional students in attendance, is one of seeking successful community engagement. Feedback from peers, measurable in a subjective sense, is also extremely meaningful and valuable. I am very intuitive when it comes to composition especially when text is involved ? I feel the text indicates its musical treatment. This means that I write vocal lines quite quickly. I am confident that I could write the vocal lines in one month. In an additional month, I could write the piano part. That said, I will take several additional months to resonate with the composition, reworking each part precisely, ensuring that the work is true to my vision. Additional time will be spent generating physical performance parts, learning the music and rehearsing together with the soprano. Experience with past projects has led me to use social media as an effective and inexpensive marketing tool to increase the engagement of the target community. So within the year, we (the soprano and I) will give two performances in different locations, marketing to and engaging with an underserved public, and expanding that audience's experience to include post-concert question and answer opportunities. I will enlist a volunteer to obtain metrics re audience size and demographics (via questionnaire) and anecdotally record feedback from observation of the audiences.