Previous MCW Grant Recipients
The Grants Committee followed the criteria established by the MCW Board of Directors in carefully and thoroughly evaluating the grant applications; the Grants Committee subsequently made funding recommendations to the Board. The Board voted to adopt these recommendations and award grants to the MCW members listed below. (The grant-making process adhered to strict conflict-of-interest rules; no one involved in any applicant’s project was present during any grant decision-making discussion, privy to any communications regarding grant decision-making, or permitted to vote on any aspect of grant-making.)
Click here to view MCW Grant Eligibility and Criteria.
Click here to learn more about the MCW Grant Application Process.
Elizabeth Start, Axiom Brass on Chicago Composer’s Consortium: $1,000 - Spring 2023
A new commission and performance which will bring women led brass works to a wide audience. “Our C3 Axiom Brass concert will inspire the creation of new brass works by five women, featuring an emerging and a renowned woman composer, with some additional repertoire by men. Collaborating with an established Chicago ensemble will bring this music to a wider audience, in an atmosphere where men and women are presented equally as performers and composers. Having pieces by women at various stages of their careers, from the world-renowned Thomas to an emerging composer, will enhance the awareness of all involved.”
Ashley Ertz, 5th Wave Collective, Florence Price “Beyond the Fist”: $1,500 - Spring 2023
An interactive performance by 5th Wave Collective taking place throughout Chicago parks in the Summer 2023. The audience will experience different combinations of winds, brass, strings and harp throughout the park, hearing parts of her musical life and being guided by narration of her personal life. The performance will culminate with selections from her iconic First Symphony arranged for our ensemble, celebrating her “first”, but also illuminating the journey to and from her most well known piece. This program will be informative and accessible for audiences of all ages and knowledge levels of classical music. “While her First Symphony is an important part of history, Florence Price is so much more than just one piece and one moment in time. We intend to showcase the breadth and complexity of her compositions by taking the audience on a musical exploration of her life and works before and after the monumental First Symphony.”
Emily Cox, “Written on the Table Where You Starved Me”: $1,500 - Spring 2023
A new commission for soprano and piano, this staged song cycle will explore disordered eating from multiple perspectives: a teen-aged victim, a middle-aged victim, and the child of a woman who suffers from an eating disorder. A workshop is planned for the fall of 2023 in Chicago, IL, with the intent to perform the work in its entirety before a live audience in the fall and winter months. Subsequent performances are being discussed in Los Angeles and New York for the spring of 2024, after which an audio/video recording will be available for private publication and dissemination. “Our goal is to further the philanthropic and supportive mission of the MCW by raising social awareness for disordered eating through a new song cycle project that highlights these issues’ impacts upon all women in society. This program provides performance opportunities to Chicago-based professional female-identifying musicians, introduces audiences to contemporary music commissioned specifically for women, and reaffirms the power of women within social activism. We hope that, by featuring our team’s first-person experiences with these diseases, we can dismantle the shame, guilt and fear that often surround discussions involving disordered eating. We aim to continue to promote conversations about healing and building female-based communities of support within a post-Covid world.”
Clare Logendyke, “The Space Between” : $2,500 - Fall 2022
The Space Between podcast will share information about a new body of music by female composers and composers of color through personal interviews and world premiere recordings.
Since 2020, Ms. Logendyke has commissioned and premiered new works for solo piano and chamber music from some of today’s most important creators, such as Nkeiru Okoye, Amy Williams, Emily Koh, and more. Many of those pieces have only been performed a few times and few have been professionally recorded. In a field that is inundated with wonderful music, it takes real advocacy for individual pieces to stand out. The Space Between podcast will help these new works gain appreciation amongst audience members and appeal amongst performers. The grant from MCW will cover stipends for individual composers, administrative duties including conducting and editing the podcast, promotional materials and sound engineering fees.
Sarah Pinto, “Double Oboe Concerto - Commission & Performance”: $2,500 - Fall 2022
After searching for repertoire for a concerto composition for two oboes, Sarah and her performance partner discovered there are few double concertos written for two oboes and orchestra, with only the two Baroque pieces being regularly performed. In hopes of performing a more contemporary and captivating piece, they would like to commission a double concerto.
They have connected with graduate student composer Grace Hale, who suggested co-writing this work with three colleagues: Hannah Boissonneault, Natalia Camargo Duarte, and Madeline Merwin, the first ever all-female class of composition graduate students at the University of Michigan. Their concerto will take the listener on a journey through the experiences of four women and their relationships with shame, vulnerability, femininity, and acceptance. They plan to premiere the piece first locally in Southeast Michigan in the Spring 2023, followed by a performance at the Summer 2023 International Double Reed Society Conference in Thailand. The grant from MCW will go towards covering almost 50% of the commissioning fee.
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Duo FAE, “Dissidents of the Gilded Age”: $2,500 - Spring 2022
Duo FAE, comprised of MCW members Charlene Kluegel, violin, and Katherine Petersen, piano, will be recording three works by three groundbreaking women in an exploration of feminine insubordination through intimate salon chamber music. The three composers are Dame Ethel Smyth (UK), Amy Marcy Beach (US), and Cécile Chaminade (France). The commercial recording will be produced and recorded at Guarneri Hall in the summer of 2022, with plans to master and release the recording later in the year.
Deborah Nemko, “Piano Music of Suppressed and Forgotten Women Composers of WWII”: $2,500 - Spring 2022
Dr. Debora Nemko will record piano works of female Jewish composers who were suppressed during the WWII era, including Rosie Wertheim, Henriette Bosmans and Johanna Bordwijk-Roepman. Since much of this music exists only in manuscript form and few recordings, if any, have been made, it is currently not generally accessible to musicians and the public. These works and the lives which they represent are certainly deserving of recognition, and this recording project will help to illuminate previously forgotten music.
5th Wave Collective, “Spring Orchestral Concert”: $2,500 - Spring 2022
5th Wave Collective’s mission to perform and promote womxn and gender non-conforming composers continues with a full orchestral concert on May 28, 2022. In this concert, they will be performing works by composers Stephanie Orlando, Clara Schumann, Jessie Montgomery and Emilie Mayer. The finale of the concert will be a performance of their own critical edition of Romantic era composer Emilie Mayer’s Symphony No. 3. Until now, the Mayer only readily existed in manuscript form and additionally there are no recordings professionally produced or on YouTube/other online spaces. The new edition will be added to 5th Wave Edition’s catalog following the performance this summer, available for purchase by the general public. The MCW grant will support this performance and the subsequent publication of the Mayer Symphony.
Natasha Stojanovska, “Uncommon Voices, Part II: American Women Composers”: $2,100 - Spring 2022
In recent years, Dr. Stojanovska has created a CD album series that brings to life the music of women composers. The second album in the series, this recording will raise awareness of American women composers and affirm their place in the standard piano repertoire. The composers featured on this album will be Shulamit Ran, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Jessie Montgomery, Lauryn Bomse, Nylea Butler-Moore, Carmen Helena Tellez and Natasha Stojanovska.
EStrella Piano Duo, “In their Own Voices”: $2,100 - Spring 2022
In their Own Voices is the culmination of EStrella Duo’s recent efforts to program and perform unjustly neglected works and bring them to the widest possible audiences. This recording project will include works by Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn, Mélanie Bonis, Cécile Chaminade, Amy Beach, Marie Jaëll, and Clara Schumann. At some point in their lives, all these women were expected to be primarily wives and mothers, and keep their music-making to a small salon setting. This CD features the often-overlooked small gems in this genre.
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Norah R. Williams and Rebecca A. Arends, Ossia Musical Forum, “Prohairesis” Music Video: $1,200 - Fall 2021
Ossia Musical Forum’s Red Riding Hood Quartet and RAREdancework will collaborate on a film entitled Prohairesis, set to Imogen Holst’s Phantasy Quartet, which is inspired by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus’ ideas surrounding the faculty of choice. The video will combine footage of the string quartet with videography of four dancers located in the United States, Germany, Greece, and Canada, capturing each country’s unique landscape and evoking notions of freedom and open pasture.
The finished film will be distributed globally to educational institutions, museums, galleries, and short film festivals, as well as to the MCW membership.
Anatolia Evarkiou-Kaku, Performing and Recording Ruby Fulton's "the girl who cried pain": $2,500 - Fall 2021
Ruby Fulton’s “the girl who cried pain” is inspired by flautist Anatolia Evarkiou-Kaku’s personal experience with the US healthcare system’s inadequate treatment of women and people of color. From June 2019 to January 2020, Anatolia suffered from chronic and intense pain in her lower back that shot down the entirety of her left leg. She consulted countless physicians, but found that medical professionals were not taking her pleas for pain relief seriously and seemed to doubt the severity of her pain. Numerous studies document that women and people of color often receive inadequate treatment by medical professionals due to a complicated web of ingrained societal biases. Ruby Fulton’s “the girl who cried pain” is, in the words of the composer, “a musical reflection on pain, pain relief, the perception of pain, and the effect of one’s gender on being believed about pain [...] just as women are more likely to receive a sedative than a pain-killer when they express pain, they are less likely to be believed or taken seriously about the pain caused by patriarchal attitudes and abuse”.
The MCW grant will greatly broaden the scope and reach of this work by funding the recording of a music video that will be filmed across Chicago communities and feature local women and musicians. This video will be shared with the MCW membership.
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Rachel Blumenthal, Trillium Flute Collective, “Commissioning Project and Scholarship Fund”: $1,750 - Spring 2021
The founders of Trillium Flute Collective, including Rachel Blumenthal, devised a series of virtual workshops to provide meaningful opportunities for pre-collegiate flute students during the pandemic. For its virtual Extended Techniques Festival in May 2021, Trillium is commissioning Kenzie Slottow to compose three short pieces for beginner/intermediate flutists, which will address an important deficiency in the flute repertoire: “Too often, pieces at a suitable level for young flutists are written by men. We want to create more opportunities for our students to play exciting music written by composers who look like them, and by composers who use a musical language that feels cool and modern.” Slottow’s new compositions will be featured at the Extended Techniques Festival.
MCW’s grant will also fund five full scholarships of $150 each for diverse students who need financial support to be able to attend and participate in the Extended Techniques Festival.
Eleanor Kirk, 5th Wave Collective “Isabella Leonarda Sonatas—Performance and Publishing”: $1,250 - Spring 2021
5th Wave Collective, whose leaders include MCW members Eleanor Kirk and Ashley Ertz, is “a Chicago-based classical music ensemble intent on the promotion and performance of music by womxn and gender non-conforming composers,” including “uncovering and championing hidden gems in the classical repertoire.” According to 5th Wave Collective, Isabella Leonarda, a 17th-century Italian nun, was the first woman to publish sonatas. 5th Wave Collective will publish a new, clear setting of Leonarda’s 12 sonatas, which will enable those works to be performed by a more flexible variety of instruments; the sheet music will be available for download on the organization’s website. 5th Wave Collective will showcase all 12 of Leonarda’s sonatas in an outdoor, distanced marathon performance during Make Music Chicago on June 21, 2021, with a rotating cast of musicians: harp, piano, or vibraphone for the continuo, and oboe, clarinet, cello, and trombone for the melody instruments.
Clare Longendyke: Piano Portraits, “An Immersive Visual Art + Music Concert Experience”: $500 - Spring 2021
Pianist Clare Longendyke will pair artwork from the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art with selections from Debussy’s “Piano Preludes” and Amy Williams’s new work, “Piano Portraits.” The resulting video, which will include narration by Longendyke, is intended to be used as an educational resource for students at The People’s Music School, as well as students attending schools that participate in the Amplify program of the Logan Center for the Arts (which partners with K-12 schools on the South Side of Chicago).
Leighann Daihl Ragusa, Bach + Beethoven Experience, “The Pandemic Woman”: $500 - Spring 2021
The Bach + Beethoven Experience, a period-instrument ensemble, will collaborate with the Artemisia Trio, a female vocal trio, to portray the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women. These musical ensembles will create a video performance with an all-female and Chicago-based team of artists, which will feature the work of poet Leslé Honoré and composer Heidi Joosten, who will write a 10-minute piece setting Honoré’s poem to music. The performance video will be shared free of charge on all social-media platforms.
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Lauren Decker, “Personalized Window (and Video) Recitals for Residents of Senior Homes”: $2,000 - Fall 2020
Contralto Lauren Decker (2019 MCW Newfield Award winner) proposed an innovative project in which she will perform a series of interactive “window recitals” at senior-care facilities in the Milwaukee area and distribute personalized video performances via the closed-circuit TV channels within the communities. These performances will be customized based on the participants’ responses to open-ended questions, which will inform her choice of songs. MCW funds will allow her to produce video performances (hiring a collaborative pianist and videographer, renting a recording venue, etc.), create pre-recorded accompaniment tracks, and personalize the performances by printing and distributing materials (programs, questionnaires, surveys, etc.) through which residents of facilities can provide input that will inform Lauren’s selection of repertoire.
Lauren shared with us a short video clip of the window recital she gave that inspired this project. She writes, “I sang to this resident every week for roughly 2.5 months. In a time that we were both strictly quarantined, the connection we were able to make, even while separated by a closed window, served as a strong reminder of the hope music and art brings.”
Elaine Smith, Music Teachers of Hyde Park (MTHP), “Concerto Day (May 2021)”: $2,000 - Fall 2020
MTHP’s Concerto Day is usually an annual opportunity for about 20 students of MTHP member teachers to each perform a single movement of a concerto with an orchestra made up of teachers, professionals, students, and community musicians, all of whom typically donate their time. Because of the pandemic, it is no longer safe or feasible to hold the event in its traditional form. Instead, for the spring 2021 edition of Concerto Day, MTHP envisions a modified, coronavirus-conscious setup that involves hiring a much smaller group of professional musicians (string quartet, piano, and bass). This would allow the students (aged 8-18) to have the experience of performing their concerto movements with an ensemble for a small audience of family members.
MTHP students are diverse with respect to race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, and former Concerto Day solo performers have testified that the experience of performing a concerto with an orchestra for the first time was thrilling and inspiring.
Michelle Areyzaga, “Were I With Thee” : $500 - Fall 2020
Michelle Areyzaga, soprano, and Dana Brown, piano, are recording an album of works for voice and piano penned by women, in both Spanish and English, and set by American composers, including Gwyneth Walker and MCW member Patrice Michaels.
Kate Carter & Louise Chan, “Strike, Strum and Stride”: $500 - Fall 2020
The Blue Violet Duo (Kate Carter, violin, and Louise Chan, piano) are recording an album of rarely performed works for violin and piano by American composers, including Irene Britton Smith and Gwyneth Walker.
Josefien Stoppelenburg & Jean Hatmaker, “Modern Muses: Contemporary Treasures for Soprano and Cello”: $500 - Fall 2020
Josephine Stoppelenburg, soprano, and Jean Hatmaker, cello, are recording an album that includes works by four American women, including MCW members Stacy Garrop and Jean Hatmaker, as well as works by numerous other composers from around the world.
Patrice Michaels, "RESOLVED" (MCW co-commission of a new work by Michaels about the 19th Amendment and the American women's suffrage movement): $1,500
"RESOLVED" was co-commissioned by MCW in affiliation with the National Constitution Center (NCC) and the Lyric Fest of Philadelphia and features a song dedicated to MCW, with lyrics by the Chicagoan Ida B. Wells.