Music Academy Of The West Announces 2021 Alumni Enterprise Award Winners

The 2021 Music Academy of the West Alumni Enterprise Award winners have been announced. Six winners will receive $85,000 in grants that advance social entrepreneurship and seed the industry with new ideas and platforms

Winning projects go global with multi-continent imprint, receiving robust creative support and mentorship from the Music Academy's Innovation Institute

Total value of grants awarded since 2018 reaches $305,000 distributed to 27 alumni

The Music Academy of the West's mission expands exponentially as its more than 7,000 alumni are challenged annually to create projects that:

• Support innovation in areas including artistic expression, audience development, education, community engagement, social justice, and technology;
• Advance social entrepreneurial endeavors/projects in classical music;
• Generate positive learning outcomes.

"It is imperative for us to help give artists a voice to react to our complex world. These awards offer them investment in their vision for the future. Their projects will have an immediate impact on their communities and spark new thinking about how music is performed and presented globally," said Music Academy President & CEO Scott Reed

The Academy received a record number of applicants for the fourth annual 2021 Alumni Enterprise Awards. 98 projects were adjudicated by members of the Academy's National Advisory Council, Board of Directors, and administrators, as well as musical entrepreneurs who were part of this past summer's Remote Learning Institute. The six Award winners will receive $85,000 in grants to complete their projects in 2021. Their bold plans address challenges from the pandemic, the call for social justice, gender equality, and include music both written and performed by BIPOC composers and musicians. Projects originate from Montréal, Canada; Amsterdam in the Netherlands; Cochabamba, Bolivia and São Paulo, Brazil; and Chicago and Philadelphia in the United States.

2021 Alumni Enterprise Award winners will participate in an Innovation Residential online presented by the Music Academy held March 22-27, 2021. Industry visionaries such as opera producers Beth Morrison and Jecca Barry, violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins, 21C Media Group, and others, will lead interactive workshops and panels focusing on entrepreneurial strategies around marketing, fundraising, audience engagement and interaction, and the evolving musical landscape. Each winner will be partnered with a professional mentor with expertise connected to their project that will serve as an ongoing advisor.

"The winning projects represent incredible enterprise and ingenuity in the creative pursuits of Academy alumni. It's thrilling to see the impact these musicians are having on peer artists and audiences, along with the education and legacy they offer the field of music," said Clive Chang, Music Academy Board member and Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

The 2021 Alumni Enterprise Award Winners:

• Camila Barrientos Ossio (clarinet '11, '12) and Bruno Luiz Lourensetto (trumpet '12) will offer real-time, online video concerts for COVID patients across Latin America and beyond in Música para Respirar 24/7
• Rich Coburn (vocal piano '14) is creating a BIPOC Voices: The Library of Music for Voice and Orchestra by BIPOC Composers, a database of orchestrated vocal works by Black, Indigenous, and other Composers of Color, featuring samples of many previously un-recorded works
• Cristina Cutts Dougherty (tuba '20, '21 and a 2020 Fast Pitch Award Winner) is heading The Resilience Project, a book which aims to secure the legacies of historic women in brass by detailing their orchestral careers and pedagogy from the 1940's to today
• Adanya Dunn (mezzo-soprano '14, '15) will present InsideOut: Pop-Up Concerts & Walking Concert Tour (Red Light Arts & Culture). These will be a range of indoor and outdoor, socially-distanced concerts (following a range of COVID protocols), in Amsterdam's Red Light District
• Christina Giuca Krause (vocal piano '13, '17 and a winner of the 2017 Marilyn Horne Song Competition) evolves Composition of a City: Digital, a Chicago-based musical education and mentorship endeavor bridging classical music and hip hop

The six winners join 21 previous winners since 2018. The total awarded in prizes is now $305,000. Further details about the 2021 winning projects available below. For information on all past projects and winners, please visit musicacademy.org/alumni-enterprise-awards.

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