Past
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RAY TINTORI received a grant for Glory at Sea!, a narrative short that takes place in 2008 New Orleans after another Katrina-like storm. The story's hero, Jake, and his girlfriend Tess sink into the clutches of Hell-not a fiery inferno, but an expanse of condemned souls planted like cornstalks at the bottom of the ocean. As Tess sinks into the sand, Jake is suddenly spat back up toward the surface. He emerges from the water, half alive, and finds himself in a mangled, dystopic American landscape. He begins constructing a raft out of the rubble of the city, planning on going to sea alone to rescue Tess. As he builds, survivors who also have loved ones lost in the underwater Hades begin to emerge from the bombed-out wasteland. Defying a clergy that declares Jake a pariah and his mission an affront to God's will, a community of fierce and devastated people join him in his epic task, seemingly doomed to failure. Jake's raft slowly transforms from a mere vehicle into a sprawling shrine of memorials and sentiments dedicated to the victims lost beneath the water. Driven by longing, desire, and their refusal to accept the idea that their loved ones were meant to die, they set sail to stage a veritable prison break from death itself. Glory at Sea! Is a film about love, loss, and hope, built from the rubble that still blankets every corner of New Orleans.

Performing artists, creators and clowns GALEN TREUER, NOAH BREMER, MEGAN ODELL AND VANESSA VOSKUIL, Minnesota, will travel to Campinas, Brazil, to attend two weeks of intensive study with the Lume Teatro company. Coinciding with the Carnival season, Lume's intensive workshops encompass clowns, butoh, dance and theater practices. The four artists expect to be artistically and physically challenged and will return to Minnesota with new skills to enrich their art making and teaching.

TROIKA RANCH, New York City, received a grant of $10,000 to support the creation and development of a new work. Troika Ranch is the collaborative vision of artists Dawn Stoppiello and Mark Coniglio. They create and produce live performances, interactive installations and digital films, combining traditional aspects of these forms with advanced technologies. Jerome is supporting the creation and development of Loop Divers, which is conceived as a metaphor for the repetition experienced by all maturing human beings. The form of the work stems from two omnipresent features of contemporary popular music: looping and sampling. The artists will explore stability, turbulence and instability in this work.

TU DANCE, St. Paul, Minnesota, received $12,000 to support the creation and production of new works in 2007. Founded by Co-Artistic Directors Uri Sands and Toni Pierce-Sands, the mission of TU Dance is to create, produce and deliver dance performances that excite diverse audiences. This commitment by the Jerome Foundation marks the fifth year of support.

VOCALESSENCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $25,000 in support of the 2007 Essentially Choral Program. VocalEssence explores the interaction of voices and instruments through innovative programming of music, past and present. Its audiences expect the unexpected. The purpose of Essentially Choral is to support the development of new works by emerging composers, explore diverse compositional styles, cultivate the career development of emerging composers, break traditional boundaries of composition and provide new repertoire for the choral music field. The program includes informational seminars, professional development opportunities, two rehearsals of the composers' works with the chorus under the direction of Philip Brunelle, group and one-on-one sessions with conductor Brunelle and a senior composer mentor, critique sessions with peer composers and a culminating reading rehearsal that is recorded for the composers' use.

VOICE & VISION, New York City, received a two-year grant of $20,500 in support of the ENVISION Retreat and Lab. Voice & Vision was founded in 1990 to develop and produce vibrant theater works with women artists at the core. It offers emerging female theater artists from all cultures, disciplines and backgrounds opportunities to develop their voices and visions in a professional theater context. Through a competitive submission process, six to eight projects are selected each year for the summer Retreat. After that concludes, the structure and content of the ENVISION Lab are determined, and plans for future development of the works are discussed. The Lab may involve readings, workshops and research.

Composer JEREMY R. WALKER, Minnesota, will travel to New York, New Orleans, and East Lansing, Michigan, to participate in intensive study of composition and piano with acknowledged jazz masters. Walker is transitioning from a saxophonist to composer/pianist because of health problems that prevent him from playing the saxophone. He will study with Ted Nash and Frank Kimbrough in New York, travel to Michigan to study with Wessel Anderson and then move to New Orleans to study with Ellis Marsalis.

Bedlam Theatre Artistic Director MAREN WARD, Minnesota, will participate in the Cornerstone Institute for community-based theater in Holtville, California. This is part of a six-month study and exploration of various techniques and processes for creating original theater with community. She seeks to understand her own work in a larger context, expand her creation tool box and, ultimately, strengthen the quality and impact of the performances she creates.

Composer and performer JENNIFER WEIR, Minnesota, will travel to Seoul, Korea, to study traditional Korean Samulnori drumming, specifically the hourglass shaped changgo drum. Weir is a founding performing member of Mu Daiko in Minneapolis and a member of the all-women's ensemble JoDaiko. Weir's purpose, in this trip, is to integrate Korean and Japanese musical influences in her taiko compositions, and better reflect her identity in her art. The travel will inspire a new composition, tentatively titled Unknown Home. She will study Korean drumming with Dong-Won Kim in Seoul.

LUCI WESTPHAL was awarded support for All's Well and Fair, an hour-long documentary that gives a unique perspective on growth and identity, choice and consequence, through portraying three punk rock mothers and their children over a ten-year interval of life on the fringes of society. Giving voice to the three mothers as well as to their five children, All's Well and Fair questions the stereotypes of welfare moms and alternative culture. It also examines the pitfalls of capitalism and mass market culture and living on the cusp of poverty. Do these women lead lives of integrity outside of the mainstream system, or have they just subjected themselves and their children to living in poverty and feeding off the system? And did they actually have a choice? The documentary ultimately focuses on the idea of knowing and being yourself.

ZEITGEIST, St. Paul, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $27,000 in support of its Composer Workshop. Zeitgeist's mission is to enliven today's music and enlarge its public with performances that absorb, stimulate and hearten. A group of musicians animated by a spirit of adventure and collaboration, Zeitgeist presents works with passion and integrity and tries to forge new links between musicians and music lovers. The Composer Workshop is designed to give emerging composers opportunities to develop their creative ideas and stretch artistic boundaries in an environment that celebrates exploration and experimentation. The focus is not on the completion of a composition but rather on the generation and development of ideas and the exploration of musical possibilities. Zeitgeist musicians become a compositional laboratory for composers who bring material they would like to develop. The Workshop extends over five days and includes two open rehearsals of the pieces for other composers and the public.

ARTS AT ST. ANN'S, Brooklyn, New York, as fiscal sponsor for the ensemble ACCINOSCO (Jim Findlay, Cynthia Hopkins and Jeff Sugg), received $9,000 in support of the creation and production of Must Don't Whip 'Um. Accinosco is a newly formed live performance company. This collective of performing artists and designers is dedicated to creating original works that meld music, text, video and technical design with unbelievable fact and outrageous fiction. Must Don't Whip 'Um is about the unresolvable conflict between the human desire for spiritual fulfillment and the human necessity for a practical means of survival, through the lens of a fictional artist who has made a Rimbaudesque decision to extract herself from the realm of art. The work will be performed live as a concert with prerecorded documentary footage interwoven and projected onto screens.

THE AMERICAN BRASS CHAMBER MUSIC ASSOCIATION, New York City, received a two-year grant of $28,000 to support four commissions awarded to emerging composers, based in New York City and/or Minnesota, for new works to be performed by the American Brass Quintet. The works will receive initial premieres at the Aspen Music Festival and Lincoln Center, after which they will be toured domestically and internationally. Emphasis will be placed on emerging composers creating experimental work. Founded in 1960, the American Brass Quintet has commissioned approximately 140 works, of which a significant number have become repertoire staples for brass quintets.

The AMERICAN COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA, New York City, received $30,000 over two years in support of commissions for New York City and/or Minnesota emerging composers. The American Composers Orchestra is dedicated to the creation, performance, preservation and promulgation of music by American composers. It identifies today's brightest emerging composers and increases awareness of the infinite variety of American orchestral music. It serves as an incubator for ideas, research and talent as well as a catalyst for growth and change. The Emerging Composers Program, the focus of Jerome subsidy, nurtures the development of early-career American composers and enhances performance opportunities and exposure. Within this multifaceted program, commissions are awarded, in addition to fellowships, residencies, professional development services and readings of new work.

A grant of $9,000 was awarded to PANGEA WORLD THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for ANANYA DANCE THEATRE, in support of the creation of new work for a 2006 concert season. Pangea World Theater is committed to international works, styles and traditions that illuminate the human condition, end divisiveness, and celebrate differences. Ananya Dance Theatre, under the direction of choreographer Ananya Chatterjea, is a performing company of women artists of color who create theater and dance to stir thoughts, raise questions and inspire social change. Chatterjea brings together sculptural forms, strong footwork, emotional articulation of the Odissi classical style of dance, yoga, the energy of street theater and issue-based work in social justice and women's lives. Chatterjea is working on a new piece titled Duurbaar: Journeys into horizon, inspired by the relentless striving of women around the world to keep going, to realize a horizon where there is none visible, to create light when all seems dark. Duurbaar means unstoppable in Bengali; it is also the name of an organization created and led by sex workers in Kolkata, India.

ARTISTS SPACE, New York City, received $18,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in the 2005-06 Exhibition Program and the provision of services to artists. Founded in 1972, Artists Space supports contemporary artists working in the visual arts, including video installation, electronic media, architecture and design. Its mission is to encourage experimentation, diversity and dialogue in contemporary arts practice, provide an exhibition space for new art and artists, and foster an appreciation for the role that artists play in their communities. Project spaces, inaugurated in 1998, offer emerging artists their first small-scale solo shows, typically booked no more than six months in advance so that the curators may respond to emerging trends and present new artists. Services include the Irving Sandler Artist File and Survival Skill Workshops, which focus on such practical matters as tax filing, studio visits from the artist's point of view, preparing submissions and portfolios, and hazards and safety in the studio.

In an exception to its geographic policy, but in accordance with the history and circumstances of the Foundation's creation, the Board approved a two-year grant of $15,000 to THE ASPEN INSTITUTE's Nonprofit Sector and Philanthropy Program, Washington, D.C., which is acting as the base for a study under the direction of Christine Vincent. There is a growing number of private foundations being created and endowed by artists, especially visual artists. Vincent proposes to study this expanding sector at a critical moment of development in order to support and strengthen it. The study will measure and profile the sector; examine trends in the formation and focus of artist-endowed foundations; convene foundation leaders to discuss issues influencing artist-endowed foundations; and document sound practices. Outcomes will include a published study with recommendations, a database housed at Princeton University's Cultural Policy and Arts National Data Archive, an online resource directory and annotated bibliography. A dissemination initiative consisting of published articles, papers, conference programs and other strategies will encourage the formation and vitality of artist-endowed foundations. The Jerome Foundation was created and endowed by artist and philanthropist Jerome Hill.

A grant of $12,000 was authorized for BANG ON A CAN, Brooklyn, New York, in support of commissions for three emerging composers, Stefan Weisman, Lukas Ligeti and Joshua Penman. Bang on a Can brings innovative and adventurous music of our time to broad and diverse audiences. It aims to discover emerging composers and ensembles that explore new musical frontiers. In the People's Commissioning Fund, Bang on a Can offers commissions to emerging composers to create music for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, an ensemble of virtuoso musicians whose collaborations with experimental composers push both into new areas. The new works are performed during the People's Commissioning Fund week, which culminates in a concert at Merkin Hall. WNYC/FM produces live broadcasts of the People's Commissioning Fund concerts, including interviews with the composers. Select works become part of the repertoire of the All-Stars, whose performance tours take them to various parts of the world.

MICHELE BATTISTE, a poet residing in Astoria, New York, will explore the city of Budapest, Hungary, and research its post World War II area history, the place and time in Part One of her collection of narrative poems-in-progress titled Uprising. Battiste will conduct research at the Central European University History Department and Library and the Open Society Archives. Battiste will also investigate museums, historical sites and the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.