2025 General Support Grant Recipients

Boulanger Initiative

Project: Beyond the Box ($2,000)

Beyond the Box builds directly on Boulanger Initiative’s research foundation, producing publications designed for music educators (grades eight and up) through lifelong learners eager to explore the lives and historical contexts of women composers. To date, Boulanger Initiative has released two modules: Baroque-Era Women Composers (2024) and Women Composers Throughout History: Orchestra Edition (2025), with a third module on Women Composers of La Belle Époque anticipated to be released in 2026.

Castle of our Skins

Project: Castle of our Skins 2025–2026 Concert Series ($2,000)

By the end of the 2025–2026 concert season, Castle of our Skins will have produced more than 25 events ranging in scope from collaborations with partnering organizations to large-scale self-produced programs of more than 300 audience members. In response to the upcoming sesquicentennial anniversary of the United States of America’s Declaration of Independence, Castle of our Skins is shaping its 2025–2026 programming around the theme of “Black Declaration of Independence.” Over the course of the year, Castle of our Skins will turn to historical moments, figures, movements, and concepts that exemplify Black independence.

Charlotte Strings Collective

Project: Chamber Music Recording of String Music by Black Composers ($2,000)

Charlotte Strings Collective is currently recording a complete album of string chamber works by Black composers for PARMA Records. Charlotte Strings Collective plans to record, edit and master two additional works: a newly commissioned string quartet by up-and-coming local composer Madison Bush and a soprano-cello duet, Loisaida My Love, by established living composer Jessie Montgomery. This goal of this recording project is to highlight and promote music by Black composers, and one Black poet, that are not already professionally recorded.

International Clarinet Association

Project: International Clarinet Association Instrument Donation Program ($2,000)

The International Clarinet Asosciation’s instrument donation program has received over 100 instruments ranging from student models to professional-level instruments. The ICA Instrument Donation Program connects these repaired instruments with students and young professionals in need around the world. ICA works with teachers, school districts, and individual players to identify young clarinetists with financial need who are in need of their first instrument, or a step-up instrument to continue the next step of their clarinet journey.

University of North Texas Division of Music History, Theory and Ethnomusicology

Project: Guest Speaker Fund for University of North Texas Division of Music History, Theory and Ethnomusicology ($1,950)

The University of North Texas Division of Music History, Theory and Ethnomusicology will bring in a mix of scholars, musicians, and other music industry professionals to collectively work with 500–1,000 individual students. These experiences will be spread across a variety of formats, from large-enrollment general education courses to smaller seminars and professional development classes. As experts in their respective fields, guest speakers will help students connect more deeply with the course material and learn about various professional careers.

Wesleyan University Press

Project: Open Access edition of Communities of Sound Religion, Displacement, and Caste in the Bay of Bengal by Carola E. Lorea ($1,500)

Communities of Sound Religion, Displacement, and Caste in the Bay of Bengal brings together insights from religion, anthropology, sound, and migration studies to explore the sonic traces of untouchability and forced migration across the Bay of Bengal. Based on an immersive, multi-sited ethnography with Matua devotees—a low-caste, Bengali-speaking Dalit religious community fragmented by Partition, war, and postcolonial displacement—the book explores how sound sustains identity across fractured geographies. The book is generously illustrated and references an online companion with video and audio examples.

Wild Muse Arts

Project: Wild Muse Arts 2026 Season ($1,700)

Wild Muse Arts presents chamber concerts that explore the relationship between music and the environment.  The 2026 Wild Muse Arts concert season (May–October), titled “Seed | Bloom | Flight,” marks the organization’s first full season of programming following a successful pilot concert in 2025. The three-concert series is inspired by a cycle of growth and transformation. Additionally, a collaboration with Statement Arts’ StART Access Program will provide free student tickets to the series, and Faraway Farm will also offer guided farm tours before each concert to help further connect musical themes with the site’s environmental mission.