2021 Alumni Enterprise Award Winners Announced

Music Academy of the West Invests in Alumni Innovation

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.

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 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.

The Alumni Enterprise Awards are generously supported by the Ladera Foundation.

ABOUT THE 2021 AWARD-WINNERS & PROJECTS

Award: $20,000

Camila is principal clarinet of the Orquesta Sinfónica Municipal de São Paulo, a former member of the quintet The City of Tomorrow, the Miami Symphony, and St. Paul Chamber orchestras.

Bruno serves as guest trumpet of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and principal of the Bachiana Philharmonic. He has served as principal trumpet of the Miami Symphony, Queretaro Symphony, and Guanajuato Philharmonic.

Based in Cochabamba, Bolivia and São Paulo, Brazil, they are co-founders and co-artistic directors of La Sociedad Boliviana de Música de Cámara (The Bolivian Chamber Music Society).

Conceived and launched as a direct musical response to the COVID-19 crisis last August, Música para Respirar 24/7 presents live classical music without  geographical limitations by offering personal mini concerts through video-calls, cultivating new audiences around the world. Top international musicians representing major institutions have since performed online concerts – available 24 hours a day, free of cost – for COVID-19 patients, their relatives, health care professionals, seniors, children, and others. The project has already presented 2,157 concerts for 5,538 listeners in 46 countries. In 2021, the winners will present four week-long editions of Música para Respirar 24/7, culminating in a Bolivian in-person tour to connect with their online audiences.

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Award: $15,000

Rich Coburn leads a dual career as a musician and educator. Musically, he works as a pianist, organist, vocal coach, music director, and arranger. He teaches entrepreneurship at McGill University and helps musicians and entrepreneurs across Canada to collaborate, negotiate, and better navigate the sometimes-tricky relationships of their careers and lives.

In 2021, Rich will create a prototype of an online library with orchestrated vocal works by Black, Indigenous, and other Composers of Color, featuring samples of many previously un-recorded works, with the goal to develop the library into a permanent resource for educational and artistic institutions.

Award: $10,000

Cristina has served as the principal tubist of the American Youth Symphony, with the New World Symphony, and as a fellow with the National Repertory Orchestra. She currently holds the position of principal tuba with Symphony in C.

This project will add to the educational narrative the voices of heroes in our musical history, highlighting fourteen trailblazing women in brass. Active between the 1940’s and today, these orchestral brass players are uniquely relevant to today’s aspiring musician – these are artists who have succeeded against all odds. During 2021, The Resilience Project will manifest as a book of biographies, pedagogies, and testimonies with supplemental online resources for education and development.

Award: $20,000

The 2020-21 recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation Developing Artist Grant and District Winner of the 2020 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions was featured in The Globe & Mail for “turning opera on its head and making the future bright for the art form.”

Adanya’s collaborative project as part of her organization Red Light Arts & Culture consists of a series of indoor and outdoor, socially-distanced pop-up concerts (following a range of COVID protocols), in unconventional locations throughout Amsterdam’s Red Light District. The series culminates in a weekend of “walking concerts” in which audience groups rotate between different special location performances during their concert experience and come together at final location. These concerts also create the opportunity for the small business owners and local entrepreneurs of the district to share their stories.

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Award: $20,000

The 2017 winner of the Music Academy’s Marilyn Horne Song Competition is the Artistic Director of LYNX, a nonprofit art song organization that amplifies diverse voices through new song commissions, inclusive performances, and innovative educational programming. She is currently on faculty at Hope College and Lutheran Summer Music Festival. 

LYNX’s initiative Composition of a City addresses the challenges facing youth on Chicago’s South Side by providing students with positive mentorship and a safe musical outlet to share their stories through a curriculum incorporating elements of both hip hop and classical music.

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ABOUT MUSIC ACADEMY OF THE WEST

Founded in 1947, Music Academy of the West offers year-round programming for the local community and talented musicians from around the world. Each year, 140 fellows ages 18-34 are selected by merit-based audition from more than 2,000 applicants worldwide to participate in an eight-week Summer School and Festival to prepare them for 21st-century careers. At the Summer Festival, they receive opportunities for advanced study and frequent orchestral, chamber, recital and masterclass performances under the guidance of more than 70 internationally renowned faculty and guest artists. Each fellow receives a full scholarship for tuition, room and board. In 2018, the Music Academy began a partnership with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) that brings LSO musicians to Santa Barbara to teach and perform, and sends twelve Keston MAX Fellows to London for ten days of training and performance with the orchestra. Career-advancing opportunities for fellows and alumni are offered through the Academy’s Innovation Institute. Summer Innovation Seminars bring together industry leaders and cutting-edge artists to engage fellows and audiences in discussion about the present and future state of classical music, while the annual Fast Pitch Awards give fellows a platform to present their pioneering ideas. The Academy’s Alumni Enterprise Awards have provided $305,000 in grants for forward-thinking projects in artistic expression, audience development, education, community engagement, social justice and technology; recipients of the awards are also invited to attend a five-day Innovation Residential. Academy alumni create entrepreneurial careers in music and beyond and are members of major symphony orchestras, chamber orchestras, ensembles, opera companies, and academic faculties throughout the world. Music Academy of the West also provides music education locally through Sing!, a free, after-school choral initiative for seven-to-twelve-year-olds from 28 schools in Santa Barbara County. The Academy presents more than 150 public events annually in four campus venues and in sites across Santa Barbara and online. For more information, visit musicacademy.org.

photos courtesy of the artists

header collage content: top row: Camila Barrientos Ossio and Bruno Luiz Lourensetto share the power of music with those affected by COVID; as part of Red Light Arts & Culture, Adanya Dunn serenades Amsterdam
bottom row: Cristina Cutts Dougherty profiles leading women in brass; Composition of a City and Christina Giuca Krause educate by connecting hip hop and classical music; Rich Coburn’s Voices Library highlights a range of BIPOC composers 

Released: January 14, 2021

Kate Oberjat
Director of Marketing and Communications
Music Academy of the West
koberjat@musicacademy.org