Big kudos today for one of LA finest contemporary music endeavors! Hear Now Music Festival, an annual weekend of concerts featuring wonders of innovation and top-notch performers from SoCal and beyond. This year’s festival was their biggest yet, and there is clearly much to look forward to, with this infusion of cash from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Hear Now is also supported by the Colburn Foundation, The Berklee College of Music, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Consulate-General of Austria in Los Angeles, and individual contributions. Click here to join the party and make a donation of your own.
Read more about the grant in the press release below.
[Press release]
Hear Now Music Festival Receives $10,000 Grant from the NEA’s Arts Works Award
LOS ANGELES—National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Jane Chu has approved more than $82 million to fund local arts projects and partnerships in the NEA’s second major funding announcement for fiscal year 2016. Included in this announcement is an Art Works award of $10,000 to HEAR NOW MUSIC FESTIVAL to repeat concerts of the Hear Now Music Festival in other locations in Los Angeles. The Art Works category supports the creation of work and presentation of both new and existing work, lifelong learning in the arts, and public engagement with the arts through 13 arts disciplines or fields.
“The arts are all around us, enhancing our lives in ways both subtle and obvious, expected and unexpected,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “Supporting projects like the one from HEAR NOW MUSIC FESTIVAL offers more opportunities to engage in the arts every day.”
“Our whole purpose in creating the Hear Now Festival of Los Angeles composers is to have their works performed with the highest professional standards and heard by as many people here as possible,” notes Artistic Director Hugh Levick. “The NEA grant opens this door to us, and we are inviting you all in.”
Levick continues, “We plan to work with the area’s colleges and universities to bring Hear Now composers for brief 3-day residencies to work with students, and to repeat the festival concerts in these locations for the students and residents of the surrounding neighborhoods. We, as composers and performers, have been inspired by this incredibly rich, dynamic, honest and exciting music. We want to share the voyage of exploration and discovery, and if you don’t have to drive an hour and a half to get there, those interested are more likely to buy a ticket for the trip. HEAR NOW sincerely thanks the NEA for this opportunity.”
The HEAR NOW Festival of New Music by Contemporary Los Angeles Composers began in 2011 with two chamber music concerts and has expanded to include electroacoustic and orchestra concerts. HEAR NOW is dedicated to providing an ever-broadening spotlight on the musical imagination of composers based in the Los Angeles area, and the results from the last five festivals are 90 new and recent works by 80 individual composers, both well-known and less well-known.
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Hugh Levick, Artistic Director
Gernot Wolfgang, Associate Director
Heidi Lesemann, General Manager
