The Juilliard School’s 2013 summer grants, supporting innovative summer educational and artistic residencies, have been awarded to six student projects that will take place in three U.S. locations as well as in Kenya, Japan, and the West Bank. They are Trade Winds, a woodwind quintet, which will offer free classes, collaborations, and performances for students in Nairobi, Kenya; pianist Benjamin Laude, whose Palestine Piano Project will introduce piano to the already-established Al Kamadjati Association, which runs a Music Days Festival and Summer Camp in the West Bank; violist Fitz Gary and cellist Avery Waites, who will offer two free concerts in churches in Staunton and Charlottesville, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains; cellist Jeon Lee, founder of JCF to Japan, created in response to the 2011 earthquake/tsunami, which will travel to Tohoku, Japan to perform free concerts and offer master classes for local students; dancer Nehemiah Spencer, whose six-day Nehemiah Project in Cleveland, Ohio, will include dance/movement therapy and a fundraising concert for scholarship students at the Cleveland School of the Arts; violist Marcus Pyle, who has created ChamberWorks, a two-week strings-only music camp in Garland, Texas, whose curriculum includes ear-training, choir, composition, improvisation, and an introduction to drama, dance, poetry, writing, and philosophy. The residencies have been part of Juilliard’s outreach program since 1991; students apply each spring through a call for proposals. In June 2012, violinist Caeli Smith wrote about her experience during her residency at a public school in Guatemala, in SymphonyNOW.
Posted May 22, 2013
