“Composer Gabriela Lena Frank has organized a combination fundraiser, commissioning project and musical matchmaking effort” to help composers and musicians during the coronavirus pandemic, writes Joshua Kosman in Thursday’s (4/30) San Francisco Chronicle. Frank has “a Rolodex full of young, gifted composers [who have] come through the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, a training residency for young artists that Frank and her husband have run for three years…. Frank’s GigThruCOVID … pairs off 65 composers with solo performers to create a series of short works, typically just one to three minutes long, that are suitable for performance on video…. The video premieres are scheduled to begin on May 14, and roll out weekly…. Funding for the project began with $15,000 that Frank contributed from a composition prize she had been awarded by the University of Texas at Austin. A GoFundMe campaign is under way to increase the pool to $35,000. [Composer] Anthony Cheung, who … is writing a piece for Los Angeles violinist Kate Outterbridge, said the requirement to work at top speed was a salutary change of pace. ‘What Gabriela told us all was … It’s meant for quick turnaround, in a spirit of collaboration.’ ”
Change font size
