Announcing the 2024 Jazz & New Music Grantees 

Annabelle Playe (FR)
February 14 – February 28, 2025 | New York, NY  

This project will consist of a series of performances and outreach activities featuring French composer, Annabelle Playe. This program looks to expand the legacy of Women’s Work, a magazine and 20th century touchstone of feminist art-making and New Music, and With Women’s Work, the ISSUE Project Room pandemic-era digital commission series that supported fourteen artists throughout 2021. Central to this goal is the US premiere of Playe’s new composition, “Arrow and Synchronicity,” and the staging of its previous companion piece, “Ad Astra,” which takes inspiration from “Zodiacal Meditation,” a score by Julie Winter published in Women’s Work’s first edition (1975).  

Photo: Annabelle Playe (c) Quentin Chevrier

Jowee Omicil (FR, US); Tiss Rodriguez (FR); Julia Richards (FR); and Val Jeanty (US)
November 1 – December 20, 2024 | New York, NY; Paris, FR  

Altered States will organize two public performances in New York and two in Paris featuring a new ensemble of French and American musicians led by Jowee Omicil focusing on engaging new audiences while demystifying jazz as a genre to make it more approachable in a broader sense. They will premiere a new composition during these performances, showcasing collaboration and cultural exchange, encouraging discussion, discourse, and knowledge sharing and further fostering audience engagement and cultural enrichment. Additionally, they’ll conduct two student workshops, one in New York at BMS and one at Ecole d’Art Musical in Paris, offering students of all ages exposure to world-class musicians and innovative jazz approaches and providing interactive opportunities for students to participate alongside professionals to enhance their musical skills and experiences.    

Photo: Jowee Olicis (c) Benjamin Mahleddine

Raphaël Imbert (FR); Kebbi Williams (US); TJ Merritt (US); CJ Brinson (US); Brandon Stephens (US); Fanny Lasfargues (FR); Blanche La Fuente (FR); and Ngnima Sarr (FR)   
September 9, 2024 – December 31, 2025 |  Atlanta, GA; Marseille, FR

The Music is My Field : From Marseille to Atlanta venture began with the encounter of the Reverence Collective, led by Atlanta saxophonist Kebbi Williams, amidst a backdrop of cultural exploration and artistic collaboration. Reflecting on past explorations and envisioning future encounters, the project aims to celebrate the diversity, inventiveness, and diversity inherent in music. Music is My Field serves as a platform to showcase the vitality of popular art, hospitality, improvisation, and alterity. Through a series of four recorded sessions with emblematic artists representing emerging aesthetics, the project seeks to bridge generations and cultural landscapes. Supported by l’INSEAMM, Marseille Jazz des 5 Continents, and Aide aux Musiques Innovatrices (AMI, Friche la belle de Mai, Marseille) and produced by la Compagnie Nine Spirit, this initiative marks the initial phase of a broader dissemination and production endeavor.   

Photo: Kebbi Williams (c) Steve Eberhardt

Yohan Giaume (FR); Evan Christopher (US); Tristan Liehr (FR); Emmanuel François (FR); and Don Vappie (US)
September 1, 2024 – June 30, 2025 | New Orleans, LA

Inspired by the legacy of the Opera Français de la Nouvelle-Orléans and the historic French Opera House, Yohan Giaume’s original work blends written and improvised elements to highlight forgotten African-American contributions to what is widely considered a European art form. Giaume’s octet, a lyric soprano, a Creole singer, the violin, viola, cello, trumpet, clarinet, trombone and banjo, interweave elements of operatic ensembles with the traditional New Orleans jazz band. The result is a contemporary dialogue among New Orleans’ musical traditions, past and present, which will be explored, rehearsed, and recorded during a New Orleans residency.  

Photo: Yohan Giaume (c) Bruno Pellarin

Flagboy GIZ (US); Moor Mother (US); Shakespeare and the Blues (US); Tonstartssbandht (US); The Smooth Cat (US); I-cube (FR); Ernest Bergez (FR); D.K (FR); and Tanz Mein Herz (FR)
November 30 – December 31, 2024 | New Orleans, LA

Developed and directed by FLEE (FR) and Barry Jean Ancelet (US), “Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler” aims to document the musical phenomena and culture of the French-speaking community of Louisiana throughout history. Contributing to its legacy while interacting with contemporary artists in the fields of musical and visual creation, the project is working towards the development of a book and a record (also digital).

Photo: Moor Mother (c) Marcus Maddox

Pala Garcia (US); John Popham (US); Julia Den Boer (US); and Diane Schuh (FR)
May 1, 2024 – May 16, 2025 | New York, NY     

Sounding Garden comprises of a musical commission, public sound installation, performance, and community engagement project by French composer, sound artist, and landscape architect Diane Schuh in collaboration with NYC-based ensemble Longleash (Pala Garcia, John Popham, and Julia Den Boer). Taking place in spring 2025, the project aims to increase awareness of and connection with the public gardens of NYC through community engagement events (guided soundwalks and field recording exercises), and a culminating sound installation and public performance at the historic Liz Christy Garden on New York City’s Lower East Side. This project will bring the work of French composer Diane Schuh to American audiences for the first time, and explore new forms of music blending sound art, live performance, and environmentally focused community engagement.  

Photo: Longleash Inc. (c) Pascal Perich

Ingrid Laubrock (US); Le Grand Orchestre de Muzzix (FR)
September 1, 2024 – January 31, 2025 | Armentières, FR; Abbeville, FR

After forging a close relationship with Ingrid Laubrock by inviting the experimental saxophonist on several occasions to perform in Lille, the Muzzix collective is commissioning her for a piece for its big orchestra: the Grand Orchestre de Muzzix (GOM). The composer spent a few days in 2023 working with a subset of the GOM, to better know one another and to understand each other’s work and influences. From this working session emerged the desire to compose a modular piece that features several compositional techniques: pieces with traditional musical notation; conduction with signs developed especially for the group; and word scores. These elements will intertwine within a constantly evolving fabric enriched by group improvisation. Ingrid Laubrock is the composer, conductor, and musical director of the orchestra. The piece will reflect the interests of the experimental composer, exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multi-layered, dense, and often evocative sound worlds. 

Photo: Ingrid Laubrock (c) Caroline Mardok

Alune Wade (FR); Harry Ahonlonsou (FR); Camille Passeri (FR); Carl-Henri Morisset (FR); Dédric Duchemann (FR); Alix Goffic (FR); Robert Sput Seawright (US); Weedie Braimah (US); Victor Campbell (US); Glenn Hall (US); Ashlin Parker (US); Erion Williams (US); Big Ed Edward Lee (US); Big Paul (US); Made Kuti (NIG); Michael Oloyede (NIG); Nicholas Payton (US); Herlin Riley (US); Pedrito Martinez (US); Marcus Miller (US); Jenard Andrews (US); and Somi (US)
September 15 – October 31, 2024 | Lagos, NIG; Paris, FR; and New Orleans, LA    

In his sixth album, “New African Orleans,” which will be released by ENJA in 2025, bass guitarist and composer Alune Wade explores the multiple connections between his native West African rhythms, the Afrobeat from Lagos, and the brass band repertoire immortalized in New Orleans. A dozen tracks, both original and standards, will be recorded in Lagos, Dakar, Paris, and New Orleans. Original compositions will explore the New Orleans sound, with its brass front line of trumpet, clarinet and trombone aligning itself with syncopated rhythms and a strong backbeat. They are a powerful tribute to the resilience and impact of songs rooted in Africa which survived the horrors of the Middle Passage and gave birth to some of the most important music our societies know.  

Photo: Alune Wade (c) Wlad Simitch

Floy Krouchi (FR); James Brandon Lewis (US)
January 20 – April 30, 2025 | New Orleans, LA    

In their collaboration, Floy Krouchi and James Brandon Lewis will explore both their practices and dive into the principles of DNA and biology—selection, repetition, mutation, determinism, and chance—to conceive, write, and play a unique composition. This piece will feature the unprecedented duo of FKBass and Tenor Saxophone, exploring the frontiers between electroacoustic music and Jazz/free Jazz, researching new processes and aesthetics. “FKBass meets Molecular Systematic Music” will be composed of seven to nine movements. After a process of conversations and preparation, Floy Krouchi and James Brandon Lewis will meet and record in New Orleans, in the studio of producer Mark Bingham.  

Photo: FKBASS (c) Ann-Son Bas & Chase Hall

Emily Yabe (FR); Lola Malique (FR); Emiliano Gavito (FR); Adam Starkie (FR); Christian Lozano Sedano (FR); and Bethany Younge (US)
March 3 – March 10, 2025 | Strasbourg, FR  

Emerging composer Bethany Younge (US) and Collective Lovemusic (FR) propose a collaborative musical/physical performance project, “Written on the Body”. This marks Bethany’s inaugural project in France and with a French ensemble. Inspired by LGBTQ+ author Jeanette Winterson’s eponymous book, “Written on the Body” will explore love as our most significant achievement, unveiling the hidden codes we carry on our bodies. Interweaving music, text, and physical gestures, this hybrid work addresses questions of identity and acceptance. During a week-long residency at La Fabrique du Théâtre in Strasbourg, they will workshop this 25-minute piece, culminating in a “work in progress” presentation in the Salle des Colonnes at the same venue. This will offer the French public an opportunity to engage with Younge and discuss the themes of the work and the creative process. Following the residency, there will be a period of revision and translating the work to written form before premiering the piece in 2026.

Photo: Lovemusic (c) Gregory Massat

Frank Woeste (FR); Vincent Courtois (FR); Ryan Keberle (US)
February 6 – February 13, 2025 | New York, NY; Durham, NC; Charlottesville, VA; Newburgh, IN; and Denver, CO    

French-American chamber jazz ensemble, Reverso, will set off to tour North America in February 2025. Reverso, along with the presenting organizations, are eager to explore ways in which to bridge the unfortunate and expansive divide that exists between jazz and classical audiences in the American performing arts world. Featuring the Paris-based composer and pianist Frank Woeste, French cellist and improvisor Vincent Courtois, and American trombonist and composer Ryan Keberle, Reverso will perform original music from their five studio albums, composed by all three members of the band, and inspired by the seminal French female composers Germaine Tailleferre and Lili Boulanger.  

Photo: Reverso (c) Maxime de Bollivier