National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chairman Jane Chu has approved more than $80 million in grants as part of the NEA’s second major funding announcement for fiscal year 2018.
Included in this announcement is an Art Works grant of $15,000 to Brevard Music Center for its Leonard Bernstein Festival, which is part of the 2018 Summer Music Festival. The Art Works category is the NEA’s largest funding category and supports projects that focus on the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and/or the strengthening of communities through the arts.
“The variety and quality of these projects speaks to the wealth of creativity and diversity in our country,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “Through the work of organizations such as the Brevard Music Center, NEA funding invests in local communities, helping people celebrate the arts wherever they are.”
“We are honored to have the support of the NEA for our upcoming Bernstein Festival,” said Brevard Music Center President & CEO Mark Weinstein. “Their funding not only provides our students with an excellent learning opportunity, but also allows our audiences to enjoy the rich legacy and prodigious accomplishments of a true icon like Leonard Bernstein.”
For its Bernstein Festival, Brevard Music Center joins arts organizations across the nation in saluting the centennial of celebrated composer Leonard Bernstein. One of the most prominent and widely published writers on topics in American music, Joseph Horowitz returns to Brevard to participate in a season-long series of events and free lectures providing rich context around the influential composer’s music, as well as topics related to social justice and Bernstein’s impassioned roles as educator, artist, and humanitarian. BMC’s Bernstein Festival includes a series of classical and Broadway concerts featuring beloved works such as Chichester Psalms, Symphony No. 2 (“Age of Anxiety”), and the Mass (Season Finale), among others. Two fully staged performances of the opera Candide and the movie West Side Story (with live symphony) complete BMC’s rich and varied festival programming.
For more information on projects included in the NEA grant announcement, go to arts.gov.