CMW receives MAP Fund Award

Community MusicWorks has received funding from a nationally competitive performance fund, the MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital primarily supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, with additional support by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project, one of 39 chosen from over 900 submissions, will support a production in the late fall or winter.

Community MusicWorks is commissioning composer Ken Ueno to create a site-specific work for the Community MusicWorks Players at the RISD Museum in Providence to coincide with the re-dedication of the ten-foot Dainichi Buddha housed there. Encompassing three live performances by Ueno and Community MusicWorks Players and a month-long sound installation in the museum, the project will engage diverse urban communities in contemporary music and ancient Asian art.

Entitled Four Contemplations, the work takes as its subject the RISD Museum's ancient Dainichi Buddha, and is intended for listeners to gain a new and personal relationship to concert music through their experience with the Buddha and Ueno’s ethereal music. Ueno's compositional approach frequently involves extra-musical modeling, including using images, cultural phenomena, or architecture as the basis for structural decisions, somewhat analogous to the use of architectural proportions in Renaissance music. For this project, Ueno will draw upon the foundations of mindfulness in Buddhist theology. The evening-length work for 12 CMW musicians will unfold in multiple movements – solos, duos, trios, and quartets – some accompanied by throat singer (Ueno).

Read more about the MAP Fund grant here.