Cedille Records To Receive $20,000 Grant From National Endowment For The Arts

Cedille Records has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for a Grants for Arts Projects award of $20,000. This grant will support the album Black Being, the latest co-composed work by acclaimed flute duo Flutronix (Nathalie Joachim and Allison Loggins-Hull) performed with the Chicago Sinfonietta. 

 

James Ginsburg, president of Cedille Records said, “It's an incredible honor to receive support from the NEA for this recording. Nathalie and Allison's Black Being project is an ideal representation of Cedille's dedication to bringing out new and underrepresented classical repertoire, as part of its mission to spotlight and preserve the extraordinary artistry found in Chicago's classical music scene. This grant not only enables us to support outstanding Chicago talent, but also reinforces our commitment to produce, release, and promote compelling projects that embody great artistic integrity. We are grateful to the NEA for helping us to record such meaningful and transformative music."

 

Flutronix's concert premiere of Black Being was praised by the Chicago Tribune as “the most stunning live performance” and listed among Chicago's Top 10 Classical Music shows of 2021. Flutronix and the Chicago Sinfonietta will record the album during the 2024–2025 season; the album is set to be released in 2025. 



Black Being explores the black female experience in an evening-length music performance. This immersive electro-acoustic performance is set to a newly commissioned text by North Carolina poet laureate Jaki Shelton Green. Through themes of strength, sacrifice, beauty, fear, and survival, Black Being gives voice to the complexities of Black womanhood and provides a musical lens into black female cultural realities and conditions.

 

Cedille Records will record, release, and promote Black Being, highlighting Cedille's mission to assist performers as they further their respective artistic visions and goals. Recordings are a vital tool in the advancement of artists' careers that often lead to performance opportunities and commissions. Yet the high cost of orchestral recordings is often prohibitive. As is the case with all Cedille recordings, the label bears production, distribution, and promotion expenses, funded by donations and grants, as a service to the artists and in fulfillment of the company's nonprofit mission. Here, with the assistance of this NEA grant, Cedille gives Flutronix the freedom to focus solely on the music and the story they want to share with audiences beyond the concert hall.

 

In total, the NEA will award 958 Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling more than $27.1 million that were announced as part of its first round of fiscal year 2024 grants.

 

Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD, the Arts Chair for the National Endowment for the Arts said, “The NEA is delighted to announce this grant to Cedille Records, which is helping contribute to the strength and well-being of the arts sector and local community. We are pleased to be able to support this community and help create an environment where all people have the opportunity to live artful lives.”  

 

For more information on other projects included in the NEA's grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

 

Flutronix is Nathalie Joachim (formerly of Chicago-based Eighth Blackbird) and Allison Loggins-Hull, two distinguished performers and composers who are paving the way from their classical roots to the future of music. Founded in Brooklyn, NY, in 2007, the duo have evolved as influential creators and socially conscious changemakers. Their current large-scale projects rooted in this space include Discourse, an evening-length community-centered performance activism initiative, and Black Being, an immersive electro-acoustic song-cycle examining the complexities of black womanhood, featuring newly commissioned text by North Carolina poet laureate Jaki Shelton Green.  In addition to their collaborative creations, the duo support each other regularly on individual projects, and as producers on recorded work, including Joachim's GRAMMY-nominated Fanm d'Ayiti. Flutronix independently publishes their extensive catalog of chamber works, and are dedicated educators who have held appointments at Montclair State University, Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, University of Hartford, The Perlman Music Program and more. Joachim currently serves as Assistant Professor of Composition at Princeton University, and Loggins-Hull is The Cleveland Orchestra's Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow.

 

Founded in 1987, the Chicago Sinfonietta has been a defiantly different kind of orchestra. The Chicago Sinfonietta is a professional orchestra dedicated to modeling and promoting diversity, inclusion, and both racial and cultural equity in the arts through the universal language of symphonic music. Known for daring and innovative concerts, its performances comprise the classical canon, diverse and often overlooked historical voices, and a variety of contemporary influences. Beyond the concert hall, the Chicago Sinfonietta supports future generations by offering outreach and music education in schools throughout Chicagoland, and through its signature mentoring program, the prestigious Freeman Fellowship program.

ABOUT CEDILLE RECORDS

 

Launched in November 1989 by James Ginsburg, Grammy Award-winning Cedille Records (pronounced say-DEE) is dedicated to showcasing and promoting the most noteworthy classical artists in and from the Chicago area. A nonprofit record label, Cedille's mission is to produce and disseminate audiophile recordings presenting the finest classical music performers and composers in and from Chicago. The recordings further the careers and legacies of these Chicago artists as Cedille invests in not only the recordings but in the artists represented on them. The label's catalog of more than 200 front-line albums brims with attractive, off-the-beaten-path repertoire from the Baroque era to the present day, including world premieres of more than 400 classical compositions. Works from the classical canon, when they do appear, are usually heard in particularly imaginative pairings. Cedille never removes albums from its catalog and each recording is a permanent documentation of the artist's work. With more than 180 Chicago artists and ensembles, over 80 making their professional recording debuts on the label, Cedille brings the area's most significant classical music artists to a worldwide listening public. Cedille recordings are available on CD, as MP3 and hi-resolution FLAC downloads, and on all major streaming platforms.

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