In light of the impact of current world issues on Fort Worth’s musicians today, Fine Line Group, the family office of Sasha and Edward P. Bass, has announced the launch of SOUNDS OF RESILIENCE.
It is the second in a series of competitive grant programs designed to help get Fort Worth’s arts community back to work. This $100,000 initiative challenges area musicians to compose works about resilience to fuel the city’s creative economy and to help drive community healing and positive change.
Led by the Fine Line Group, with support from the Alice L. Walton Foundation, the Tartaglino Richards Family Foundation, and Bass Performance Hall, SOUNDS OF RESILIENCE will provide highly focused financial support to 41 talented musicians whose work brings the Fort Worth community together to reflect on their recent experiences in the world and to begin driving change and healing through music.
Earlier, Fine Line Group set up THE NEW NORMAL: An Artist’s Response to COVID-19, designed to distribute stipends to Fort Worth visual artists in stipends to create a work responding to their own experience living through the COVID-19 pandemic.
The organization also recently announced THE NEW NORMAL Rockport, to support Rockport’s visual artists to create works inspired by their current experiences in the world.
“Music is part of Fort Worth’s soul. By putting this city’s stories into song, artists have the power to help our community process and heal from the unprecedented events we have all watched unfold over the last several months. As our city battles a pandemic and reckons with the legacy of prejudice, SOUNDS OF RESILIENCE delivers not just highly-focused financial support to Fort Worth-area musicians, but also, helps to create an audio record of our town’s unique perspective on all that has occurred, and all that we hope to see in the future,” founders Sasha and Ed Bass said in a news release.
“SOUNDS OF RESILIENCE is built on a model we implemented with ‘The New Normal: An Artist’s Response to COVID-19,’ ” Sasha Bass said in the release.
“Within hours of launching that program, submissions from our city’s most talented artists poured in. The need for a program like this was clear. Visual art is but one segment of our city’s creative economy, there are so many powerful and accessible mediums through which our experiences in history are recorded. We knew music would be next,” she said.
Sasha Bass and Lauren Saba Childs, program administrator and founder of Gallery of Dreams, approached one of Fort Worth’s leading singer/songwriters, Abraham Alexander, to brainstorm how the model could be adapted to help the city’s musicians.
“Moving forward at this unprecedented and challenging time is about so much more than just finding work. It’s about reviving the spirit and soul so we can make music again. This model does both, and that’s what makes it so powerful,” Alexander said in the announcement.
“This program is a lifeline for the musicians of our city. It’s a life vest for the dreams our musicians are fighting to keep afloat in the midst of two life-threatening viruses – one new, and the other – systemic racism – an old and deadly plague,” Alexander said.
Applicants are asked to create and submit a unique live performance video of two original songs, in a format similar to a “Tiny Desk” submission, along with a personal statement about their experience in the pandemic and the role their music will play in drawing people together around the theme of resilience.
The full application is available at www.soundsofresilience.com
There is no fee to apply.
A panel of six of Fort Worth’s music industry leaders will manage the selection process, awarding $2,000 grants to 35 musicians, and $5,000 grants to the top six strongest applicants. Panelists will pair these six musicians together to create and produce an original, and inspired song about resilience, which will be recorded live at Fort Worth landmark, Bass Hall.
SOUNDS OF RESILIENCE is administered by Gallery of Dreams, a Fort Worth nonprofit arts organization established by Lauren Saba Childs of Fort Works Art.
Applications opened July 1 and will close Sunday, Aug. 2, 2020
SELECTION PANEL
Abraham Alexander, musician
T Bone Burnett, musician, songwriter, and producer
Troy Campbell, founder and creative director, The House of Songs
Rosana Eckert, vocalist and principal lecturer, jazz studies at the University of North Texas
Miguel Harth-Bedoya, chief conductor and music director, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra
Amy Miller, program director and host of The Local Show, KXT
– FWBP Staff