Grants announced for Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts

Work by national, regional artists as well as Brandeis community

More than 100 students and staff will participate in visual art, music, theater, and multidisciplinary projects at Brandeis this year during the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts, April 28-May 1. The Festival, founded in 1952 by composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, blooms each spring on campus with a celebration of creativity and community with work by national and regional artists as well as Brandeis faculty and students.

Each year the Office of the Arts awards grants to Brandeis undergraduates, graduate students and staff to produce innovative and artistic work that offers opportunities to create, participate and learn about the arts. The grants jury evaluates applications on the quality and innovation of the project, and the potential for broad involvement of the Brandeis community during the festival.

“Reading these grant applications gives us a glimpse of the creative potential of this campus,” says Ingrid Schorr, festival producer and program administrator for the Office of the Arts. “The individuals who sent in proposals are thinking about big ideas in new ways, and their desire to bring their work to the larger community is what makes the festival so compelling.”

The a cappella club Too Cheap For Instruments hopes to establish a festival tradition with its second annual Folk Stage. Last year the group used its grant to bring in professional folk singers including rising star Sarah Jarosz, and persuaded Livingston Taylor to host the concert. Among the grant recipients is staff member Jon Koppel, who will build a gas-powered furnace and demonstrate bronze casting.

"My goal is to bring the 5,000-year-old process of bronze casting to the community,” says Koppel.

Maayan Bar-Yam ’11, will build a Performance Cube, which was inspired by Antony Gormley's “One and Other.” Bar-Yam’s cube will serve as a stage on which all will be invited to perform.

"This piece is about the Brandeis community being the art, and about showing what the community really is, in microcosm," says Bar-Yam.

This year’s visual arts grant recipients include:

• Maayan Bar-Yam '11, $370 for Performance Cube, outdoor sculpture/stage
• Sarah Biber (GRAD), $210 for untitled paper project    
• Rachel Gelenius (GRAD), $420 for Body Casts project 
• Audra Grady (staff), $400 for Aum: Interculturalism, Art + Peace    
• Matthew Grogan (GRAD), $495 for Communications Portal, outdoor interactive sculpture
• Jon Koppel (staff), $500 to build and demonstrate a bronze furnace
• Emily Leifer '11, $100 for Memory Map and book projects
• Max Price '11, $400 to complete Sweet Escape, a multi-genre film
• Nichole Speciale (GRAD), $230 for Reality Drawing 3-D project

Performance Projects:

• Too Cheap for Instruments, $600 to produce the second annual Folk Stage
• B'Yachad, $100 to support performance of "Suite for Musika Rox"
• Renana Gal '12, $200 to support performance of "In the Name Of," an original play
• Jake Weiner '13, $200 to support Music Not Bombs event