The Jacobs School of Music has received a grant of $400,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities Music Unwound consortium.
According to a press release by Linda Cajigas, assistant director of communications at Jacobs, the Music Unwound consortium was founded in 2010 by American music scholar Joseph Horowitz.
The intent of the consortium was to promote humanities-based public teaching on topics in American classical music.
Through the funding and in collaboration with various IU partners, the Jacobs School of Music will present two music festivals — “The Souls of Black Folk” and “Charles Ives’ America” — in the 2023-2024 musical season.
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“The Souls of Black Folk” will focus on the continued efforts to bring attention to a history of Black classical music, like William Levi Dawson’s composition, “Negro Folk Symphony,” which will be conducted by Jacobs professor of music, Arthur Fagen.
The festival is striving to recontextualize old works within the greater American musical and historical narrative to ensure all generations can appreciate and celebrate the pieces.
“Charles Ives’ America” is scheduled for the 2024-25 musical season as a continued part of the 2024 Ives Sesquicentenary — the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the modernist composer.
The festival will aim to place Ives in a new historical framework to argue that his legacy should be more widely known and celebrated in the American cultural pantheon.
