InterMusic SF, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the arts in the San Francisco Bay Area through programming and financial support, announced last week the 23 awardees of its 18th annual Musical Grant Program (MGP). Since 2008, InterMusic SF has provided over $1.2 million in funding to support projects designed for small ensembles, spanning multiple genres.
LiederAlive!, a group dedicated to performances of art song, received the grant for Sacred Joy: The Recording, a live concert and recording to take place at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Belvedere on Dec. 20. The performance will feature soprano Esther Rayo and pianist Peter Grünberg.
Also using the MGP to keep an art form alive is bassist Sascha Jacobsen, who will execute his project with the help of his Musical Art Quintet and mezzo-soprano Melinda Martinez Becker. The ensemble plans to produce a recording of Kanta Judezmo, Jacobsen’s 10-movement oratorio with lyrics in Ladino by Bobby Coleman.
Other ensembles’ projects concern the development of new commissions, like the Sierra Ensemble’s future collaboration with David A. Jaffe. Though the premiere and performance dates remain to be set, the composition will be inspired by Brahms’s chamber music and arranged to highlight collaboration between violin, horn, and piano.
Two projects feature jazz sextets: Lisa Mezzacappa’s othrwrldly and the Kasey Knudsen Sextet. Both plan to produce recordings that will draw on traditional and contemporary improvisation techniques and take inspiration from literature, among a myriad of other sources.
Recording its sixth album is Ensemble for These Times, a contemporary music trio. El Tiempo Latine will feature contemporary works by “women, queer, and nonbinary Latine composers” and is slated for release in May 2026.
The complete list of recipients of this year’s MGP can be found here.
