Tag: Grants and Funding

Instrument Repair Shop for LA Public School Students Gets $1 Million Gift, Plus a Visit from Yo-Yo Ma

In Monday’s (4/7) Los Angeles Times, Catherine Womack writes, “In a downtown Los Angeles warehouse Sunday night … an unlikely quartet performed … At the piano, Amanda Nova, a Fairfax High School graduate and freshman at the USC Thornton School of Music. On alto sax, Theodore Roosevelt Senior High School student Ismerai Calcaneo. On violin, Palms Middle School seventh-grader Porche Brinker. And on cello, the most senior member of the group: Yo-Yo Ma. All four performers played on instruments owned and maintained by the Los Angeles Unified School District…. The ensemble came together at a fundraiser at the facility where about a dozen LAUSD employees maintain and repair the school district’s 130,000 instruments. The repair shop, its staff and the students who played with Yo-Yo Ma on Sunday were featured in the documentary short ‘The Last Repair Shop.’… The film won an Academy Award for documentary short last year…. The film’s creators saw the shop’s financial needs and launched a capital campaign … said [co-director Ben] Proudfoot … Sunday’s event … celebrated a $1-million donation from the Chuck Lorre Family Foundation, founded by the veteran TV producer … Proudfoot said 82% of LAUSD’s more than 440,000 students live below the poverty line. ‘For a family to pay $25 a month to rent a violin or take responsibility for a $2,000 tuba, it’s not going to happen for most students … We are doing whatever we can to protect this shop and to rally the community … so that L.A. can keep this beautiful, wonderful thing.’ ”

NEH Cuts American Musicological Society Grants

In Friday’s (4/4) Classic 107 (Winnipeg, Canada), Chris Wolf writes, “The American Musicological Society (AMS) is confronting a significant financial challenge following the abrupt termination of all four of its active grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), effective April 1, 2025. These grants, totaling over $363,000, were essential for AMS programs such as ‘Many Musics of America,’ ‘Music of the United States of America (MUSA),’ ‘Musics of the United States: Telling Our Stories,’ and ‘Music Means: A Digital Platform for Exploring Music and Meaning in America.’​ This development coincides with broader governmental restructuring efforts led by Elon Musk, who has been serving as a special government employee heading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) … and has involved sweeping cuts across various federal agencies, including significant reductions in grants and staff within the NEH…. The termination of AMS’s grants has sparked concern among cultural and educational organizations…. AMS Executive Director Siovahn Walker has called for collective action to oppose the funding cuts and seek alternative funding sources. She emphasizes the societal importance of AMS’s programs in preserving and promoting America’s musical heritage…. The society has approximately 3,000 individual members spread across fifteen regional chapters in the United States, Canada, and other locations.”