On October 1, the MacArthur Foundation announced the recipients of its 2024 Fellows Grants, colloquially called “Genius” grants. Each of the 22 recipients will be given a grant of $800,000, with, as the foundation states, no strings attached. Fellows cannot apply and are only notified after they have been selected. Among this year’s writers, scientists, historians, performing and visual artists, and activists is violinist, composer, and producer Johnny Gandelsman, who champions living composers and reimagines classical scores, often with newly developed technical enhancements. Classically trained, Gandelsman is a founding member of the Silk Road Ensemble and the Brooklyn Rider chamber group, has premiered dozens of new works as a performer, and has released albums by The Knights, the Silkroad Ensemble, Brooklyn Rider, and others on his label, In a Circle Records. The MacArthur Foundation views the grants as investments in people whose “ideas, experiments, and solutions expand our expectations of what’s possible.”
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