Half a dozen jazz musicians and a jazz biographer have been honored in the past two weeks with fellowships carrying significant financial gifts. Don Byron, Bill Frisell, John Hollenbeck. Vijay Iyer and Nicole Mitchell have been named to the first class of Doris Duke Charitable Foundation artists, while drummer-composer Bobby Previte and Terry Teachout, biographer of Louis Armstrong currently working on a life of
Duke Ellington (as well as writing for the Wall Street Journal, among other periodicals, and blogging) have been named as fellows by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.
The Doris Duke artists — among 21 in a first class of three to be named annually — receive unrestricted multi-year grants totaling $225,000 each, and up to a further $50,000 for retirement funding and audience development, as well as career advancement consultations from Creative Capitol. A DDCF sub-initiative applies to multi-disciplinary work done in colleaboration with non-profit arts organizations.
Guggenheim fellowships are also given for unrestricted purposes; however, the size of financial rewards varies with consideration (according to Wikipedia) of need, “the fellow’s other resources and the purpose and scope of their plans.” Other 2012 Guggenheim fellows pursuing jazz-related activities include James Kaplan, writing a biography of Frank Sinatra; Carol J. Oja, William Powell Mason Professor of Music, Harvard University, writing on racial desegregation, Broadway musicals and progressive politics in the 1940s, and Gayle Wald, Professor and Chair, Department of English, George Washington University , writing “It’s Been Beautiful”: Soul! and Black-Power Television.
The Doris Duke Artists are conferred honors which cannot be applied for. The Guggenheim Fellowships are open to applications; specific information about the application process for 2013 felloships will be posted at the Guggenheim website http://www.gf.org in July 2012.
