ASCAP Composers Courtney Bryan & Raven Chacon Receive MacArthur “Genius Grants”
October 5, 2023
Can you say GENIUS? We are so proud to congratulate Courtney Bryan and Raven Chacon on being named as 2023 MacArthur Fellows.
The MacArthur Fellowship is a $800,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows:
- Exceptional creativity
- Promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments
- Potential for the Fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.
Courney Bryan is a composer and pianist who melds elements of jazz, classical, and sacred music in works that reverberate with social and political issues of our time. Bryan bridges gaps between often disparate musical worlds. She layers styles from African-American traditions, such as gospel, soul, and spirituals, onto postmodern classical concert works, and there is a subtle improvisational impulse to her compositions. Many of Bryan’s compositions reverberate with pressing social and political issues of our time.
+ Read more about Courtney’s work here
Raven Chacon is a composer and artist creating musical experiences that explore relationships among sound, space and people. In an experimental practice that cuts across the boundaries of visual art, performance and music, Chacon breaks open musical traditions and activates spaces of performance where the histories of the lands the United States has encroached upon can be contemplated, questioned and reimagined.
+ Read more about Raven’s work here
+ Check out our interview with Raven Chacon on the heels of his 2022 Pulitzer Prize win
Once again, congratulations to our prestigious MacArthur Fellows. You can learn more about the MacArthur Foundation and all of the 2023 fellows at www.macfound.org/programs/fellows/.