2020 SPRing GrAntees
Brazilian Girls - Musicians
Music Grantee - Brazilian Girls
The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2020 Spring Music Production Grant to Brazilian Girls.
Brazilian Girls return to the world stage recording their 5th studio album. Unlike previous albums, the band is now embarking on a new format with multiple vocalists and instrumental tracks. Collaborating in multi genre-bending, futuristic time traveling methods, crossing all social and cultural barriers. From the roots of New York’s dance underground and beyond, Didi Gutman, Aaron Johnston, and Jesse Murphy bring an incredible breath of fresh air to the world of sound and rhythm.
Brooklyn Raga Massive - Musicians
Music Grantee - Brooklyn Raga Massive
The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2020 Spring Music Production Grant to Brooklyn Raga Massive, a prolific artist collective for their project In “D”
In “D” was co-composed by Neel Murgai and David Ellenbogen, the Artistic Directors of Brooklyn Raga Massive. Neel Murgai is a sitarist, overtone singer, percussionist, composer and teacher. Neel's music ranges from Indian classical to original compositions and contemporary cross-cultural collaborations with influences spanning the globe. Hailed as “Leaders of the Raga Renaissance” by the New Yorker and praised by the New York Times for “Preserving the past while blurring genres in an inventive spirit,” BRM presents over 70 concerts annually.
Julia Forrest - Artist
Visual Grantee - Julia Forrest
The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2020 Spring Visual Grant to Julia Forrest to continue her photography series "Illusion”. She poses nymph-like women in the landscape. By using mirrors, reflections, and forced perspective, Julia creates an illusion in front of the lens. Although they misleadingly appear docile, it is obvious they possess a mysterious power to move the landscape at will. They change shape and scale, picking up parts of the landscape or completely transforming it.
Sook Jin Jo - Artist
Visual Grantee - Sook Jin Jo
The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2020 Spring Visual Grant to Sook Jin Jo for her upcoming exhibition at the Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College in Old Westbury, New York which will include some important wooden works along with her large-scale photo installation entitled “Seoul Cross” (two editions of which are in the collections of two museums in Korea). Also, it will include her photographs of disappearing buildings -- abandoned warehouses, factories, hospitals and homes -- that were taken over the last 20 years in a number of countries, but which have not been exhibited anywhere. The relationship between her photo and her wooden works would create a great deal of interesting and inspiring conversation.
Kinetic Light - Artist
Image Description: A grid of four square headshots, all featuring the artists of Kinetic Light. Clockwise, from top right: Laurel Lawson, a white woman with short blonde hair and blue eyes, gazes away from the camera with a wry smile highlighted by crimson lipstick. Jerron Herman, a Black man with a beard and black hightop hair, looks directly into the camera; he wears a blue shirt with very tiny stripes and holds his palsied hand in front of his chest. Alice Sheppard, a light-skinned multiracial Black woman with short very curly brown, red, and golden hair, looks over her shoulder and stares into the camera intensely. Michael Maag, a white man with a large white beard and flowing white/blonde hair, smiles at the camera; he wears thin framed glasses. Headshots by Robert Kim, Dan Kim, and Beverlie Lorde.
Performance Grantee - Kinetic Light
A Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation NYC 2020 Spring Performance Grant has been awarded to Kinetic Light for the upcoming performance of “Wired”, an immersive aerial dance experience of sound, light, and movement that meditates on the gender, race, and disability stories of barbed wire. Dancers spin, bounce, and fly, shattering the norms at the center of dance, design, and disability. The work features dancers Alice Sheppard, Laurel Lawson, and Jerron Herman, the work of lighting designer Michael Maag, and music by composers Ailís Ní Ríain and LeahAnn Mitchell.
Talea Ensemble - Artist
Performance Grantee - Talea Ensemble
The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2020 Spring Performance Grant to Talea Ensemble for their world premiere production of “November Airs” in December 2021.
November Air is a multimedia ensemble work by Wang Lu that celebrates the age-old art of storytelling, transforming folklore through music and drawing on the imagination as a source of inspiration. Written for the Talea Ensemble, the work reflects the composer’s vivid memories of characters encountered in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, a classic Qing Dynasty literary anthology of hundreds of supernatural stories.
Colter Jackson - Author
Literature Grantee - Colter Jackson
The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2020 Spring Literature Grant to Colter Jackson, a writer and illustrator living in New York City. Her work is focused in complicated family relationships and the human capacity to forgive and to love broken things. She will be continuing her project called “Mother”.
Diane Mehta - Author
Literature Grantee - Diane Mehta
The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2020 Spring Literature Grant to Diane Mehta to help continue her work on her essay collection, a systematic and shapely book of old-fashioned probing. The unifying theme is Diane Mehta.