2020 WiNTER GrAntees

Music Grantee - Remy Le Boeuf

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation has awarded a 2020 Winter Music Production Grant to Remy to complete work on his “Architecture of Storms” project. The project features Remy’s 20-member jazz orchestra, Remy Le Boeuf’s Assemby of Shadows. The ensemble’s first self-titled album, was praised by The New York Times for its “overwhelming beauty” and its “ace ensemble.” “Secondhand Smile” will be released on SoundSpore Records on October 2nd, 2020.

Music Grantee - Carolina Mama

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation has awarded a 2020 Winter Music Production Grant to Carolina to complete work on “Amina”, a powerful visual and sonic experience expressed through the struggle and celebration of womanhood. Carolina’s project combines solid folkloric/jazz and cinematography creating different scenes and moods throughout the compositions, connecting them as they were scenes on a film.  Advocating strong social involvement, “Amina’s” journey finds its roots in both Latin American and North African folklore with the intention of bringing to light the old and the new meaning of what it is to be born a woman.

Visual Grantee - Jemila MacEwan

A Café Royal Cultural Foundation 2020 Winter Visual Grant has been awarded to Jemila to help with the future installation of her project “Dead Gods”. “Dead Gods” is a living monument that honors the prehistoric mushrooms that are the origin of life on earth as sacred ancestral deities. Jemila draws connections between people and place; material and culture; spirituality and experience. Jemila is known for her intimately interwoven earthworks, sculptures and performances that build mythological narratives around meteorites, volcanoes, fault-lines and melting glaciers. Jemila will be growing the “Dead Gods” this summer at Sculpture Space residency. The work will be on view at Governors’ Island this coming September to October.

Performance Grantee - Robert McCaskill and Alex Lyras

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation awarded a 2020 Winter Performance Grant to Robert McCaskill and Alex Lyras to help them realize their production of “Plasticity”. In this multimedia production, a comatose man on his way to recovery recreates his identity by delving deeply into his memories, while a circle of family members and loved ones form scheming camps over grave neurological decisions. A profound, often comedic tour of the collective unconscious is coupled with the latest neuroscience in a compelling exploration of how the brain heals itself, and ultimately creates the mind.

Performance Grantee - Ivan Talijancic

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation has awarded a 2020 Winter Performance Grant to Ivan Talijancic and WaxFactory to help them realize their production of “Democracy Project”. In the midst of a deeply divisive political climate and highly polarized reporting in the mass media, this brand-new multidisciplinary ensemble piece investigates these topical issues through the lens of drama from Ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy. Inspired by Sophocles' Women of Trachis and directed by Ivan Taljancic, the newly devised play will have public and free performances in 2021.

Literature Grantee - H’Rina DeTroy

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation has awarded a 2020 Winter Literature Grant to H’Rina DeTroy to help continue her project “The Vengeance of Elephants”. The creative nonfiction project blends personal narrative with critical analysis and historical inquiry along with seeking to answer: how we make our lives out of stories and imagination. At the heart of “The Vengeance of Elephants” is a complex mother and daughter relationship that centers questions on race, gender, and inherited legacies of war and displacement.