2022 Winter GrAntees

Literature Grantee - Antoinette Cooper

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2022 Winter Literature Grant to Antoinette Cooper for her upcoming book UNRULY.

Antoinette Cooper (we/us) is a writer, rainmaker, TEDx speaker, and founder of Black Exhale, a space for the liberated Black body. She’s committed to healing collective trauma through the arts, ancestral healing, and medical humanities.

Literature Grantee - Sangamithra Iyer

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2022 Winter Literature Grant to Sangamithra Iyer for her first book, Governing Bodies: A Catena.

Sangamithra Iyer is a writer, engineer, and environmental planner. She is the recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, a Pushcart Prize and an Aspen Summer Words Emerging Writer Fellowship. Sangamithra has volunteered for animal sanctuaries in North America and Africa, researched and documented the rise of factory farming globally, and worked in water supply protection for over a decade. She writes at the intersections of art and science and personal and planetary grief.

Literature Grantee - C. Quintana

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2022 Winter Literature Grant to C. Quintana, for her upcoming novel The Twisted Fate of La Media Luna.

C. Quintana, or CQ (she/any) is a queer multi-genre writer with Cuban and Louisiana roots based on unceded Canarsee and Munsee Lenape land in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. This past fall, CRAFT First Chapters Competition selected an opening excerpt of The Twisted Fate of La Media Luna as a finalist, and prior, CQ worked on the manuscript in Megan Giddings’ 2021 Tin House Novel Writing workshop.

Performance Grantees - Karen Kandel and Mallory Catlett

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2022 Winter Performance Grant to Karen Kandel and Mallory Catlett for their project with composer Eve Beglarian, The Vicksburg Project.

The Vicksburg Project traces the experiences of women and gender-complex people in Vicksburg, Mississippi in four different eras. Spanning the Civil War 1860s, the Jim Crow 1910s, the Civil Rights 1960s, and the current moment, The Vicksburg Project evokes intersections of race and gender through deeply researched and resurrected stories from a small city pivotal to the painful history of our country. A live theatrical song cycle The Vicksburg Project will be presented in a co-production between Mabou Mines, and Harlem Stage.

Performance Grantee - Christopher Rudd

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2022 Winter Performance Grant to creator / performer Christopher Rudd, for his upcoming new work WITNESS, a three-part work at the intersection of art and activism.

Inspired by the murders of Trayvon Martin and countless African-Americans killed without justice, WITNESS mixes different genres of dance with contemporary circus to put America’s racial landscape into historical context, combat systematically taught racial biases, and imagine a more just future. With hopes of opening a rich dialogue on the challenging issue of race in America, especially with students, WITNESS aims to premiere in the Spring of 2023 in New York City.

Music Grantee - Jamie Baum

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2022 Winter Music Production Grant to Jamie Baum for her new project To Be of Use, composed for her critically-acclaimed Jamie Baum Septet+ (of twenty years) and guest vocalists, which utilizes texts by women poets (i.e., Marge Piercy, Tracy K. Smith, Naomi Shihab Nye, etc.) in a modern jazz setting to illustrate the palpable, personal and communal experience of living in the time of Covid-19 (and simultaneous socio-political movement) and its abrupt transformation of our world. Though Baum’s initial plan was to compose music paying tribute to women activists working with issues related to gender, race, political strife, discrimination, who've effected the path forward for both themselves and others, through choosing these poems, Jamie's found a approach to express her intentions.

Music Grantee - David Hodges / Los Chantas Tango Ensemble

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2022 Winter Music Production Grant to David Hodges of the Los Chantas Tango Ensemble for the production of their new album, 20 Años, (working title) to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the group’s continuous presence on the New York City tango scene.

The record will feature original arrangements of deep cuts from the tango tradition by the likes of Maglio, Gobbi, and Plaza; innovative cross-cultural adaptations such as a tune by the Brazilian choro master Pixinguinha; as well as original compositions in the tango style from the group’s members. The timbre and versatility of the traditional tango quartet provides a unique palette for musical expression with a sonic profile that can be by turns melancholic and haunting or playful and exuberant. 20 Años, has an anticipated release date in the Fall of 2022.

Music Grantee - Nicole Zuraitis

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2022 Winter Music Production Grant to Nicole Zuraitis to help complete, How Love Begins (part I: oil/ part II: water). The 5th album as a leader by Grammy nominated, New York based vocalist, pianist and songwriter Nicole Zuraitis, is co-produced with Grammy Award winning bassist Christian McBride and set to release in 2023, featuring all-original compositions and the talents of some of the jazz world’s best.

Nicole’s touring ensemble, Generations Of Her: Women Songwriters and Lyricists of the Last 100 Years, has played to sold-out houses in NYC and around the country. As a recording artist, Nicole has released four albums as leader, including 2020’s All Wandering Hearts on Dot Time Records. In December 2018, she partnered with guitarist Brandon Scott Coleman to record and release a live album, Live At the Two-Headed Calf. She is also a new member of the modern jazz super group Ryan Keberle and Catharsis. 

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2022 Visual Grant to Coleman Collins for his new project “Body Errata”. Coleman is interested in genetic research. He wants to know how the cumulative changes in our knowledge of the body and biological processes have produced our current reality: behaviors and diseases can be predicted, genes can be edited. As a descendant of slaves (with an uncertain genealogical tree), Collins also investigates how this technology can shed light on the past. The artist sequenced his DNA – receiving a long string of nucleotides (composed of the letters ACGT, as opposed to digital Ones and Zeros), while also discovering that he was 50% Nigerian, 30% Congolese, and 20% Northern European. Collins found artifacts from these cultures and 3D scanned them (gesturing to another, cultural type of inheritance), and took the 3D scans and began to manipulate them. He mutated the forms and produced new sculptures from these mutations, using 3D printing and CNC cutting. The show will also include new video works, drawings, digital prints, and laser cut metal objects.