Music Production Grant
2025 Fall Grantee
Wade Schuman
Wade Schuman -Songwriter and Singer
The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2025 Fall Music Production Grant to Wade Schuman for the recording "Good Friend."
The new material will be dedicated to the memory of Joseph Daley, a remarkable man and uniquely multitalented musician and composer from New York City who passed away this August, and who was a fundamental founding member of the band HazMat Modine for almost three decades.
Wade Schuman is a founder and principal songwriter and singer of the “genre fluid” band Hazmat Modine, he plays diatonic harmonica, guitar, and other miscellaneous Instruments. Wade has played the diatonic harmonica since the age of ten and is an accomplished master in both traditional prewar styles and contemporary extended techniques. For over forty years he has expanded the use of harmonica in the context of a large band and pushed the creative boundaries of harmonica in contemporary music.
Wade grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan which has long had a vital and interesting musical scene, living and working in New York City since 1994, Wade is also a full-time professor and Chair of the Painting Department at The New York Academy of Art in NYC. He is currently represented by Forum Gallery in NYC.
Wade has written songs for or worked with: Natalie Merchant, Kronos Quartet, Huun Hour Tu & Alash (The Tuvan Throat Singers), Balla Kouyate (Mali), Gangbe Brass Band (Benin), Son of Dave, and Vince Bell among others. Recording credits include Joan Osborn's "Relish" which was nominated for four Grammys, and Natalie Merchant’s “Leave your Sleep”. Wade has produced and designed six albums for Hazmat Modine: Bahamut, Cicada, Hazmat Modine Live, Extra-Deluxe-Supreme, Box of Breath, and Bonfire.
Hazmat Modine, is an ensemble that includes that is quintessentially New York, pulling from the diaspora of sound that is the history of New York City. The compositions and lyrics influenced by many genres and musical languages: American roots with world music branches. Instrumentation includes Harmonica, Guitar, Banjo, Trumpet, Saxophone’s, Clarinet, Trombone, Tuba, Drums and Percussion, Violin, Balafon, Hulusi, Fipple Flute, Pan Flutes, Tiple, Cimbalom and other instruments.
Hazmat Modine has toured and performed in over forty countries for over twenty-five years. Worldwide performances include: WOMAD (England, France, Australia, New Zealand, Russia), Jazz, Folk and World music festivals in Berlin, Vienna, Seville, Montreal, Pori, Cambridge, Vancouver & Calgary, FMM Sines in Portugal and live on the BBC3. They have toured in China, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, India, Malaysia, Central Asia and across most of Europe. They have written for Japanese television (Tokyo Joe) had music in Wim Wenders’ film “Pina” and performed for the Nobel Laureates’ 75 anniversary conference. Hazmat Modine has been featured on NPR’s The Next Big Thing, All and Things Considered, Soundcheck on WNYC, The World on BBC/PRI and on WKCR radio.
“This is a New York band that has achieved the tour de force, by itself, of representing the entire history of American music. A vast melting pot in which all genres merge to form one! There are blues, Swing, sounds of music from Eastern Europe, Folk, Jamaican and Hawaiian consonances, and so on… a fascinating overview of somegreat and magnificent American musical territories.”
– Dominique Boulay Paris,
Move & Blues Magazine