Charting the Future of Hearing in Color with Innovative Collaborations and Grant-Fueled Growth
After a very successful presentation of our very first full season in the Fall of 2023, Hearing in Color has been working strategically to enhance our ability to be a responsible community funded and collaborative non profit organization. Though our public programming has quieted, we have been engaged in intense strategic planning programs through grant opportunities that will chart the future of Hearing in Color.
As we reflect on the growth made possible through these opportunities, we’re eagerly preparing for 2025—a year that promises to be filled with impactful programming, new partnerships, and vibrant celebrations of artistry. We’re excited to share this next chapter with you and deeply appreciate your continued support in helping us achieve our mission.
2024 Grant Programs
Enrich Chicago (Just Praxis Circle Imagine Just)
The IJ Community-Advised Fund (CAF), collaboratively stewarded by Enrich Chicago and BIPOC artists from across our ecosystem, was established to address the needs of artists, organizations and collectives that are often overlooked and unrecognized by more traditional funders. Recipients of this award receive a $5,000.00 unrestricted gift to sustain their organization/collective. Beyond financial support, the IJ Community-Advised Fund aims to sustain a community of care for BIPOC arts leaders and culture workers. Groups/organizations that are funded also form part of the Just Praxis Circle, a space for community care, accountability and healing for BIPOC culture workers and artists. The Just Praxis Circle is a collectively-led peer space that meets monthly for one year and will culminate in a community celebration of learning. Members of the Just Praxis Circle will lead the subsequent peer-review process for 2025 grantees.
New Music, Inc. Chicago
New Music Inc. is an incubator program which helps small-budget, artist-led new music organizations to generate new ideas, strategies and collaborations at pivotal stages in the group or collective’s development. The program provides an $8,000.00 grant, hands-on skill building workshops and professional development over 18-months, and mentorship with professional arts leaders in Chicago. Since April 2023, Hearing in Color has been engaged with this intensive work along with incredible and impactful artistic organizations across the Chicagoland area.
Young Composer Residency
Now in its 4th iteration, Hearing in Color’s Young Composer Residency Program has engaged a new young voice, Madeline Clara Cheng to commission work with partner organizations, La Caccina and Music Institute of Chicago. Performances of Cheng’s work will be featured on MIC’s Celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Concert January 19th at Nichols Concert Hall and with La Caccina on March 1, 2025 at St. Chrysostom’s Episcopal Church (1424 N. Dearborn St. - Chicago, IL) and March 2, 2025 - 3:00 pm and Grace Episcopal Church (924 Lake St. ~ Oak Park, IL).
Madeline Clara Cheng is a Taiwanese American composer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a Presidential Scholar at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, she studies composition with minors in business law and music industry. Madeline is a 2023 YoungArts Award Winner, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award finalist, and a recipient of the ICEBERG New Music and Lift Up Our Voices scholarships. An alumna of Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid's Luna Composition Lab and the Wildflower Composers Festival, she has been commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's 150th anniversary May Festival, Ensemble for These Times, and the UUCWC Crossing Chorale. Madeline’s compositions have also been performed by members of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Norway’s Bergen International Festival, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble for These Times, the Boston New Music Initiative, and SOLI Chamber Ensemble. She is an alumna of the Tanglewood Institute, for which she received a full scholarship, as well as the Yellow Barn Young Artists Program.
When she’s not composing, Madeline can be found designing escape rooms, music directing a show, producing interdisciplinary arts events, enjoying improv comedy, or playing piano and saxophone—sometimes simultaneously.