ABOUT THE GRANT
- $31,700 to Old Town School of Folk Music to support Quantum Music/Englewood (MAP 2018)
- $6,600 to general operating support for Old Town School of Folk Music
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Quantum Music/Englewood, a new work by renowned Chicago musical artists Ernest Dawkins and Rahul Sharma, seeks to uncover the unheralded traditions behind contemporary urban music, instruct an inter-generational corps of musicians in these roots and genres, and generate very large-scale public performances as points of pride for one of Chicago’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Quantum Music/Englewood is conceived as a piece for 250-member chorus and 100-150 instrumentalists that aims to investigate the past, present and future of segregation in Chicago, and the way that music can confront and potentially subvert these conventions.
Taught through a shared online streaming and trans-media component, the piece will be disseminated among Chicago’s many youth-centered musical institutions, non-profit arts organizations, community choirs and faith-based groups, gathering additional participants. Quantum Music/Englewood’s student performers will work on their parts in their individual locations, coming together for large rehearsals and performances at the end of the process.
Quantum Music/Englewood will challenge the ways that Chicago interacts, by bringing traditionally disparate groups from rarely intersecting areas of the city of Chicago together to explore and represent the musical traditions that are core elements of Englewood’s musical history, and instill their global value into the young people of the entire city.
ARTISTIC TEAM
Ernest Dawkins
Bau Graves
Uday Sharad Joshi
Rahul Sharma