Three Philly-linked artists among 2016 Leonore Annenberg fellowship grantees
Nine artists, including two from Philadelphia, plus a Curtis Institute of Music graduate, have been announced as recipients of grants from the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund for the Performing and Visual Arts. The fund awards $50,000 a year for up to two years to help beginning-career artists across the arts.
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Nine artists, including two from Philadelphia, plus a Curtis Institute of Music graduate, have been announced as recipients of grants from the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund for the Performing and Visual Arts. The fund awards $50,000 a year for up to two years to help beginning-career artists across the arts.
The two Philadelphians are violinist Robyn Bollinger and actor Miriam A. Hyman. The Curtis graduate is bass-baritone Brandon Cedel of Charleston, S.C.
Bollinger, daughter of Philadelphia Orchestra trombonist Blair Bollinger, made her Philadelphia Orchestra debut at age 12. She is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. Her proposal was a multimedia project titled CIACCONA: The Bass of Time, on Bach's Ciaccona for solo violin.
Hyman, a graduate of the University of the Arts, received an MFA at the Yale School of Drama. Her first professional acting job was in the role of a high school senior in the annual holiday production of Langston Hughes' Black Nativity at the Freedom Theatre. She performed this year in August Wilson's The Piano Lesson at McCarter Theater in Princeton. She also raps under the moniker Robyn Hood.
Curtis Institute graduate Cedel is completing his third year in the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program in New York, after which he will join Oper Frankfurt.
The other recipients are actor Jeremie Harris of New York; cellist and conductor Nico Olarte-Hayes of Plainsboro, N.J.; actor David Pegram of Houston, Texas; multimedia artist Nyugen Smith of Jersey City, N.J.; American Ballet Theatre soloist Devon Teuscher of South Burlington, Vt.; and musician and musicologist Daniel Walden of Berkeley, Calif.
Previous recipients include eminent dancer Misty Copeland, dancer Isabella Boylston, actor André Holland, Grammy Award-winning singer Isabel Leonard (who recently sang in the Jennifer Higdon opera Cold Mountain at Opera Philadelphia), pianist Sullivan Fortner, violinist and composer Michelle Ross, and actor Jeremy Strong.
Leonore Annenberg (1918-2009) was U.S. Chief of Protocol for President Ronald Reagan. She was also the wife of Walter H. Annenberg, the diplomat and philanthropist who owned The Inquirer from 1942-1969. The first year of the fellowship was announced in 2008. All grants are made on an invitation-only basis, in consultation with a partner organization. Information: www.leonoreannenbergscholarships.org.
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