Meet the 2024 ECM artist assistance grants recipients
At the CU Boulder Entrepreneurship Center for Music (ECM), students can find the skills and tools they need for their music careers. Most recently, the ECM awarded $5,820 in artist assistance grants to support eight student-led professional development and community engagement projects including:
Josie Arnett
“I’m really picky about which pieces I release on streaming platforms because I’m 20 and need to be able to write really bad music … and then release the things that I really love,” says Josie Arnett, an undergraduate composition student.
“Last fall, I got the opportunity to write a saxophone quartet piece for a group that travels all over the United States. I was really happy with the piece and really proud of it, so I reached out to a faculty member who set me up with the CU Boulder graduate saxophone quartet.”
Working with the Sanitas Saxophone Quartet, College of Music Recording Engineer Kevin Harbison and a mixing artist, Arnett recorded the piece for projected release on streaming platforms this summer. The ECM grant helped pay the artists and distribution fee.
Arnett says she learned a lot about how to interact in a professional recording setting and enjoyed collaborating within the College of Music. “It’s been fun to work with people that have a lot of energy, positive attitudes and are just really excited about what they do,” she shares.
Alice Del Simone
At the end of May, DMA student in voice performance and pedagogy Alice Del Simone was part of a workshop presentation at the Voice Foundation Symposium in Philadelphia titled “Legato Then and Now, Vibrato Edition: A Close-Up of What Happens Between the Pitches in the Classical Bel Canto Tradition.”
“The workshop offered a toolbox of exercises for how to teach the type of legato singing that was happening at the end of the 1800s, beginning of the 1900s when we started to have recordings available,” Del Simone says.
“It was my very first time presenting at a conference where there are often hurdles for a young academic to get an invitation to present. I’ve been lucky that I’ve been able to work with a group of people who are more prominent in the community than myself.”
During the symposium, Del Simone stayed at the conference hotel, partially funded by her ECM grant.
Zachary Howarth
Zachary Howarth, a DMA student in jazz studies, will go on the road this summer to record music in studios in Reno and South Lake Tahoe. Howarth also hopes to perform this music live in venues across Colorado and Nevada.
The project will involve a contemporary jazz quartet—trumpet, piano, bass, drums—writing and recording the music. The ECM grant will help the project get off the ground by assisting with studio fees, production costs and travel expenses.
“The opportunity to write, record and play music with such high-level artists is invaluable to my collaborative research in compositional tendencies in contemporary jazz mediums and fully improvised music,” Howarth says.
SeaJun Kwon
SeaJun Kwon, also a DMA student in jazz studies, likes writing compositions that push the boundaries of jazz music including “Avant Shorts”—10 etudes exploring micro tonalities and rhythmic concepts that aren’t commonly used in jazz compositions.
Kwon plans to compose these etudes and begin recording them over the summer, using a microphone setup funded by an ECM grant.
“I thought I’d write a bunch of super short compositions that focus on different ideas to develop myself and provide my community with these resources,” Kwon says.
By keeping them brief, he hopes to make the compositions more accessible and useful for his community.
“People are really busy, there are so many things that you have to do and also so many distractions,” Kwon says. “I think these short compositions put less pressure on people—they can work on them for 10 minutes and still learn from them.”
Er-Hsuan Li
Er-Hsuan Li graduated from the College of Music in May with a DMA in piano performance. In April, he held a concert featuring the world premiere of John Clay Allen’s “” concerto for piano and strings along with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1.
“It was a very fun event,” Li says. “Even though it was off-campus, it was really CU that made this possible because that’s how we connected.”
Many CU Boulder musicians participated including conductor and Associate Director of Orchestras Renee Gilliland, composition alumnus John Clay Allen, Anna Kallinikos—who’s majoring in trumpet performance and minoring in business—and the majority of the 18-member orchestra. The ECM grant assisted Li with compensating the performers and renting the venue.
“I had performed in front of an orchestra only once before when I was a high schooler,” Li recalls. “So it was really special for me that—after 13 years—I got to do this again professionally. And I would like to think that I am a better musician now compared to then!”
Ethan Stahl
When Ethan Stahl discovered Nkeiru Okoye’s music, he knew he’d found something special. “I loved her music so much that I began working on it for one of my degree recitals,” he says. “Eventually, it became evident that I had enough material to create a lecture recital.”
To prepare, Stahl—who’s pursuing a DMA in piano performance—interviewed Okoye about her music. “We talked on the phone for a few hours and in that conversation, she proposed the idea of writing a piece for me to add to one of the sets of piano pieces that I was studying.” The ECM grant helped fund Okoye’s contribution.
Okoye’s music is already part of the American Music Research Center’s Helen Walker-Hill Collection; her upcoming composition will be added to the collection.
“Okoye is extremely novel in the world of piano composition,” Stahl adds. “I’ve never heard piano music that is similar stylistically to hers.”
Natalie Trejo
Artist Diploma student Natalie Trejo competed in the finals for the Austin Flute Society’s Young Artist Competition in April—and the ECM grant helped her get there.
“I submitted the preliminary recordings back in January. From there, they selected three finalists to perform in the live final round in Austin, Texas,” Trejo says. “It went really well. I ended up getting third but I was very happy with how I played and I was not nervous at all.”
Trejo performed Chen Yi’s “Memory” for solo flute and Frank Martin’s “Ballade” for flute and piano.
“I love doing competitions because I get to learn new repertoire, meet new flutists, make connections and get to know the other finalists—it’s very important and humbling, but still encouraging,” Trejo says.
Jonathon Winter
Another spring 2024 graduate, Jonathon Winter—who earned a DMA in violin performance—recorded four pieces to be compiled into an album titled “Origin: Music by Women of the Americas.” The pieces are “ko’u inoa” by Leilehua Lanzilotti, “Scratch the Surface” by Dana Kaufman, “String Poetic” by Jennifer Higdon and “Sueños de Chambi” by Gabriel Lena Frank.
“I picked some fiendishly difficult music to play but it was so worth it,” Winter says. “I learned so much about preparing for recordings and what that actually entails.”
Winter worked with pianist and Postdoctoral Lecturer Barbara Noyes, as well as Kevin Harbison to record all four pieces over the course of seven months. Winter will continue the project over the summer with the goal of finding a label to disseminate the recordings.
Congratulations to all grant recipients and our thanks to this year’s adjudicators: College of Music staff member Kathryn Bistodeau, Music Advisory Board member Laurie Hathorn and University of Denver entrepreneurship faculty member Neil Pollard.