2025 Grant Recipients
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Pittsburgh, PA
About:
Viii Dorsey is a sound-collage artist, vocalist, and poet whose work blends eclectic instrumentation, layered production, and elements of mantra, meditation, and prayer. Her music bridges groove, storytelling, and sound healing as she approaches each project as both experiment and enrichment for herself and the listener.
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Iowa City, Iowa
About:
Described as being “unafraid to be anything at all” and making “shadowy music that prickles on your skin”, Gabi Vanek is a bassoonist who exists in a world of drone, doom and noise. With her sonic interests often the aesthetic and tonal crossover of the latter with contemporary classical music, she has had the privilege of performing as both a soloist and ensemble member at small and large festivals, conferences, and series such as the Darmstädter Internationale Ferienkurse, International Double Reed Society, Oh My Ears, Feed Me Weird Things, and exhibited at the Osaka University of the Arts Electro-Acoustic Music Festival.
Her further scholarly activity has included lectures and workshops regarding unconventional bassoon practice at Columbus State University, University of Iowa, and University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She had additionally spoken about classical idiom and compositional structure in death metal at the 2016 Extreme Music: Hearing and Nothingness conference at University of Denmark - Odense, with a follow up article later published in the Metal Music Studies journal.
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San Francisco, California
About:
Joel St. Julien (he/him) is a Haitian-American composer, sound and video artist based in San Francisco. Joel has written music for documentaries, short / feature films, podcasts, and dance. He is a firm believer in experimentation/fusion with acoustic and electronic elements in sound oscillating through escapism and the mysticism of the present tense: music both being art and spiritual practice.
Joel has shared music at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Stanford University’s CCRMA, Gray Area, CounterPulse Festival, Land and Sea Gallery, Re:Sound, Cone Shape Top Center for Arts and Music, The Lab, and Kadist Gallery.
His music has also been featured and reviewed in Resident Advisor, The Wire, Disquiet, KQED, Foxy Digitalis, a closer listen, Dublab, and many more.
Joel has released music independently and on Land and Sea, Dragon's Eye Recordings, Beached Records, and CST Imprint.
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