Announcing Arts Alive Grants

In order to learn about Baroque music, I checked in with Karen Marie Marmer and Jorg-Michael Schwarz of the duo the Black Marble, who tell me that Baroque music, popular from about 1600 to 1760, is “absolutely glorious…a blending of different voices…and emotional without being melodramatic.” These two musicians take their Bach and Handel so seriously that they play on violins that were designed and retrofitted to mirror those olden ones that were made with sheep gut strings and stroked with convex baroque bows.  They say that the sound is more brilliant and their fans agree.  Like many other small organizations, they plan to apply for an Arts Alive grant to keep this unique early music available in Westchester. The Arts Alive grant program is available to groups in both Westchester and Rockland Counties.  Funded by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), the grants are administered by ArtsWestchester with grant proposals due on September 26 (Westchester) and October 2 (Rockland) for 2019 programs. “It’s highly competitive,​” advises Susan Abbot, Associate Director of Programs at ArtsWestchester, who runs the program.  “Typically, we get twice as many proposals as we can fund, so it’s important to give everyone their best shot.”  For this reason, the ArtsWestchester team holds several technical assistance sessions from July through September. Black Marble’s “Musica Antiqua Nova” series consists of several Baroque music concerts, taking place at Embark Peekskill,  the John C. Hart Library in Shrub Oak, New Rochelle Public Library,  Drum Hill (Peekskill). In its last round, Arts Alive funded such diverse programs as dance workshops by accomplished choreographer Sidra Bell, a two-day ComicCon at Mount Vernon Public Library,​ film and animation workshops presented by the Yonkers Film Festival (YoFi Fest), and a Veteran-Student story-exchange by artist David Surface, which teamed local veterans with Ossining High School students.​