Musical Grant Program der InterMusic SF

Musical Grant Program der InterMusic SF is sponsored by InterMusic SF. Förderung von kleinen Ensembles, Instrumental- und Vokalperformer:innen, Komponist:innen und Konzertveranstalter:innen in der Bay Area.

Musical Grant Program – InterMusic SF In 2008, InterMusic SF introduced the Musical Grant Program (MGP), a grant opportunity that funds music projects for Bay Area-based musicians dedicated to creating and presenting small ensemble music in our local communities.

InterMusic SF was founded with the understanding and awareness that musicians, composers, and concert presenters face financial barriers to create, celebrate, and practice the art of small ensemble music-making. InterMusic SF offers three main pillars of supportive programming and is uniquely positioned as a vital resource for active musicians in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area.

We deeply value feedback from community members, who have increasingly expressed a significant need for project funding to grow and sustain their careers. Nineteen years ago, InterMusic SF established the Musical Grant Program , an annual grant opportunity that has awarded over $1. 3 million in project funding to local artists, funding over 444 distinct projects.

Established in 2022, the Common Application for the Arts (Common App) is a tool for artists, arts and culture organizations, and fiscally sponsored projects seeking funding from Bay Area visual and performing arts grantmakers. The Common App is designed to make applying to multiple opportunities simpler and faster for artists seeking project and general operations grant funding.

Grantseekers can use the responses crafted for the Common App to submit applications to participating funders, as eligible. This year marked the third year of Musical Grant Program / Common App integration . If you’re an artist looking to apply for grant funding, the Common App might be the right tool for you!

Visit the Common App website for templates to get started. More info and resources, like technical assistance videos and templates, are available on the InterMusic SF Workshop page. PARTICIPATING GRANTMAKERS + FUNDERS Questions about the Common App for the Arts?

Email [email protected] . The mission of the Musical Grant Program (MGP) is to encourage and promote the creation of small ensemble music. The grant provides financial support for Bay Area-based music creators and collaborators committed to the presentation and production of musical activities, such as live performances, composition commissions, professional recordings, and other collaborations.

InterMusic SF continues to serve as an advocate for local creators by sustaining the Musical Grant Program. The grant is open to Bay Area-based individuals and arts and culture organizations, and welcomes emerging and established music-makers to apply. With support from the MGP, musicians continue to offer masterful and groundbreaking contributions to the cultural fabric that defines the Bay Area as a vibrant, creative ecosystem.

The Musical Grant Program grant cycle is currently closed. The 20th cycle will open in January 2027. The mission of the Musical Grant Program (MGP) is to encourage and promote the creation of small ensemble music.

The grant provides financial support for Bay Area-based music creators and collaborators committed to the presentation and production of musical activities, such as live performances, composition commissions, professional recordings, and other collaborations. InterMusic SF continues to serve as an advocate for local creators by sustaining the Musical Grant Program.

The grant is open to Bay Area-based individuals and arts and culture organizations, and welcomes emerging and established music makers to apply. With support from the MGP, musicians continue to offer masterful and groundbreaking contributions to the cultural fabric that defines the Bay Area as a vibrant, creative ecosystem. The 2026 Musical Grant Program grant cycle opens January 23, 2026.

Once the cycle is open, visit intermusicsf. org/mgp/apply Now in its 19th year, InterMusic SF’s Musical Grant Program is made possible in part by the Clarence E. Heller Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, additional support from Mervyn L.

Brenner Foundation, Campbell Foundation, Fleishhacker Foundation, Gerbode Foundation, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, and generous individuals and community partners. Please consider a tax-deductible donation to ensure the sustainability of the Musical Grant Program – a unique and vital funding resource for our musical community members.

CONGRATULATIONS to THE 2026 AWARDEES Learn more about the 26 recipients of the 2026 Musical Grant Program and the exciting new projects coming to the Bay Area.

African American Composer Initiative 16th Annual Concert of Music by African American Composers The African American Composer Initiative (AACI) presents live concerts of music by African American composers, historical and living, while preserving, commissioning, and publishing new works. Founded by Bay Area musicians in 2009, AACI performs spirituals, art songs, chamber music, jazz ensemble works, and more in East Palo Alto.

Studio Recording and Performance of New Jazz Compositions As a pianist, composer, and bandleader, Anne Sajdera, is a creative force whose music exhilarates listeners with emotion. Known for her burnished lyricism, she relies on her roots in American and Brazilian jazz, and her classical training, to create a genre-blending sound that’s melodically verdant, harmonically sophisticated and rhythmically compelling.

Second Annual Ben Goldberg Festival of Music Ben Goldberg is an East Bay–based clarinetist, improvisor, and composer whose work spans classical music, jazz, klezmer music, and the blues. Drawing from these traditions and decades of East Bay practice, he creates original music grounded in inquiry into the fundamentals of music, polyphony, and collective improvising.

CHAMBER OPERA / CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL Circadian String Quartet (CSQ) performs classical and contemporary repertoire of folkloric or cultural significance. Founded during more hopeful moments of the Arab Spring, CSQ has become known for bold programming that bridges cultures, works with living composers, and responds to current events, creating something new from collision and fusion.

Tunes From Our Backyard Studio Recording CONTEMPORARY / FOLK / CLASSICAL / JAZZ / POP David Steinberg’s work is inspired by the WPA California Folk Music Project, a collection of songs recorded by ethnomusicologist Sidney Robertson Cowell to document California’s immigrant and migrant musical traditions. His personal connection to Armenian music and ancestry in Fresno shapes his exploration of local history and song.

DOMÉSTICO - From the Border of Home LATIN AMERICAN / CARIBBEAN Bululú will produce and premiere DOMÉSTICO, an all-original Latin music album inspired by the everyday lives of Latinx communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Blending traditional Latin American genres with contemporary global production, it explores immigration, LGBTQ+ identity, women’s rights, spirituality, domestic life, and cultural empowerment.

Earhart Trio Recording Project The Earhart Trio is committed to performing lesser-known works and traditional canon repertoire, presenting music that addresses environmental and social/historical narratives reminding listeners of their connection to the earth. Formed in 2023, the trio of Kumiko Uyeda, Kate Stenberg, and Mary Artmann searches for spiritual togetherness through chamber music.

Earplay nurtures new chamber music, linking audiences, performers, and composers through concerts, commissions, and recordings. Launched in 1985, the ensemble performs music from the 20th and 21st centuries and has presented over 625 works by more than 350 composers, including 150+ world premieres and 100+ commissions. Edward Schocker is a composer and performer who creates music with made/found materials and alternate tuning systems.

A Mills College graduate and co-founder of arts nonprofit Thingamajigs, Schocker’s projects often extend beyond the traditional concert hall, developing pieces with local and underserved communities using unusual instruments, everyday objects, and tunings.

Simon Music Productions Inc. Latin Heart Album Recording Simon Music Productions Inc. is dedicated to the creation, performance, and dissemination of innovative music that bridges jazz and Latin American musical traditions. Founded to support pianist-composer Edward Simon’s projects, the organization fosters cross-disciplinary collaboration, artistic excellence, and cultural dialogue within the Bay Area and global arts community.

Faye Carol is an internationally renowned vocalist, educator, and recording artist whose professional career began in the early 1960s and spans jazz, blues, gospel, and R&B. Her artistic vision is to uplift Black musical traditions, uniting them into a singular musical voice through acoustic, improvisational, collaborative music and education.

Legacy Symphonic Orchestra Legacy Symphonic Orchestra HIP-HOP / JAZZ / SOUL / R&B / CLASSICAL Kev Choice is an Oakland-based pianist, composer, producer, arranger, and musical director whose work bridges Jazz, Hip-Hop, Classical, R&B, and Soul traditions. Known for dynamic artistry and leadership, he creates innovative, inspirational, community-rooted music and has led high-profile productions across the Bay Area and beyond.

Phantom Islands II: The Bag of Winds EXPERIMENTAL / WORLD / JAZZ / AVANT-GARDE Mat Muntz will create Phantom Islands II: The Bag of Winds, a composition combining traditional Croatian and Bulgarian bagpipes with contemporary improvisation and chamber music, channeling Mediterranean maritime mythology, Jack Vance's post-apocalyptic surrealism, demonological readings of Herman Melville, and Ornette Coleman's Skies of America.

Melody of China Legacy Concert WORLD / CHINESE / TRADITIONAL / NEW Melody of China (MOC) promotes the beauty and versatility of Chinese music and instruments through concerts, performances, and workshops. Since 1993, MOC has performed new and traditional music on Chinese instruments while commissioning contemporary composers and fostering cross-cultural collaboration through education programs, classes, and home season concerts.

Motoko Honda's Simple Excesses Quartet Motoko Honda’s Simple Excesses Quartet: Album Creation and Release Project Motoko Honda is a pianist and composer who creates musical environments of curiosity, freedom, and shared discovery through improvisation, sound exploration, and spontaneous composition.

Her recent artistic focus centers on Simple Excesses Quartet, through which she highlights Bay Area musicians and improvisers, and her solo piano program Emergent Piano. Nippon Kobo Vol. 3: Tradition × Evolution "Nippon Kobo (“Japanese Workshop”) presents curated music concert series paired with contemporary Japanese art and culture in the SF Bay Area.

Founded by Haruka Fujii in 2019, Nippon Kobo is establishing itself as a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration and contemporary Japanese music in the Bay Area. " Outsound Presents Gino Robair’s Radical Divination AVANT-GARDE / IMPROVISATION Outsound Presents encourages original, new, and experimental music in all forms, championing local and touring musicians as an alternative to traditional and market-driven music.

Since 2001, the organization has supported Bay Area artists through concerts, educational events, the SIMM Series, and the annual Outsound New Music Summit. San Francisco Electronic Music Festival SFEMF @ 25: Past, Present, and Future Frequencies ELECTRONIC / ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival is an artist-run organization founded in 1999 by Bay Area electro-acoustic music and sound art practitioners.

It provides a public forum for composers and sound artists working with electronic-based technologies, presenting concerts, installations, and discussions that challenge academic and commercial standards. Sarah Wilson's Fuse Quintet Sarah Wilson is a Bay Area composer, trumpeter, and singer devoted to the creation, production, performance, and recording of musical composition projects.

Her original work crosses jazz, theater, dance, film, and community-based arts projects, combining composed sections and improvisation while drawing from avant pop, Afro-Latin grooves, and indie rock. Som Dela Debut Album Recording Project WORLD / BRAZILIAN / JAZZ / CLASSICAL Som Dela is dedicated to performing multi-genre music by women composers from Brazil and making space for women’s voices to be heard.

The ensemble retrieves, uncovers, supports, and celebrates historic compositions of women through research, musical arrangements, and active live performances while seeking new music to commission and perform. Strobe is a San Francisco Bay Area–based oboe quartet dedicated to expanding and elevating the repertoire for oboe, violin, viola, and cello.

Formed in 2016, the ensemble commissions and premieres new works, brings renewed attention to overlooked repertoire, and makes the creative process visible and accessible. Sumi Lee is a San Francisco–based pianist, presenter, organizer, and educator dedicated to advancing Argentine tango as a vibrant contemporary art form.

Classically trained and specialized in tango piano in Buenos Aires, Lee creates meaningful cultural experiences through performance, recording, collaboration, education through SF Tango Academy and creating concerts through SF Tango Orchestra. Heels Upon The Ground: The Sampaguitas Album Release Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Sampaguitas sing Filipino folk songs and inspired originals in three-part harmony.

Influenced by folk, blues, doo-wop girl groups, and the Filipinx-American diaspora, The Sampaguitas share music from their roots and explore what it means to be in a “third culture” between worlds. CLASSICAL / IMPROVISATION / COMPOSITION / ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC Thea Farhadian is an improviser and composer whose solo pieces for violin and electronics combine classical music, extended techniques, and digital processing.

Her music explores textured, tonal, and microtonal sound worlds. She has released two solo albums, “Tectonic Shifts,” (Creative Sources, 2016) “Tattoos and Other Markings” (Other Minds Records, 2025). Vitamin Em - The First Ten Years!

JAZZ / FUNK / SOUL / R&B / BLUES / FIDDLE / POP / CLASSICAL Vitamin Em is a musical collective all about high-quality fun, engagement, and connection. The ensemble brings mostly original music and unique arrangements to concerts spanning jazz, Soul, Funk, Latin, pop, fiddle, and Western Classical roots, with improvisation as a highlighted feature and community-building at its core.

Leela Paymai is an Iranian-American bassist, trombonist, composer, arranger, and bandleader based in San Francisco. She leads ZHENIIA, a Persian jazz fusion project, which fuses Iranian heritage with contemporary jazz while building cultural bridges through music and community.

African American Composer Initiative The musicians of the African American Composer Initiative will present the 16th Annual Concert of Music by African American Composers on January 30 and 31st at 3 pm at the Performing Arts Center of Eastside College Preparatory School, featuring art songs, spirituals, instrumental concert music, jazz, and more.

The African American Composer Initiative (AACI) is dedicated to presenting live concerts of music by African American composers, historical and living; preserving this music through commercial CDs and online video recordings; and commissioning and publishing new works.

Comprised of classical and jazz musicians of the San Francisco Bay Area, AACI strives to increase awareness of this vast, rich repertoire, with the hope of sparking further explorations and performances among presenters and musicians. AACI was founded by a group of Bay Area musicians interested in exploring the significant but little-known repertoire of music by African American composers.

What began in 2009 with a concert that included music by William Grant Still, presented by five musicians, developed the following year into an ensemble of singers and instrumentalists dedicated to the performance of music by African American composers.

The music AACI presents spans a wide variety of genres, including spirituals, art songs, vocal/instrumental chamber music, and jazz ensemble, reflecting the breadth and depth of African American composers’ contributions to American musical heritage. Through concert narration and projected images, the sharing of information deepens the audience’s acquaintance with these important composers.

Committed to the musical life of East Palo Alto and surrounding communities, AACI presents concerts at the Performing Arts Center of Eastside College Preparatory School. Now in its sixteenth year, AACI has performed music by over forty-five African American composers, commissioned and/or premiered numerous new works, recorded four CDs for Cambria, and published commissioned works by four composers.

Anne Sajdera will record nine new jazz works, scored for different configurations of a jazz quintet, 9-piece string ensemble, string quartet, and solo piano. The project will be recorded at SFCM’s recording facility and Opus Studios in 2027, with a corresponding album release concert in San Francisco. As a pianist, composer, and bandleader, Anne Sajdera, is a creative force whose music exhilarates listeners with emotion.

Known for her burnished lyricism, she relies on her roots in American and Brazilian jazz, and her classical training, to create a genre-blending sound that’s melodically verdant, harmonically sophisticated and rhythmically compelling.

Her first release, Azul (Bijuri Records, 2012), was co-produced by Ray Obiedo and featured a performance from percussion legend Airto Moreira, earning a spot on JAZZIZ Magazine’s Top Ten Critics Poll for 2012 and inclusion in Latin Jazz Corner’s Great Latin Jazz Albums for the same year.

Her second release, New Year (Bijuri Records, 2018), features two composer/instrumentalists from Prague, a special guest appearance by saxophonist Bob Mintzer, and musicians from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Also produced by Ray Obiedo, it was chosen by Down Beat Magazine for the December 2018 Editor’s Pick list and can be heard on jazz radio stations throughout the U.S. Sajdera has performed at Bay Area venues including The California Jazz Conservatory, Herbst Theater, Piedmont Piano Company, and SFJAZZ. In 2020, she performed with Hindustani master violinist Kala Ramnath for the Global Fusion concert in Dubai.

Her most recent album, It’s Here (Bijuri Records, 2024), which was released in September 2024, earned a semifinalist rank in the 2025 Unsigned Only Music Awards international music competition. The Second Annual Ben Goldberg Festival of Music will be held October 1–3, 2026, at Wyldflowr Arts in Oakland, and on October 4 at Bird & Beckett in San Francisco.

The festival will spotlight two bands and a solo set each night, featuring Things That Move, Invisible Guy, Archimedes Lullaby, Trouble Trouble, Flower-Radish, and Ben Goldberg’s Brainchild. Ben Goldberg is a clarinetist, improvisor, and composer who has lived and worked in the East Bay since 1985.

Though his career has expanded internationally, the Bay Area is where he has developed and nurtured his work, beginning in 1990 when his group New Klezmer Trio “kicked open the door for radical experiments with Ashkenazi roots music” (SF Chronicle) and continuing through more than 50 albums of original compositions, appearances at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, European festivals, SFJAZZ, and the Stone in New York.

The New York Times has written that Goldberg’s music “conveys a feeling of joyous research into the basics of polyphony and collective improvising. ” In the Downbeat Critics Poll, he has twice been named Rising Star Clarinetist and is consistently rated highly in the clarinet category.

Many of his albums have been released on his own record label, BAG Production, and since 2016 he has taught “Improvisation in the Jazz Tradition” in the Music Department at UC Berkeley. Early in his career, Goldberg studied privately with clarinetist Rosario Mazzeo and improvisors Joe Henderson, Steve Lacy, and Joe Lovano. From these teachers, he learned the importance of conducting his own inquiry into the fundamentals of music.

Drawing from his experience in classical music, jazz, klezmer music, and the blues, he has found his voice as a composer and improvisor. Circadian String Quartet with guest singer, Melinda Martinez Becker, and others will premiere the five act Chamber Opera, Eurydice’s Defiance, composed by David Ryther with a libretto by Kimiko Guthrie in April of 2027 at Cal State East Bay Hayward, with a repeat performance in San Francisco in May.

Bay Area–based Circadian String Quartet was founded in 2013 to perform classical and contemporary repertoire of folkloric or cultural significance. One of the quartet’s hallmarks is music that bridges cultures, creating something new from the collision and fusion. Founded during more hopeful moments of the Arab Spring, CSQ also hoped to create a chamber group nimble enough to respond to current events.

Since its inception, CSQ has become known for bold original programming ideas that break boundaries or reach across cultures. The quartet frequently works with living composers and is proud to have given world and U.S. premieres of new chamber music by Sahba Aminikia, Ben Carson, Noam Lemish, Hamid Taghavi, Ian Venables, Davide Verotta, and David Ryther.

In 2015, CSQ first performed Sahba Aminikia’s One Day Tehran live on KPFA’s “Music of the World” with Joanna Manqueros. In 2016, CSQ commissioned Iranian-born composer Aminikia to write a new piece for string quartet and narrator. The result, The Weight of the World, a glowing kaleidoscopic mixture of text by Allen Ginsburg and Hafez, premiered in 2017 at the Piedmont Arts Center and can be heard on Circadian Stories.

CSQ has also become known for original transcriptions and compositions. In 2017 and 2019, its transcriptions of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and The Firebird premiered to enthusiastic crowds and critical acclaim. In 2016, CSQ collaborated with narrator and historian Nikolaus Hohmann to tell stories from World War Two, creating short original pieces called Chiaroscuros, now a regular part of CSQ concerts.

Circadian String Quartet can be heard playing commissioned works and original transcriptions on their recently released album, “Circadian Stories” which was recorded at Skywalker Ranch and is available on all streaming platforms including: Spotify, Apple Music, Band Camp and CD baby.

Composer and producer David Steinberg will record Tunes From Our Backyard, a project created to reimagine songs from the WPA California Folk Music Project, a New Deal-era folk music survey conducted by Sidney Robertson Cowell. Funding will go towards the project’s first studio recording to be completed in 2026. David Steinberg has long been fascinated with the musical history of the Bay Area.

His research led him to the WPA California Folk Music Project archived in the Library of Congress. Here, he discovered the hundreds of recordings collected by ethnomusicologist Sidney Robertson Cowell from 1938 to 1940 in her quest to document the folk music practices of a diverse set of immigrant and migrant groups in the state.

Tunes From Our Backyard began in 2022 when Steinberg received a Shenson Foundation Faculty Grant through his work on the faculty at the San Francisco Community Music Center. The grant went towards presenting a concert that brought songs from the WPA California Music Project to life through new performances by contemporary artists.

Following the Shenson concert, Steinberg was inspired to continue his work on the project after seeing numerous connections between the music and people that Sidney Robertson Cowell encountered and Steinberg’s collaborators and audiences. The breadth of Robertson Cowell’s collection makes it easy to find a link to the subject matter through a song or a photograph or a reference to a place or time.

His own personal connection was made in the many recordings of Armenian music collected in Fresno, CA, where Steinberg’s maternal ancestors first settled in the United States before moving to San Francisco. Bululú will produce and premiere DOMÉSTICO, an all-original Latin music album inspired by the everyday lives of Latinx communities in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Blending traditional Latin American genres with contemporary global production, it explores immigration, LGBTQ+ identity, women’s rights, spirituality, domestic life, and cultural empowerment. Bululú is a Bay Area–based Latin band dedicated to creating original music rooted in Venezuelan, Colombian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, and broader Caribbean cultures.

A women-led, minority-led, and LGBTQ+-led ensemble, Bululú amplifies Latinx voices, stories, and rhythms while celebrating heritage, equality, and social justice. The Earhart Trio will professionally record two commissioned works of contemporary art music: Spiral Arm for piano trio by Ben Dorfan, and two movements of Piano Trio No. 2 by Lera Auerbach, on July 5/6, 2026 at Berkeley Piano Club with recording engineer Samantha Bounkeua.

The Earhart Trio is committed to performing lesser known works as well as works from the traditional canon. The trio presents works that address environmental concerns and social/historical narratives that remind listeners of their connection to the earth. It is also committed to presenting at least one work by a female composer or a living composer on its programs.

In their chamber music performances, they seartch for a spiritual togetherness right on stage through music. Formed in fall 2023 after a lengthy discussion about creating a piano trio with the objective of addressing environmental changes on the planet, the Earhart Trio later widened its scope to social concerns.

The trio began presenting concerts in spring and fall 2024 and most recently performed a February 2026 concert that included the world premiere of a commissioned work by Northern California composer Ben Dorfan. The Earhart Trio is comprised of Kumiko Uyeda, pianist; Kate Stenberg, violinist; and Mary Artmann, cellist. Stenberg and Artmann had collaborated previously in piano trios, performing in many venues throughout the Bay Area.

Uyeda and Artmann met at the Berkeley Piano Club as new members in 2023 and performed together in piano quartets. It was a natural step for all three members to create a piano trio together, especially after discovering that all had coached extensively with Burton Kaplan. To date, the Earhart Trio has performed over a dozen concerts in the two years since it began, mostly to full capacity audiences.

In May 2027, Earplay will present Voicings, a program celebrating the human voice. Featuring multiple vocal works, the performance includes a new collaboration between composer Josiah Catalan and poet Brandon Gagante. Earplay’s 2027 season, entitled Carbon-Based, is a broad musical reflection upon the new age of artificial intelligence.

Earplay nurtures the finest new chamber music of our time, linking audiences, performers, and composers through concerts, commissions, and recordings. Launched in 1985 by composers and musicians impacted by the lack of opportunities for practitioners of new music, Earplay advances its mission by performing concerts that wholly encompass music written in the 20th and 21st centuries.

In its 41-year history, the ensemble has performed over 625 works by more than 350 composers, including over 150 world premieres and more than 100 new works commissioned by the ensemble. With the exception of 2020–2022, Earplay’s Home Season has produced 3–6 concerts annually in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1985.

In 2025, the ensemble established its primary venue as Noe Valley Ministry, a space with a long history of chamber music and an excellent Steinway D piano.

In addition to the Home Season, regular engagements have included West Edge Opera’s Snapshot; participation in the Festival of New American Music (FeNAM); SF Music Day; faculty composer concerts at Stanford University’s CCRMA; and coaching activities at San Francisco State University. Since 2000, Earplay has conducted the Donald Aird Composers Competition, awarding 25 prizes since its inception.

The ensemble launched the Vibrant Shores Composers Competition in 2022, focusing on works by composers of color. Earplay has recorded seven CDs since 1996. Edward Schocker will compose Epiphanic, a multimedia community-driven work with members of Sacred and Profane Choir and Thingamajigs Performance Group.

The project incorporates community storytelling; live projected images combined with electro-acoustic instruments and an ensemble of vocalists. Events will take place in Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties. Edward Schocker is a composer and performer who creates music with made/found materials and alternate tuning systems.

A graduate of Mills College, where he studied under avant-garde pioneers Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran, and Lou Harrison, Schocker’s projects often extend beyond the traditional concert hall. With the belief that anyone can make meaningful music with objects found in everyday life, he co-founded Thingamajigs, an Oakland arts nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting music created with unusual instruments and tunings.

Schocker develops pieces directly with local and underserved communities of all ages, with recent collaborations with Cury-J and RYSE Youth Centers, as well as Elder Ashram Assisted Living Community. He was artist in residence at the European Dance Development Center in Düsseldorf, Germany, where he took part in and conducted workshops on instrument building and composer-choreographer collaborations.

He also composed music for a UNESCO-sponsored work with Echo Arts, a large bi-communal project in Cyprus aimed at building understanding between communities in conflict. In recent years, Schocker’s works have been performed at Berkeley Art Museum, Stanford Lively Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Sacred and Profane Chamber Choir, Firebird Youth Chinese Orchestra, National Gugak Center in Seoul, and International House in Tokyo.

As a performer, he has presented work at festivals around the world. He is an ensemble member of the Thingamajigs Performance Group and the Northern California Gagaku Group, and an associate member of Theatre of Yugen. Simon Music Productions Inc. Latin Heart - commissioned by Chamber Music America's New Jazz Works program - blends the rhythmic vitality and melodic richness of Latin American music with jazz.

Recorded at Tin Roof Studio in Sonoma, CA, it features the Edward Simon Trio with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Adam Cruz, the Del Sol String Quartet, and saxophonist Chris Potter. Simon Music Productions Inc. is dedicated to the creation, performance, and dissemination of innovative music that bridges jazz and Latin American musical traditions.

Through composition, collaborative projects, and interdisciplinary works, the organization seeks to expand the artistic language of contemporary jazz while honoring the cultural heritage and rhythmic diversity of Latin America. Founded to support music projects by pianist and composer Edward Simon, the organization serves as a vehicle for developing new work while fostering collaboration among world-class artists across disciplines.

Through Simon Music Productions Inc., Simon has produced recordings, performances, and multidisciplinary projects that reflect a commitment to artistic excellence and cultural dialogue. These projects bring together collaborators from the international jazz community as well as artists working in chamber music and other genres, expanding the scope and reach of the work.

The organization has played a central role in acclaimed recordings, including Femeninas: Songs of Latin American Women (2023) and Venezuela: Latin American Songbook Vol. 2 (2025). These recordings highlight Simon’s focus on reimagining Latin American repertoire through a contemporary jazz lens and have contributed to his reputation as a leading voice in modern jazz composition and performance.

Rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area and connected to a global network of musicians and audiences, Simon Music Productions Inc. advances its mission to create innovative, culturally resonant music while contributing to the artistic community. Faye Carol & Her Octet will record 'The Funky Latin Getdown,' an ambitious suite of music blending jazz, blues, funk, and Latin music, to be released on her Getdown Records.

Faye Carol is an internationally renowned vocalist, educator, and recording artist whose professional career began in the early 1960s and spans jazz, blues, gospel, and R&B. Her artistic vision is to uplift Black musical traditions of jazz, blues, gospel, R&B, and hip-hop, uniting these traditions into a singular musical voice.

Through acoustic, creative, improvisational, collaborative ensemble music, she brings diverse communities together through multigenerational and interdisciplinary collaboration. Carol has toured the U.S., Canada, Italy, Germany, and France, and her work has been featured in the Oakland Museum of California exhibit Oakland, I Want You to Know and the documentary film Evolutionary Blues.

She has been honored with proclamations of “Faye Carol Day” by the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, along with awards recognizing her artistry and public service. A prolific recording artist, Carol has released over a dozen projects including Forever Dynamic (2026).

She has shared stages and studios with legendary artists across genres and generations including Marvin Gaye, KRS-One, Taj Mahal, Albert King, Pharoah Sanders, Otis Redding, Sun Ra, Joan Baez, Twista, and Robert Randolph. A