BMI Foundation Announces Recipients of New Music Grants
Non-Profit Music Organizations Across United States to Receive over $400,000 in Funding over Three Years
L-R: New Music Grant Recipient Organizations Haida Roots, Seal Bay Festival, Luna Composition Lab (Photo by Colleen Brostek), Elementz, Hear Your Song, and Building Beats
NEW YORK, NY - July 1, 2026 - BMI Foundation, Inc. has announced the recipients of the 2026-2029 New Music Grants, which provide three years of unrestricted funding to non-profit organizations across the United States. Selected organizations include new music presenters and organizations which provide education in songwriting and composition to students in K-12 schools.
The 2026-2029 recipient organizations are:
Alarm Will Sound
AMP (The Artist Mentorship Program)
Boston Modern Orchestra Project
Building Beats
Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music
Copland House
D-Composed
Eighth Blackbird
Ekmeles
Elementz
Ensemble Dal Niente
Girls Write Nashville
Haida Roots
Hear Your Song
JACK Quartet
K4K in Harmony
Luna Composition Lab
Musicambia
New Music Institute of Kansas City (newEar)
New Music On The Point
Opportunity Music Project
Present Music
Rawkstars
Seal Bay Festival
Talea Ensemble
The Crossing
The Jazz Gallery
The MusicianShip
Third Coast Percussion
Voices of Change
Wet Ink Ensemble
Established in the 1980s, the New Music Grants Program is the BMI Foundation’s flagship organizational grant program. Since its inception, the Foundation has given millions of dollars in general operating support to small budget 501(c)3 organizations specializing in the creation and performance of new American music as well as music education across the United States. In a major update to the program, the Foundation has extended these grants to be renewable over three years. Organizations must have budgets under two million dollars, and can receive up to two consecutive cycles (six years) of support.
Artistic Consultants for the 2026 New Music Grants included Dan Atkinson (Athenaeum Music & Arts Library), Jennie Oh Brown (Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras), Neil Gillis (CollectivRights Management), Eric Jacobsen (Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra), Aaron Jay Kernis (Yale University), Jennifer Kessler (CANVAS), David T. Little (Mannes School of Music), Lucy Shelton (Manhattan School of Music), Matthew Evan Taylor (University of California, Berkeley), Raff Wilson (Seattle Symphony), Lidiya Yankovskaya (Chicago Opera Theater), and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.
About the Recipient Organizations
Alarm Will Sound | New York, NY
Alarm Will Sound is a GRAMMY®-winning 22-member band committed to innovative performances and recordings of today's music.With classical skill and unlimited curiosity, Alarm Will Sound takes on music from a wide variety of styles. Its repertoire ranges from European to American works, from the arch-modernist to the pop-influenced. Alarm Will Sound has been associated since its inception with composers at the forefront of contemporary music, premiering pieces by Steve Reich, Meredith Monk, Tyshawn Sorey, David Lang, John Adams, Mary Kouyoumdjian, John Luther Adams, Marcos Balter, and Augusta Read Thomas among others. The group itself includes many composer-performers, which allows for an unusual degree of insight into the creation and performance of new work. Alarm Will Sound is the resident ensemble at the Mizzou International Composers Festival.
AMP (The Artist Mentorship Program) | Portland, OR
For more than 30 years, AMP - Artist Mentorship Program has supported youth experiencing homelessness in Portland, Oregon. AMP provides young people ages 15–25 with a low-barrier drop-in center focused on music, creativity, and community. Youth have access to recording studios, beat production, songwriting, audio engineering, live performance opportunities, and mentorship from musicians and artists, alongside hot meals, hygiene and harm reduction supplies, and referrals to housing and support services. Built on trust and consistency, AMP’s relationship-based model empowers youth through creative expression, helping them build confidence, connection, technical skills, and pathways toward greater stability and opportunity.
Boston Modern Orchestra Project | Boston, MA
The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is the premier orchestra in the United States dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A unique institution of crucial artistic importance to today’s musical world, BMOP exists to disseminate exceptional orchestral music and opera of the present and recent past via performances and recordings of the highest caliber.
Building Beats | New York, NY & Los Angeles, CA
Building Beats equips underserved youth in NYC and LA with technical, leadership, and entrepreneurial skills through hands-on music and creative technology programs—bridging the gap between creative passion and professional access to create pathways to sustainable careers in the global creative economy. Since 2013, we have worked with 12,600+ youth through 250+ partnerships with schools, community centers, and homeless shelters. Our impact is driven by two distinct programs: bbWorkshops, which provides K-12 students with hands-on, artist-led training in music production, DJing, and music-coding; and bbLeaders, which offers young adults (16-24) access to technical training, workforce development, mentorship, and post-secondary pathways in creative industries.
Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music | Santa Cruz, CA
Cabrillo Festival is America’s preeminent and longest-standing festival dedicated solely to new music for orchestra. An annual two-week event in Santa Cruz, CA, the Festival brings together a world-class orchestra of professional new music specialists, composers, and guest artists from around the world to present a series of concerts and free public programs celebrating new symphonic music by living composers, most of whom are in residence. 2026 marks Music Director Cristian Măcelaru’s 10th year conducting the Cabrillo Festival orchestra, as the Festival prepares for his full 10th anniversary celebration in 2027. He follows a distinguished roster of artistic directors including Music Director Laureate Marin Alsop, John Adams, Dennis Russell Davies, Carlos Chávez, and Gerhard Samuel. The Festival has presented hundreds of world, U.S., and West Coast premieres involving the participation of more than nearly 400 composers on the mainstage, plus more than 60 emerging composers from its Conductors/Composers Workshop. Cabrillo Festival has commissioned more than 50 works over the past fifteen years.
Copland House | Peekskill, NY
An award-winning creative center for American music based at legendary composer Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark home and at its vast new satellite venue at Bluestone Farm, both in New York’s Lower Hudson Valley, Copland House welcomes and collaborates with artistic dreamers and game-changing cultural innovators of all backgrounds and identities. Celebrating America’s vibrant cultural legacy and championing the nation’s creative promise, Copland House’s wide-ranging programs singularly embrace the entire artistic process. From creation and development to study, performance, and preservation, its activities are built upon three core components – multi-faceted composer support, live and recorded performances, and educational initiatives activities – that resonate far beyond its walls, nationally and globally.
D-Composed | Chicago, ILD-Composed is a Chicago-based Black chamber music collective that celebrates Black culture and creativity through the music of Black composers. The Chicago-based ensemble with global impact has been presented by Apple, Theaster Gates’ Rebuild Foundation, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, TUCCA in São Paulo, Brazil, the Kaufman Music Center in New York, and TEDx. While merging the worlds of contemporary music and classical, they’ve collaborated with esteemed artists, including Jessie Montgomery, Jlin, Silkroad Ensemble, Angel Bat Dawid, jamila woods, Davóne Tines, Sudan Archives, Plínio Fernandes, Chassol, and New York Times Bestselling Author Tricia Hersey. In the Fall of 2025, D-Composed was named one of the inaugural creative partners at artist Theaster Gates’ & The Rebuild Foundation’s latest space-based project, The Land School.
Eighth Blackbird | Chicago, IL
Eighth Blackbird moves music forward through innovative performance, advocacy for music by living creatives, and its growing legacy of guiding an emerging generation of artists. Accolades include: Four Grammy Awards for Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance | The MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions | The Concert Artists Guild Competition Grand Prize | The Musical America Ensemble of the Year | The Chamber Music America Visionary Award ||| Creative Output Includes: Chamber Ensemble Commissions and World Premieres | Theatrical Music Productions | Chamber Concertos with both Orchestras and Bands | An Extensive Recording Catalog ||| Mission-driven Initiatives: Eighth Blackbird | The Blackbird Creative Lab | The Chicago Artists Workshop | Artists-in-Residence with the Athenaeum Center for Thought and Culture.
Ekmeles | New York, NY
The mission of Ekmeles is to present new and rarely-heard works for small vocal ensemble, and to collaborate with instrumental ensembles performing similar repertoire. Given the flexibility of tuning afforded by unaccompanied singing, Ekmeles has a special focus on commissioning and performing works in non-standard tuning systems, and exploring historical tunings and temperaments. Our work in this realm has included Italian madrigals in a 31-tone 15th century keyboard tuning, and world premieres by composers including Georg Friedrich Haas and Catherine Lamb.
Elementz | Cincinnati, OH
Elementz is Cincinnati’s premier Hip Hop Cultural Art Center. Founded in 2002 as a direct response to the killing of Timothy Thomas, a young black man, and the social unrest in Over-the-Rhine that followed, Elementz was created to give voice to young people in the urban core and to disrupt the status quo, encouraging positive community engagement. Today, Elementz continues to embrace and leverage the richness of Hip Hop culture, helping the young people we serve become catalysts of change and engage in creative futures. We work to intentionally Preserve, Protect, and Advance Hip Hop as an art form, culture, and a global economic and creative force, while helping our young people prepare for sustainable and equitable futures. Elementz programming authentically reflects the foundational creative expressions of Hip Hop Culture through dance, DJ-ing, music production, creative writing, and graffiti art.
Ensemble Dal Niente | Chicago, IL
Ensemble Dal Niente performs, develops, and sustains new and experimental music for small to large chamber ensemble. We are dedicated to growing relationships with artists, composers, and listeners; advancing distinct and challenging musical voices; and sharing that work with our Chicago, U.S., and international communities.
Girls Write Nashville | Nashville, TN
Girls Write Nashville is an artist- and educator-led 501(c)(3) creative youth development organization empowering expression through songwriting, music production, mentorship, and creative community for teen artists in Nashville, TN. Founded in 2016 as a one-time community arts project, the organization grew into a nonprofit after its first nine students asked to return the following year. Today, Girls Write Nashville serves nearly 200 students annually through free, trauma-informed, culturally responsive music programs in partnership with community schools and local organizations. Grounded in research around Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs), protective factors, and pre-clinical psychosocial wellbeing, Girls Write Nashville creates restorative creative communities that support identity, belonging, confidence, and connection through music and cultural participation. Its work has been featured on NPR’s Here & Now, named Best of Nashville “Best Teen Programming,” and recognized as a semi-finalist for the Lewis Prize for Music.
Haida Roots | Seattle, WA
Haida Roots is a 501c3 organization based in Seattle, WA. We are committed to preserving our critically endangered Xaad kíl (Haida language) for future generations through songs and stories. We will do this by recording many new song compositions in the Haida language and learning old songs from audio that Haida Elders made in the 1970s & 1980s. We share our language, art, songs and stories with all cultures and people's starting with our own. We also host online and in person language learning opportunities such as singing classes for young children, storytelling events and art classes.
Hear Your Song | Various
Hear Your Song empowers youth living with serious illnesses and complex health needs to make their voices heard through songwriting. At the heart of Hear Your Song's work is a "kid-driven," totally individualized process that puts every child and teen in our community — youth who live with physical and mental health diagnoses that so often deprive them of power and choice — in complete creative control. Since 2020, Hear Your Song has supported over 700 youth songwriters to write, compose, record, and produce nearly 1,000 songs.
JACK Quartet | New York, NY
Founded in 2005, JACK Quartet is dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of 20th and 21st century string quartet music. Through more than 40 performances a year in New York, the US, and internationally, JACK Quartet invites audiences to dive deeply into an astonishing variety of new music compositions and engage with musical practices from a staggering range of stylistic viewpoints. Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK Quartet enters their third decade as a pioneering string quartet synchronized in their mission to create an international community through transformative, mind-broadening experiences and close listening.
K4K in Harmony | New Orleans, LA
K4K in Harmony (formerly Koats for Kids) is a New Orleans-based nonprofit dedicated to empowering system-impacted youth through trauma-informed songwriting and instrumental programs. Founded in 2009 by cellist and educator Dr. Jee Yeoun Ko and the late Ellis Marsalis, the organization began as a community coat drive concert featuring local musicians and has grown into a year-round initiative serving youth facing poverty, housing instability, and trauma, while remaining open to any young person seeking access to music. Through songwriting and composition workshops alongside instrumental instruction, students build confidence, develop their creative voice, and form meaningful connections with professional teaching artists, creating a safe space for expression, growth, and hope.
Luna Composition Lab | New York, NY
Founded in 2016 by composers Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid, Luna Composition Lab’s mission is to close the gender gap in music composition through mentorship, performance opportunities, and sustained professional community. By empowering young female, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming composers ages 13 to 18 at a formative moment – while actively working to dismantle structural barriers to participation – Luna Lab provides a model of inclusivity that reshapes individual artistic lives and expands the future of the field itself.
Musicambia | New York, NY
Musicambia (“music” + “change”) helps people in prison and jail write, play, and perform music, cultivating collaborative communities that benefit the health and well-being of everyone involved. Musicambia operates educational programs at Sing Sing, Bedford Hills, Fishkill, and Eastern Correctional Facilities in New York State; Rikers Island in New York City; and prisons in Kansas and California, annually reaching 125 incarcerated participants, and audiences of over 200 incarcerated people for concerts. Musicambia's Teaching Artists hold positions in the Attacca Quartet and Imani Winds, and teach at the New School, Curtis, Princeton, and Peabody. They have won GRAMMY awards, and collaborated with Pulitzer-Prize winners.
newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble | Kansas City, MO
newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble is a professional chamber music ensemble featuring the music of living composers. Our concerts often blur the boundaries of classical art music, rock, jazz, world music, and the avant-garde. Other artistic disciplines are often part of newEar performances— you may see dance, visual arts, or theatre in the mix. We strive to bring Kansas City the most eclectic and cutting-edge creative trends of the twenty-first century. newEar has been the leading contemporary chamber ensemble in Kansas City since 1992. We invite you to join us, listen, and experience the music of our time.
New Music On The Point | Leicester, VT
New Music On The Point, Inc. offers an intensive and unique learning opportunity to composers and performers of contemporary music in the early stages of their careers, in a beautiful and isolated Vermont lakefront setting. A vibrant creative collaborative energy of innovation is characteristic of the festival, an educational experience designed to strengthen skills and to support these developing artists as they come together to create, network, perform, and share new work.
Opportunity Music Project | New York, NY
Opportunity Music Project’s mission is to provide the opportunity for all children, regardless of economic background, to pursue their passion for music, gain valuable personal and collaborative skills associated with the rigors of learning an instrument, and be engaged in an inclusive community. Students at OMP receive private lessons, training in orchestral studies, music theory, composition, choir, and chamber music, and have access to elite mentorship and performances by premier artists, all on full scholarship.
Present Music | Milwaukee, WI
For 44 years, Milwaukee-based Present Music has engaged audiences with imaginative, provocative new music. As a champion of living composers, the nationally acclaimed ensemble has commissioned over 100 works, released 18 CDs, and hosted over 20 live streams. This innovation earned them ASCAP’s Adventurous Programming Award six times. Notably, their commission of Raven Chacon’s Voiceless Mass won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize. Led by Artistic Director Eric Segnitz and Conductor David Bloom, they perform six to ten annual concerts. Present Music maintains a strong global profile, and in recent years toured nationally and internationally, including performances across Japan, China, and Turkey.
Rawkstars | Massachusetts & Rhode Island
Rawkstars, Inc. is a creative youth development nonprofit that provides 100% free music programs for kids across New England. We see access to music as a fundamental human right, akin to clean drinking water, healthcare, and public education. Founded in 2003, Rawkstars supports over 325+ students annually. Our programs are rooted in community and the voices of the youth we serve: Rawk Enroll: 100% free instruments, music lessons, and performance opportunities for kids; Beats, Bars & Beyond: Music-making and career development tools for incarcerated youth; Band Together: Collaborative music making with community partners; Harmony & Hustle: Creative entrepreneurship transforming passion into careers.
Seal Bay Festival | Bowdoinham, Maine
The mission of the Seal Bay Festival is to make American chamber music a living experience for general audiences, conservatory and post-graduate level composers, seniors, and school children in Maine, where there is little exposure to contemporary music. The SBF fosters a vital, mutually stimulating relationship among leading and emerging composers, passionate interpreters, visual artists, and local audiences through engaged community activity and public performance.
Talea Ensemble | New York, NY
Recipient of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the Talea Ensemble has brought to life at least 80 commissions of major new works since it was founded in 2008, including bold and inventive productions combining music and other genres. Aside from a robust NYC performance season, festival engagements have included the Lincoln Center Festival, Donaueschingen Musiktage, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Warsaw Autumn, Wien Modern, Vancouver New Music, Time of Music Finland, TIME:SPANS, NY Philharmonic Artist Spotlight Series, and many more. Talea’s recordings have been distributed worldwide on the KAIROS, Wergo, Gravina Musica, Tzadik, Innova, and New World Records labels. Talea actively supports early-career composers through US school residencies, a commissioning program, and a composer recording workshop.
The Crossing | Philadelphia, PA
The Crossing is a four-time Grammy winning professional chamber choir with 40 album releases, conducted by Donald Nally, that sings only new music, bringing together creative teams to imagine, present, and record new, substantial works for choir that look at the world and our place in it. Often using a journalistic approach to text curation, The Crossing commissions music from living composers on topics of our time that explore and expand ways of writing for choir, singing in choir, and listening to music for choir.
The Jazz Gallery | New York, NY
The Jazz Gallery is America’s premier performance venue for emerging artists who challenge convention, take creative risks and lead their field as performers, composers and thinkers. Through residencies, commissions, performances, and exhibitions, we provide a platform for artists to discover their unique voice and a home for established musicians to continue to experiment and grow while being committed to removing barriers to participation and to advancing a diverse representation of cultural backgrounds. At The Jazz Gallery, artists and audiences come together from around the world to explore new creative ideas, collaborate and celebrate jazz as a dynamic art form that reflects our ever-changing world.
The MusicianShip | Washington, DC
The MusicianShip empowers youth and emerging musicians throughout the Washington, DC region through free music education and enrichment programs that build skills, amplify talent, and create positive life-changing outcomes. Founded in 2009, The MusicianShip provides out-of-school-time vocal, instrumental, digital music, and music industry workforce development programs for young people ages 6-24, with a focus on communities where access to high-quality arts education is limited. Through school-year and summer programs, student showcases, the Washington Youth Choir, and the Wammie Awards, The MusicianShip connects youth with teaching artists, mentors, and real-world creative opportunities.
Third Coast Percussion | Chicago, IL
Third Coast Percussion is Chicago’s GRAMMY® Award-winning percussion quartet. For more than twenty years, the ensemble has forged a unique path in the musical landscape with virtuosic, energetic performances that celebrate the extraordinary depth and breadth of musical possibilities in the world of percussion. Through over 100 commissioned works, diverse collaborations, tours across four continents, dozens of recordings and thoughtful educational programming, TCP has pursued its mission of inspiring and educating through the creation of exciting and unexpected musical experiences.
Voices of Change | Dallas, TX
Voices of Change performs, celebrates, and advances new chamber music in the city of Dallas and across North Texas. Dedicated to the music of our time, we promote contemporary composers through performance, commissioning, recording, and education. We curate thematic programs that place new works in meaningful artistic context, fostering deeper audience engagement and dialogue. Our work amplifies diverse creative voices and demonstrates how contemporary chamber music can illuminate urgent issues, inspire reflection, and strengthen connections between artists, audiences, and the broader community.
Wet Ink Ensemble | New York, NY
The Wet Ink Ensemble is a composer-performer collective that has been presenting innovative performances of adventurous contemporary music for over 25 years. Our mission is to present a broad range of compelling contemporary music at the highest artistic level - working closely with composers on developing new work, collaborating with visionary performers, advocating for underrepresented artists, and engaging with the public through live concerts, recordings, and online programs.
About the BMI Foundation, Inc.
The BMI Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1985 to encourage the creation, performance, and study of American music. The Foundation’s programs include competitive scholarships for songwriters and composers, operating grants for nonprofit arts presenters, and support for innovative music education initiatives in schools and communities across the country. For more information about the work of the Foundation, please visit our website at www.bmifoundation.org. For exclusive news and content, follow @bmifoundation on Instagram and like BMI Foundation on Facebook.
