New Music Education students just scored with grant for spring festival

The Heidelberg New Music Association (HNMA) is hitting all the right notes!

This summer, student HNMA members and their advisor, Dr. Matthew Kennedy, were thrilled to score a $3,784 ArtSTART matching grant from the Ohio Arts Council. The funding will help set the stage for the debut of the 1st Biennial New Music Festival & Symposium this spring.

“I’m really excited for them and what this means for the program,” Matthew said. He added that he has worked with graduate students on grant writing projects in the past, but never undergrads – which makes their success that much sweeter.

Even better, the lion’s share of the winning proposal came straight from the group. Seniors Steeve Gaietto and Sarah Jewell, along with ’25 grad Jacob Reuter, dove into writing the narrative for the grant for the first time and crushed it.

They agree it was a hugely collaborative effort, and credit Jacob for initiating their involvement and coordinating the effort. Steeve and Sarah split up the writing, which was no easy task.

“It was so hard because I have a different style of writing,” Sarah said. The process unfolded when she discovered the trick: writing about what people don’t know about our community. That had an unexpected benefit. After her Tiffin research, she feels like she knows the area better, “which is so cool.”

Editing – condensing, to be specific – was also key. “There was so much that we could have written, so they had to learn what was needed and not needed,” Matthew noted.

Once they figured out the content, the process was smooth sailing. “The fact that our group is so young and we’ve already accomplished something so great was amazing,” Steeve said. The HNMA was approved as a student organization in the spring of 2024.

According to Matthew, the grant funds will help offset some of the costs of bringing musicians to campus as guest artists for the New Music Festival in March. By virtue of receiving this grant, the HNMA will be eligible to apply for a larger (up to $10,000) grant in the next funding cycle.

The process will also have an unanticipated benefit for the students, who will take the new skills they learned with them into their professional careers. “I know this is going to be beneficial for them post-Heidelberg,” Matthew said. “It is something that music educators should be doing in 2025 and beyond.”
Sarah added, “As a future music educator, grant writing will be a huge part of my job. I’ll be able to talk about it in job interviews and it will be important to ensure that arts programming still gets adequate funding.”

About the New Music Festival

Mark your calendars for March 26–28, when Heidelberg’s campus comes alive with the New Music Festival — a dynamic collaboration between the New Music Association and the School of Music & Theatre. The three-day event will showcase groundbreaking contemporary music and scholarship with five free public concerts, including winning works from the international Call for Scores and Presentations. Symposium sessions will dive into cutting-edge topics in music and pedagogy.

The lineup is stacked with talent: chamber ensembles Neonautica (New Orleans), Tower Duo (Columbus), andPlay (Brooklyn, N.Y.), along with acclaimed soloists Marianne Parker and Michael Hall (Chicago). Headlining the festival as keynote artist is award-winning composer Stacy Garrop.