A dozen Philadelphia artists have just been named Pew Fellows in the Arts, including three musicians working in and around improvised music: drummer-composers Mikel Patrick Avery, Tyshawn Sorey and Chad Taylor. Each will receive $85,000 in unrestricted funds, professional resources and opportunities to partake in artist residencies.
For Sorey, 44, the Pew Fellowship follows a tidal surge of acclaim. A composer and percussionist whose work spans contemporary classical music as well as modern jazz, he won the Pulitzer Prize in Music this year, and is the recipient of past fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, among others. His next album, The Susceptible Now, will be released on Oct. 11; it features his most jazz-forward project, a trio with pianist Aaron Diehl and bassist Harish Raghavan. Sorey has also just been announced as an artist in residence at the 2025 Big Ears Festival, happening in March.
As with Sorey, it’s insufficient to describe Mikel Patrick Avery, 42, as a drummer, though he’s best known for playing that role in Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society. Avery also builds and performs with electronic instruments; his latest release, NUMMER, features improvised drones on a Casio keyboard. He’s also a photographer and filmmaker, and an inveterate tinkerer. “I consider it all to be one practice,” he told Perfect Circuit in a recent interview. “Filmmaking, music, building, designing, it all utilizes the same thing at its root, which is creative problem solving.”
Chad Taylor, 51, is another artist with an unclassifiable profile: he’s a bandleader and founding co-leader of Chicago Underground, with cornetist Rob Mazurek. He has collaborated with many other leading figures in experimental jazz, including tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, guitarists Marc Ribot and Jeff Parker, and the late trumpeter Jaimie Branch. Earlier this year, Taylor was named the William S. Dietrich II Endowed Chair in Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where he now serves as artistic director of the Jazz Studies Program.
Even as he settles into his first semester there, Taylor and his family continue to reside in Philadelphia. “Right now I’m living in two different places,” he tells WRTI, speaking on the Pitt campus last week. “I’m living in Pittsburgh and I’m also living in Philly. And people are like, ‘Chad, how can you do that commute?’ And I say, ‘Listen, you have to realize I’ve been commuting to Europe for like 30 years. So going back and forth between Pittsburgh and Philly, that’s nothing to me, you know what I mean?”
Taylor does indeed have a history of movement, as someone closely associated with Chicago and also rooted for some 20 years in New York City. He has lived in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia for the last eight years. “Once I moved to Philly,” he says, “it’s really the first place where I felt at home — like, ‘OK, this is feeling like a home base,’ in a way that Chicago and New York never did.”
Along with the artist grants, this year’s Pew Center for Arts & Heritage beneficiaries include 18 local arts and heritage organizations. Some are being recognized as part of a new “Evolving Futures” award, which goes to organizations actively adapting their operating and business models; among them are Opera Philadelphia and People’s Light. The Crossing has also received Pew funding to commission a four-movement choral work that addresses climate change and the rise in natural disasters.
“We’re delighted to continue our longstanding support for individual artists and creative projects as well as to introduce the Evolving Futures grants this year,” says Paula Marincola, executive director of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. “We are particularly gratified to offer important risk capital to address crucial operational issues through this new funding platform while also supporting vibrant programs for many different audiences and communities.”
Visit The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage online for more information about its grants.
