National Endowment for the Arts acting chairman Joan Shigekawa announced that The Princeton Festival is one of 886 nonprofit organizations nationwide and 12 in New Jersey to receive an NEA Art Works grant.
The Festival is recommended for a $15,000 grant in support of its June production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.
Porgy and Bess is the centerpiece of The Princeton Festival’s 2014 season, titled The New World: Voices of the Americas.
Gershwin called Porgy and Bess “opera for the theater.” It is a meld of jazz, Tin Pan Alley, and European classical tradition. Full of humanity’s laughter, struggles and tragedies, it contains American standards, like Summertime and It Ain’t Necessarily So.
Performances of Porgy and Bess are scheduled for 3 p.m. June 22 and 29 and 8 p.m. June 27. The performance will be accompanied throughout the month with free lectures focusing on the social history, art, and literature of the period in which Porgy and Bess was written, and musical previews with principal artists and the production’s directors.
Art Works grants support the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and enhancement of the livability of communities through the arts. The NEA received 1,515 eligible applications under the Art Works category, requesting more than $76 million in funding. Of those applications, 886 are recommended for grants for a total of $25.8 million.
Now in its 10th anniversary season, The Princeton Festival is set to run June 7 to June 29 at venues throughout the Princeton area, offering a wide variety of musical performances, including jazz, chamber music, a cappella jazz, puppet theater, world music with Cuban roots, a piano recital, and a piano competition for young artists.
More information is online at princetonfestival.org.
