Project Inclusion Freeman Fellowship IN COMPOSING

Project Inclusion started in 2008 to provide promising, diverse musicians mentorship and growth. The goal is to identify, train, and ready orchestra musicians beginning their pursuit of a professional career—musicians from diverse backgrounds including, but not limited to, diverse racial, ethnic, socio-economic and geographic backgrounds, that are traditionally under-represented in orchestras.

Introduced in the 2020-2021 season, the Freeman Composing Fellowship was created to include emerging composers best suited to the program's criteria and offerings. Composing fellows are given multiple opportunities to learn, workshop, and share the craft of composition with leading composers throughout the nation. They also receive extensive mentoring, technical training, and workshop activities spread out over the course of the fellowship. Sessions include Sibelius, Musicscore, and Finale software training, contract negotiations, management skills in marketing, programming, fundraising, and finance, mock compositional pitches, as well as more nuanced discussions on cultivating diversity, and leadership.

The fellowship will culminate in a longer commissioned piece to be performed by Chicago Sinfonietta at the season finale to the 21.22 Season.