Long-standing contemporary classical ensemble Third Angle New Music announced today that they've won a $25,000 grant from the MAP Fund, the New York-based organization that, for the past three decades, has provided funds for original live performance projects.

The money will be used by Third Angle to help fund their staging of Sanctuaries, a “jazz-classical chamber opera” written by Portland Jazz Master and PSU instructor Darrell Grant with a libretto by two-time National Poetry Slam Champion Anis Mojgani. According to Third Angle, the work focuses on “personal stories from the Albina neighborhood” while challenging “Portland as a community to truly listen to and acknowledge marginalized voices while addressing issues of white privilege, racial equity and inclusion, and economic disparity.”

In a statement released through Third Angle’s Twitter account, Grant gave his thanks to the MAP Fund, saying, “As I dig into the writing this summer, I am affirmed in the knowledge that this kind of community-driven, ambitious work is being given a place among the upper levels of artistic support.”

The premiere of Sanctuaries will happen in April 2020 with three performances at the North Warehouse on 732 N Tillamook. Those events are part of Third Angle’s 2019-20 season, which also includes an appearance by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw and In Wildness, an evening of music inspired by our current global warming crisis that features, among others, pieces by John Luther Adams, Eleanor Alberga, and Nancy Ives.

Third Angle was the only Oregon-based arts organization to get the nod from the MAP Fund, but the Northwest arts scene did get some additional shine. Included among the 42 grant recipients this year was Seattle-based Earshot Jazz, who will receive $45,000 to support Paul Rucker’s That Nice Black Neighborhood, a series of events to be held around the US at locations that, according to the artist's statement, "were once economically vibrant Black neighborhoods that were later destroyed by White mobs.”