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Institutional donors to the Center for Jazz Studies

In 2006-07, the Center for Jazz Studies received significant contributions from new and continuing institutional partners. These contributions constitute the most significant funding of any 12-month period in the Center’s eight-year history.

The Ford Foundation

It was the generous support of the Ford Foundation that first funded the Jazz Study Group in 1994 – the group that led to the creation of the Center for Jazz Studies in 1999, also with Ford Foundation funding. Over the past year, Ford has announced two grants totaling $1 million to the Center. The first, a $500,000 challenge grant, must be matched one-to-one by contributions designated to establish a permanent endowment for the Center. A second grant of $500,000 grant was announced in June 2007. These grants will underwrite the Center’s teaching and research functions, as well as the costs of launching Jazz Studies Online, a web-based knowledge center that will make jazz scholarship accessible to diverse communities around the globe. The Center for Jazz Studies is developing this resource in partnership with the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC) and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL).

New York State Music Fund

In December 2006, the New York State Music Fund announced a $300,000 grant to the Center to create the ColumbiaHarlemJazzProject. In collaboration with the Harlem Arts Alliance, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Studies, Community Works, and the New Heritage Theatre Group, among others, this Project, over a two-year period, will be presenting leading jazz artists in public programs that explore and interpret jazz music from a variety of perspectives, in a community where the roots of jazz run as deeply as any in the world.

The New York State Music Fund was established by the New York State Attorney General and is administered by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation

This consistent, long-time supporter has renewed its support of the Center with a $179,000 grant. This funding will once again underwrite the Louis Armstrong Visiting Professor at the Center for Jazz Studies, as well as the Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program, which encompasses eight student performance ensembles, nine music associates who provide private lessons, and a visiting artist program.