IOCSF AWARDED $25,000 GRANT FROM THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
ADD YOUR STORY | NEA GRANT PRESS RELEASE
Help match our grant from the National Endowment for the Arts!
The International Orange Chorale of San Francisco (IOCSF) is pleased to announce it has been approved by the National Endowmentfor the Arts (NEA) for a Grants for Arts Projects award of $25,000. This grant will support IOCSF’s commission of a new work by world-renowned composer Tarik O'Regan, “Requiem for the Estranged,” which explores mourning complicated relationships and estrangement from the past, and whose text will be sourced from the stories of our community. (See below for how you can contribute your story.)
San Francisco has long been a city of refuge and reinvention for many who have been estranged from their families or displaced from their lives for a multitude of reasons. People have come to San Francisco for generations to escape political, religious, economic, and/or social oppression and persecution; or simply to find new opportunities while leaving behind past lives that asked us to existing ways at odds with ourselves and our values. This piece aims to explore the ways in which the bold personal decisions we make in the name of social justice and a complete sense of self have ramifications that last throughout our lives.
Contribute your stories to “Requiem for the Estranged”
We are working with composer Tarik O'Regan on a new commission titled "Requiem for the Estranged,” which will explore mourning complicated relationships and estrangement from the past.
Estrangement is a complex, multi-faceted range of emotions that can often stir up complicated feelings when we confront a past that is no longer our current reality. Those feelings can include intense grief, shame, and isolation, among a range of others.
But we are not alone in our experiences of estrangement. Our aim with this new choral work is to tell stories of estrangement within our community to reflect back the often unspoken impact of the difficult but necessary choices we make in the name of our safety, social justice, and progress. Through this piece, we hope to offer the opportunity of some solace for those of us experiencing estrangement from a past that no longer fits our shared values.
We are asking you to contribute your stories and your voices below to help create a new work of art that speaks to the unique grief that is created through estrangement in all of its forms.