Cleveland Institute of Music Announces Future of Music Faculty Fellows

The fellowship is a career development initiative for Black and Latinx music professionals currently in academia

35 fellows were chosen as the inaugural cohort of the Cleveland Institute of Music Future of Music Faculty Fellowship. The fellows are Black and Latinx professional musicians, graduate students, adjunct and junior faculty, and scholars in jazz, performance, pedagogy, and other disciplines.

The program, supported by the Sphinx Venture Fund and provided at no cost to fellows, aims to prepare future faculty leaders through a curriculum and personalized mentorship from June 2021 to January 2022. 

"In every academic position I held, I was 'the first,'" fellowship faculty member José Bowen told Broadway World. “Other people could help and guide me, but there was never anyone who looked like me to get real with. This is an opportunity to be surrounded by people who 'get it' and to help each other be our best authentic selves as we break barriers.”

Fellows will participate in a series of virtual events — including keynotes by Wynton Marsalis, Angela Duckworth, Ronald Crutcher, and Simon Sinek — in addition to other leaders from The Juilliard School to the Heifetz Institute. They will also attend an in-person event in January 2022, coinciding with SphinxConnect.

“We hope that the Future of Music Faculty Fellowship will spark important dialogue, motivate action, elevate musicians of color into tenured professorships and ultimately accelerate positive change,” Afa Dworkin, president of the Sphinx Organization, wrote in a press release on the CIM website when the program was first announced earlier this year.

A full list of fellows can be found on the CIM website.