Grant Programs

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Grant 2025/26

The Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies invites proposals for a grant award of $1,500 for an outstanding scholarly or creative project that fosters diversity, equity, and inclusion either within the keyboard field generally or within a particular community. This competitive grant, awarded on a yearly basis, may be used to support research, publication, performance, projects related to instrument building or restoration, a commission, or another kind of keyboard-related creative activity. Applicants are encouraged to include a community engagement component as part of their project.

Applicants, who may be individuals or a collaborative team, are asked to submit the following materials compiled as one .pdf file with the applicant’s name on each page: (1) a 600-word-maximum project proposal that identifies the nature, scope, merits, and impact of the work and explains how it addresses diversity, equity, and/or inclusion in terms of process, engagement, and intended outcomes; (2) a one-page (maximum) budget and timeline for the project; 3) a c.v. summary, biography, or organizational history that bespeaks your qualifications for the proposed project (maximum 2 pages in 12-point font). Inquiries and submissions should be addressed to info@westfield.org.

Deadline: September 1, 2025

Notification: November 1, 2025

Past Awardees

2024

AWARDEE: Aruna Kharod

Over the past year, the Westfield Center supported my research into histories, texts, and performance lineages of the pedal harmonium in present-day western India. The project began with ethnographic research harmonium players in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra that took me across various royal courts (Rajpipla and Baroda, Gujarat), museums and private instrument collections, and eventually led to the discovery of pedal harmonium teaching manuals from the early 1900s in Indian archives. While the box-style seated harmonium has been studied in more depth due to its popularity in South Asian musics, this grant supported research into the pedal harmonium, whose once-vibrant performance histories and cultures are now largely forgotten. The resulting publication is a chapter that I have submitted (currently under review) on the multilingual musical texts, cultural history, and performance legacies of the pedal harmonium in western Indian popular and courtly musics before Partition. This work offers new insights about South Asian popular music, musical theater, and instrumental music pedagogy in late colonial India (1850-1947) in the context of South Asian histories and ethno/musicology.

2023

AWARDEE: Thomas Feng, Ph.D. student at Cornell University.
SUMMARY: Thomas applied the Westfield DEI grant toward digitizing "a collection of historical analog recordings by the Ethiopian composer, pianist, and nun, Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru." Feng's dissertation topic is on Emahoy’s life and music. He writes, “As Emahoy has been the sole performer of her own music until the past ten years, the recordings provide an indispensable reference of her own playing style and important context as to how to read her idiosyncratically notated scores. Previously, these recordings had not all been digitized to a consistent quality, with some at transferred at the wrong speed, very low volume, or lossy file formats. Especially as some of the tape recordings are decades old and have begun to deteriorate, it’s imperative that they are preserved soon and handled with great care.”

AWARDEE: Rebecca Cypess, Professor of Music and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
TITLE: A Portrait of Ignatius Sancho: Music and Letters of an Eighteenth-Century Black Englishman.
SUMMARY: Rebecca received support to commission "a new song cycle for voice and eighteenth-century English square piano by the New Jersey-based African American composer Trevor Weston (b. 1967)." The songs were completed in August 2023.
She writes, "The texts for the songs are drawn from the posthumously published correspondence of the Black British writer and composer Ignatius Sancho (ca. 1729–1780). My collaborator, soprano Sonya Headlam, and I will perform and record Weston’s newly composed songs as part of a larger program by the Raritan Players that includes Sancho’s own songs and instrumental dance pieces. Sancho will thus appear in this program as both composer and textual author. Weston’s compositions will use this historic piano and Sancho’s texts to illuminate the continued relevance of Sancho’s story in our own day."

The Barbara Owen Research Grant

A lifelong member of the Westfield Center, Barbara Owen made immense contributions to our understanding of the organ and its music. She was especially known for her scholarship on the American organ and organists, and she co-wrote the Grove Dictionary article on the organ, a standard reference work. To honor her memory, the Westfield Center will award a $2000 $2000 grant for research into historical keyboard instruments (organ, harpsichord, clavichord, fortepiano). The research may culminate in a scholarly article or other format for presenting the information.

Applicants are asked to submit the following materials compiled as one .pdf file with the applicant’s name on each page: (1) a 600-word-maximum project proposal that identifies the nature, scope, merits, and impact of the work and explains how it addresses historical performance practice at the keyboard ; (2) a one-page (maximum) budget and timeline for the project; 3) a c.v. summary, biography, or organizational history that bespeaks your qualifications for the proposed project (maximum 2 pages in 12-point font). Inquiries and submissions should be addressed to info@westfield.org.

Deadline: January 1, 2026
Notification: March 15, 2026