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NEW YORK -- It's sung each summertime successful shot stadiums astir the United States. But the interaction of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” goes overmuch further than simply getting fans retired of their seats for the 7th-inning stretch.
More than a period aft Jack Norworth penned the lyrics, a nonprofit founded with the song's royalties is celebrating 50 years of supporting young musicians — including the endowment down immoderate of today's astir fashionable musicals. The ASCAP Foundation, the charitable limb for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, was established successful 1975 aft Norworth's property near a bequest of the licensing payments for baseball's unofficial anthem and his different hits.
“Just arsenic each euphony begins with a song, the ASCAP Foundation began with a song,” said Paul Williams, the group's president and a composer-lyricist whose award-winning vocation includes “Rainbow Connection.”
The enactment provides money, lessons and mentorship astatine each vocation stages successful an manufacture wherever that enactment is severely needed by artists who often toil for years moving different gigs portion trying to get their euphony earlier the close ears. To scope its semicentennial, however, the instauration has had to place caller backing streams and reinvent programming.
“Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” written successful 1908, has since entered the nationalist domain and nary longer generates revenue. The instauration nowadays relies connected a premix of philanthropies, firm sponsors and wide nationalist donations. The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation is simply a longtime backer and storied New York instrumentality steadfast Paul Weiss is different sponsor.
And, according to Williams, “there’s not a batch of stingy songwriters retired there.” The precocious Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, arsenic good arsenic Herb Alpert, are among those with named scholarships and awards. Williams said different bequests, which are charitable gifts near done a will, person travel from “Hello, Dolly!” composer-lyricist Jerry Herman and “Tea for Two” lyricist Irving Ceasar.
“It’s truly a mode of making a people connected the satellite and extending their values forward,” fundraising manager Claire Axelrad said of bequests, which she added person consistently made up astir one-tenth of charitable gifts.
With dwindling arts backing and millions of children reportedly going without euphony education, the ASCAP Foundation is besides trying to scope underserved communities. Leaders number astir 60,000 K-12 students who participated successful past year's programs. They assistance thatch guitar to New York summertime campers and bring students to escaped Broadway-caliber productions. Youth are learning to play the djembe, a drum primitively from West Africa, done a collaboration with municipality farming nonprofit Harlem Grown.
Tax filings amusement the instauration gave distant much than $325,000 successful grants for scholarships, fellowships and currency awards successful 2023. Award-winning songwriter Emily Bear, who co-wrote the soundtrack for Disney’s “Moana 2,” said the instauration took her “very seriously" erstwhile she was a five-year-old prodigy receiving its young composer award.
“That benignant of validation astatine that benignant of property means truthful overmuch erstwhile you’re conscionable a small miss with precise large dreams and you’re successful a country afloat of radical that you idolize," she said.
Composer Stephen Schwartz, who was honored this week with the ASCAP Foundation Champion Award during a June 10 fundraiser astatine Tony victor Adam Guettel’s Manhattan home, said the nonprofit is filling gaps arsenic the authorities “supports the arts little and less.”
This April besides marked the 3rd twelvemonth that Schwartz has hosted the foundation’s two-day Musical Theatre Fest successful Los Angeles. The determination allows participants to get feedback from salient guests and link with Hollywood studios — 1 mode the instauration is trying to enactment applicable by serving the renewed involvement successful musicals for tv and movie screens.
It's emblematic of the mentorship younger composers accidental Schwartz — a Broadway icon whose hits see “Godspell,” “Pippin” and “Wicked” — has offered to emerging artists implicit the years.
Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the songwriting duo down “Dear Evan Hansen,” credited the ASCAP Foundation for “cementing” their transportation with Schwartz. Pasek said specified adjacent proximity to a hero, who past became a "living, breathing idiosyncratic who gives you advice,” made the assemblage “more plausible.”
“Typically, you’re moving connected projects connected a helping and a supplication and hoping that someday it reaches the stage,” Paul said. "So, an enactment similar the ASCAP Foundation breathing beingness into not conscionable your work, but your pocketbooks, is simply a huge, immense support.”
Schwartz said it was “scary and bewildering” erstwhile helium archetypal started retired without immoderate connections. He sees an important relation for himself arsenic idiosyncratic who tin “ease the mode a bit” to assistance newcomers’ “talents flourish earlier and much completely.”
There’s besides different motivation.
“It’s somewhat selfish due to the fact that I get to spot bully enactment and bask it,” Schwartz added.
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Associated Press sum of philanthropy and non-profits receives enactment done the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with backing from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely liable for this content. For each of AP’s philanthropy coverage, sojourn https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
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