Zeelie Brown
Zeelie Brown is a jazz cellist and multimedia artist whose work investigates the vernacular culture of the Black Gulf and Global South. Their Recomposing America residency includes the creation of a new work titled americasongs. The collection of pieces for choir also includes a site-specific installation of found objects gathered around the Twin Cities. The project reflects on the loss of 14 million acres of Black farmland since 1910, the loss of 25% of Black neighborhoods during midcentury urban renewal, and the atrocities stemming from the 1915 military occupation of Haiti. And yet, these songs point us toward the sacred and overlooked corners of our nation, tending to the earth and music, the land and the built environment, the mundane and the divine.
About Zeelie Brown
Zeelie Brown is a Black-American composer from rural Alabama and South Texas, now living in New York. Their work moves between composition, installation, ecology, and the built environment. They have taught everyone from children in the favelas of Brazil to graduate students at MIT and have performed and held residencies all over the world. Most recently, they completed an Unsettlement Session with Ted Hearne at Avaloch Music Farm, and their album the apocalypse is not the end but the unveiling was released by New Amsterdam Records.
Founded on the belief that Minnesota thrives when its artists and culture bearers thrive, the McKnight Foundation’s arts and culture program is one of the oldest and largest of its kind in the country. Support for individual working Minnesota artists and culture bearers has been a cornerstone of the program since it began in 1982. The McKnight Artist & Culture Bearer Fellowships Program provides annual, unrestricted cash awards to outstanding mid-career Minnesota artists in 15 different creative disciplines.
Program partner organizations administer the fellowships and structure them to respond to the unique challenges of different disciplines. Currently, the foundation contributes about $3 million per year to its statewide fellowships. For more information, visit mcknight.org/artistfellowships.