How Portland choir Cappella Romana rallied to save concerts amid uncertainty about NEA grant

Perhaps no executive order of President Trump’s has so far been met with as much confusion and consternation as the one issued two weeks ago freezing federal funding for grants and loans. Although it has been blocked temporarily by federal courts, nonprofits and organizations are still reeling from the effect it’s had on grants they’ve won from agencies like the National Endowment for the Arts.

That’s especially true if you’re a nonprofit like Portland choir Cappella Romana, which won a $35,000 NEA grant last May for the premiere of a work about racial reconciliation that fuses Orthodox music with African American gospel. As first reported in Oregon ArtsWatch, the choir was uncertain its NEA grant money could be accessed for performances of Canon for Racial Reconciliation in Seattle and Portland after the federal funding freeze was announced. But a direct appeal to donors, who gave more than $20,000 in 48 hours, has ensured the shows on Feb. 28 and March 1 will go on.

On the morning of Feb. 11, the NEA funds appeared in Cappella Romana’s bank account, according to executive director Mark Powell. He joins us to talk about the Canon for Racial Reconciliation, and how the evolving guidance for NEA grants may close the door to works championing racial diversity or marginalized communities.

Editor’s Note: The headline and description have been revised to reflect the release of the NEA grant dollars to Cappella Romana’s account on Feb. 11.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Last May, the Portland choir Cappella Romana won a $35,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, to put on the premiere of a work about racial reconciliation that fuses Orthodox Christian music with the African American gospel tradition. But as first reported in Oregon ArtsWatch, the nonprofit was not able to access its grant money because of the federal freeze on grants and loans. A direct appeal to donors brought in more than $20,000 in 48 hours, ensuring that the shows will go on. And in fact, just this morning, the federal money did show up in the nonprofit’s account. But there are still major questions about the broader picture of federal arts funding going forward.

Mark Powell is the executive director of Cappella Romana. He joins us to talk about all of this. Welcome to the show.

Mark Powell: It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Miller: For people who aren’t familiar with your organization, what is Cappella Romana?

Powell: Cappella Romana is a vocal ensemble, a chamber choir. Our name, Cappella Romana means Roman chapel. So the idea is to do sacred music from the Roman inheritance. And that can mean Rome and Western Europe, as well as especially New Rome, which was the capital of Byzantium when Constantine the Great moved the capital there in the 4th Century.

Miller: Can you describe the newish piece at the heart of this funding question, the “Canon for Racial Reconciliation”?

Powell: Sure. The “Canon for Racial Reconciliation” started as a poem. So it’s a text. And a canon is a form of poetry, common in the Orthodox church. So it’s an eight-part or sometimes nine-part poem with different stanzas in each section. And this poem goes back to 5th and 6th century Byzantium. An African American doctor in Alabama chose to write a poem based on this form on racial reconciliation. That is the text that is set by this musical work.

Miller: And what is the mashup of musics that are in this?

Powell: In this piece, you’ll hear aspects of Slavic choral music, like you might hear in a Russian choir or a Serbian choir. And you’ll also hear gospel music. There are moments when the two come together and it’s really magical.

Miller: Let’s listen to part of it. This is a short excerpt from the piece. It’s from a performance from a partial premiere that was done in Kansas City in 2023 at the Community Christian Church. This is a part where you can hear more of the gospel side of the piece.

[“Canon for Racial Reconciliation” playing]

Miller: As I noted, you were awarded a $35,000 grant from the NEA, the National Endowment for the Arts, to put on these concerts in Portland and also in Seattle. What was the grant supposed to pay for?

Powell: The budget for the whole project is well over $100,000. So there’s funding coming from lots of different sources, paying for staff, marketing, all those sorts of things. The main thrust of this grant was to pay for the artists. Because this project is involving more musicians, more singers on the stage than we have ever done before.

Miller: When did you realize you were gonna have problems getting that money?

Powell: So I woke up on that Tuesday morning, just under two weeks ago, when the [federal] freeze was announced. I immediately called our grant officer at the National Endowment. I should also say that the National Endowment and also National Endowment for Humanities will award these grants many, many months beforehand. And we have to submit a report in order to receive the funds. So they helped us very much to write that report so that we could have access to the funds.

Miller: You have to do some of the work before you get the money, so it’s almost like getting reimbursed?

Powell: Exactly, exactly. There’s enough staff cost, initial marketing costs and so on, in the whole budget, that we could submit the reimbursement.

Miller: So the news comes out that there’s a federal freeze on grants nationwide for everything. You call up your grant officer in D.C., I suppose?

Powell: That’s right.

Miller: What did you hear?

Powell: He didn’t really know actually at the time. It was so soon that there wasn’t any guidance coming down to the staff at the NEA, at that moment.

Miller: And then you decided to send an email out to previous donors or audience members, a kind of urgent appeal. What did you say?

Powell: I said that we were awarded this grant, but we weren’t sure that it was going to appear. It was the uncertainty that was really at the center of the appeal. And as I said and you noted, in about two days more than $20,000 came in as a kind of an insurance policy to ensure that this project would go forward.

Miller: My guess is that a lot of your audience members, at this point, are used to getting appeals, especially political appeals from candidates or people in elected office, saying, “This is not a drill, we need your help right now.” You know, all caps, emails, over and over and over. How often do you feel like you could make a direct ask like that?

Powell: Very rarely, I would say. Any of us in the nonprofit space want to show that we are planning ahead, that we’re organized, that we’re not profligate, that we’re being very careful with the funds that we have. We’re in the public trust, as any nonprofit is, and we take that very seriously. So that communication around the uncertainty was really the focus of it. And that’s why we made it.

Miller: I want to listen to another excerpt from the “Canon for Racial Reconciliation.” I should note that it’s going to be performed in Portland at the First United Methodist Church on Saturday, March 1. But again, this is from that 2023 partial performance in Kansas City.

[“Canon for Racial Reconciliation” playing]

Miller: In 2023, your revenue and your expenses were both hovering around a million dollars. We’re talking here about a grant of $35,000. So not a drop in the bucket but smallish, compared to your overall budget. How much do you rely on federal funds?

Powell: We don’t rely on it very much. It’s always by project. We’re not receiving regular funding for general operating. The NEA only makes grants for specific projects. So some years we might have funding from the NEA for a specific thing, other times we won’t. We had planned for this funding because it was awarded and then we weren’t sure.

Miller: What does that kind of uncertainty mean for any kind of nonprofit, you happen to be a performing arts one, but any nonprofit?

Powell: I mean, I have colleagues and friends in nonprofit spaces that deal in social services and medical research, all kinds of things. And it’s affecting everyone because we just don’t know what’s going to happen next.

Miller: But what does that mean for planning?

Powell: So for a group like ours, we will plan not to have these funds, really, in the future. I think that the kinds of things that we do probably won’t fit with new NEA guidelines.

Miller: What do you mean by that?

Powell: So the new NEA guidelines just were published on Monday, so it was yesterday. They are focusing entirely on, really … I mean, to be most competitive, you need to do a project that’s around the 250th anniversary of the country. Of course, there’s a lot that can be done that’s fantastic and positive. But it’s not really what we’re going to be doing. So chances are we probably won’t be relying on any federal funding for the next period.

Miller: Would you make programming changes based on the political ideology of the current presidential administration?

Powell: No.

Miller: What about the way you frame an ask? You happen to be an arts organization that is focused on one piece of a long Christian tradition of Christian music.

Powell: That’s true.

Miller: This is an administration that there’s no religion that they seem more amenable to focusing on in a positive way than Christianity. You also, for this new piece, are focusing on race, and on racism, and on racial reconciliation. I can imagine strategically emphasizing Christianity over race in a grant. I’m wondering how you think about that as an arguably cynical or wise way to get money from the federal government in 2025?

Powell: We’re not going to change the way we do things. Our tagline this year and actually for a couple of years has been “This music is for you.” And we frame this very rich tradition, particularly of the Eastern Orthodox side of things because very, very few ensembles go there as far as we do – everything from medieval Byzantine chant all the way to contemporary pieces. This is a part of world culture. And we think of our audience very much like an NPR audience. If you’re curious about the world and you want to know more about it, this is one part of it that you should know about.

Miller: Can you tell us about the “Requiem For the Forgotten” that’s coming up in just, I think, a month and a bit?

Powell: Yes. So that program features both a 19th century mass by a composer called Josef Rheinberger, for double chorus, standard text of the Catholic mass. But the second piece is by Frank La Rocca, who is a composer in California. He wrote this requiem, commemorating those who have become homeless and those who’ve been displaced by war. And yes, that’s leaning into contemporary issues. But we also want to show that this is part of a bigger picture and it’s beyond politics, as far as I’m concerned.

Miller: Mark Powell, thanks very much.

Powell: Thank you for having me.

Miller: Mark Powell is the executive director of Cappella Romana. They’re going to be performing the “Canon for Racial Reconciliation” on Saturday, March 1 at the First United Methodist Church in Portland. You can find a link to the performance on our website, opb.org/thinkoutloud.

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