Announcing The Masterwork Music and Art Foundation 2025 Emerging Artist Awardee, Fadi J. Khoury of FJK Dance

 August 2025 

 This year the Masterwork Music and Art Foundation decided to expand their portfolio of awards to include an Emerging Artist Award. This $500 award is given to an emerging artist of distinction who has exhibited excellence in the arts. 

 

 

We're pleased to announce that Fadi J. Khoury of FJK Dance is the recipient of the inaugural award.

Special thanks to Masterwork’s Program Committee - Joseph White, Eric Hafen, Eileen White, Tony Javed and Alice Glock for their work identifying our awardee.

More About Fadi J. Khoury 

Fadi J. Khoury’s innovative style – both as dancer and choreographer – showcases his life-long immersion in a world of dance forms. He was born in Baghdad, Iraq, surrounded by the folkloric music and dance of Arab culture. His father, also a dancer and choreographer, was the Artistic Director of the National Iraqi Ballet. Through his father, Fadi was exposed to diverse approaches to dance in Mesopotamia, still present in Assyrian, Syriac, and Bedouin folkloric dances of the Middle East. When Fadi was thirteen, he moved to Beirut, Lebanon, where he trained in Classical Ballet, Folkloric Dance, and also in Modern, Jazz, and Ballroom. Still in his teens, he began experimenting with the eclecticism that has defined his work ever since. By seventeen, he was dancing professionally with the Rahbani Musical Theatre, while studying at the Lebanese Fine Arts University and Lebanon Dance Academy.

In 2014, inspired by a successful collaboration with Sevin Ceviker, he created his own company, FJK Dance, where he could continue to refine his distinct, personal style. Every FJK Dance performance reflects his unique mix of experiences, unlike anyone else’s in the current dance scene and still exuberantly evolving. In 2018,  Fadi received a CUNY Dance Initiative award and the opportunity to perform the first production of “UnTold” at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.  Fadi was recently appointed as the first dance “Artist-in-Residence” at Kings County Hospital, Brooklyn, Wellness and Recovery Division, Behavioral Services, “to use dance to remove the stigma of, and to enable the public to better understand, mental illness.”

For more about Fadi J. Khoury, please visit: www.fjkdance.org/

The Masterwork Music and Arts Foundation has been supporting excellence in the arts for over 60 years. 100 percent of your donation funds art and artists through community grants, competitive awards, and a premier award for an emerging artist. Find out more at www.masterworkarts.org.
 
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Announcing The Masterwork Music and Art Foundation 2025 Community Arts Grant Awardees

 
August 2025 
 
Our Community Grant Awards are designed to support organizations and people that encourage excellence in the arts at the community level. For the 2025-2026 community grant season, four grants were offered — one at the $1,000 level and three at the $500 level.  Artists and arts organizations in the tri-state area were encouraged to apply. 

Special thanks to Masterwork’s Program Committee - Joseph White, Eric Hafen, Eileen White, Tony Javed and Alice Glock for their work identifying award criteria and evaluating applicants.
We’re pleased to announce the following awardees:

 
·      Our $1,000 award goes to the Chelsea Music Festival
 
Chelsea Music Festival celebrates great music by convening world-leading musicians & artists in the performing, culinary, and visual arts for an international audience. The Festival invites artists, composers, and performers to collaborate in pursuit of new perspectives in artistic expression.

Inspired by its Chelsea roots, the Festival reflects the creativity of one of New York City's most dynamic neighborhoods. Programs span musical genres ranging from classical to contemporary to jazz with a special emphasis on Festival commissions by composers whose works are not in the traditional western canon. In addition to its on-the-ground programming, the Festival hosts an online library of recordings so music enthusiasts, artists, and students alike can explore unique interpretations of classical, jazz, and contemporary works via high-quality videos of world-class performances and dialogues available for years to come.
 
For more about the Chelsea Music Festival, visit: https://www.chelseamusicfestival.org/
 
·      Our three $500 awards go to Flute Choir Day, Blues Alive and Site-Specific Dances respectively

1.Carter-Glennon Center for Arts and Nature’s Flute Choir Day  
 
An annual event at the Carter Glennon Center for Arts and Nature, the New Jersey Flute Choir Day celebrates flutists of all abilities, ages and backgrounds.  Participants range in age from 9 years old to 90. A day long rehearsal culminates with a concert featuring a piece by J.S. Bach, as well as an original work reflective of the year’s theme.

For more about New Jersey Flute Choir Day, visit: www.carter-glennon.org

 

 
2. Blues Alive, for Ma Rainey’s Living Tradition of the Blues
 
Part of the Brooklyn Folk Fest, Blues Alive will partner with the Ma Rainey House Museum in Columbus, Georgia to frame Gertrude Pritchett—a.k.a. Ma Rainey—as a trail-blazing American composer and band leader.
 
We shine a light on the woman as a powerful musician, mentor, and collaborator to several young sidemen who in-turn became innovators in their own careers; trumpeter/vocalist Louis Armstrong, pianist Thomas Dorsey, guitarist Tampa Red, and saxophonist Coleman Hawkins.

This awardee offering includes a 40 minute panel discussion and a 60 minute concert.

For more about Blues Alive, visit: https://www.brooklynfolkfest.com

3. Site-Specific Dances
 
Site-Specific Dances is an interdisciplinary performing arts collective of artists, choreographers, musicians, and designers. Much like architecture, our projects emerge from a direct engagement with a particular place. Our work moves beyond the stage to engage deeply with the world around us, with the site as a protagonist - and not a backdrop. 

Our practice unfolds across three primary typologies

* STAGE PIECES about sites
* SITE ACTIVATIONS in spaces not designed for performance
* COMMUNITY-DANCE, a participation-based project that invites local participants to create a community performance in public space

Our performances often feature original scores by collaborating composers in a range of styles, frequently performed live.

For more about Site-Specific Dances, visit: https://www.sitespecificdances.com/


Congratulations to our 2025 awardees!

 

The Masterwork Music and Arts Foundation has been supporting excellence in the arts for over 60 years. 100 percent of your donation funds art and artists through community grants, competitive awards, and a premier award for an emerging artist. Find out more at www.masterworkarts.org.
 
   #MasterworkArts
   #CommunityArts
   #LovetheArtist
   #LovetheArts