Albany Symphony Orchestra receives Georgia Council for the Arts grant

ALBANY — The Albany Symphony Orchestra was recently notified of a grant it is being awarded by the Georgia Council for the Arts that will be used to help connect students to professional musicians.

Symphony officials announced earlier this week that a GCA Vibrant Communities Grant had come through for its Link Up music program for Albany area students.

“We received notification last week that we had been awarded a grant of $2,663.75 toward the Link Up program,” Albany Symphony Executive Director Joelle Leigh Fryman said in an email to The Albany Herald. “The award is a little over half of what was requested, which albeit disappointing, is better than nothing.”

Link Up is a six- to eight-week program during which students interact with professional symphony musicians. Last year, the symphony received $5,000 through the same grant program to help with Link Up.

Officials said GCA awarded a total of $300,000 through its Vibrant Communities program. All eligible applications are sent to a review panel, which this year consisted of five panels with three panelists on each. Panelists read all of the applications from one county and ranked the applications based on the benefit of the project to the community being served and the viability of the project.

The ranks are converted to numeric scores, and the highest scoring applicant in each county is funded. If additional money is available at that point, the remaining funds are allocated to the next highest scoring applicants across the state.