2022 Adolf Busch Award Recipient

The Adolf Busch Award is pleased to announce this year’s recipients: Musicambia and Beyond the Bars. Musicambia has received the $10,000 award, and Beyond the Bars has been awarded $5,000. Musicambia, which began in 2014, provides music opportunities to populations within prisons and jails throughout the United States. The classes include composition, performing, instrument lessons and music theory. Musicambia aims to contribute toward humanizing the criminal justice system by building supportive and creative communities that foster connections, communication, self-confidence and positive self-image. The goal is that students are able to rebuild their lives around a new passion introduced by Musicambia. In fact, there is an alumni program outside prisons, which continues a music-based approach to building community. Beyond the Bars is based in Philadelphia and serves the adolescent population, ranging from middle to high school, who have been impacted by violence. The organization's goal is to give this population easy access to music, so that they have the opportunity to recognize potential new passions in their lives. Beyond the Bars intends for the music education to work in three phases for dedicated members: self-expression, self-efficacy (realizing your talents), and then self-exploration (including talents in your future plans). Six students in the Beyond the Bars program have returned as teachers, and the $5,000 award will go toward student teaching training tracks, encouraging current members to take on leadership roles within this community. We were impressed with the amount of quality applications this year, which made it a competitive year for the award. Thank you to all the worthy organizations who applied, especially our additional finalists, Enriching Lives Through Music, Heartbeat Music Project, Mexican-American Council and Shelter Music Boston. We are looking forward to next year’s award process, so stay tuned for more information.