Recipient Information
Location
Chicago, Illinois
Project Title
Earbird
Year of Award
2025
Grant or Fellowship
Individual Artist Career Opportunity Grants
Grant Amount
$39,822
This Chicago-based residency, supported by Old Town School of Music and Sensaphonics, will produce a jazz-fusion album with accessible scores and two sensory-adaptive live performances, inspired by the artist’s own experiences with hearing loss, tinnitus, and hyperacusis.
About the Artist
Joel Styzens is an award-winning multi-instrumentalist and composer, a recording artist and an educator, and a hearing conservation advocate.
His newest album, Resonance, was named a “Top 10 contemporary album of 2023” by The Guardian. The BBC calls it “open-hearted” and NPR says, “Phenomenal music.”
Styzens began his career as a professional jazz drummer but a sudden onset of severe tinnitus and hyperacusis changed his musical trajectory and guided him to his unique voice and passion as a composer and multiinstrumentalist.
It's a style blends the rhythmic sensibilities and nuance of Jazz with the texturally rich and dynamic emotion of Classical and World music into a sound that breathes, where silence and space are as much a part of the music as notes themselves. RelaxYourEars.com