Salt Bay Chamberfest (SBC), the highly regarded and popular chamber-music festival held annually in Damariscotta, has been chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts to receive a $15,000 Grant for Arts Projects award. The funds will further SBC’s mission to present world-class music in Midcoast Maine by supporting this summer’s festival of concerts and community events, to take place in August.

“We are beyond thrilled and grateful to be recipients of a 2022 NEA Project grant,” declared SBC Artistic & Executive Director Wilhelmina Smith. “The arts are a vital part of our lives, and this grant enables us to continue to play an important role in our community by providing high-quality arts experiences for all. We look forward to sharing our 28th season in August!”

NEA Acting Chair Ann Eilers said, “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects like this one from Salt Bay Chamberfest that help support the community’s creative economy. Salt Bay Chamberfest in Damariscotta is among the arts organizations nationwide that are using the arts as a source of strength, a path to well-being, and providing access and opportunity for people to connect and find joy through the arts.”

Set for Aug. 8-20, Salt Bay Chamberfest’s 2022 season, titled “Illuminations,” will offer a powerful combination of artistic elements that enlighten and transform. Light appears in every program literally through video projections that accompany live music, and symbolically through the radiant works of a variety of composers. Illuminations will also explore light’s inverse, darkness, through musical pieces that respond to loss and sorrow. “There could not be a more fitting place than Maine’s coast, with its many lighthouses illuminating dramatic and sublime shores, to experience a festival of Illuminations through music and art,” Smith noted.

“Illuminations” is among 1,248 projects across America totaling $28,840,000 that were selected to receive this first round of fiscal year 2022 funding in the Grants for Arts Projects category.

For more information about SBC and Illuminations, visit saltbaychamberfest.org. For more information on other projects included in the National Endowment for the Arts grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.