No Strings Attached—A Look at the MacArthur Fellowship’s Multifaceted Impact 

By Thomas May | From the January/February 2025 issue of Strings

Sheer disbelief: that was Johnny Gandelsman’s initial reaction when he received an unexpected phone call last fall. The news that he numbered among the 2024 MacArthur Fellows felt “totally surreal” to the Brooklyn-based violinist and producer. “It’s actually overwhelming and still hard to process,” he adds.

As one of 22 awardees selected for the class of 2024, Gandelsman suddenly found himself part of a cohort that comprises not only performing artists but a vast spectrum of “exceptional, creative, and inspiring people”—to cite the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation’s own description—that includes trailblazing scientists and a disability justice activist.

Even among this select group, Gandelsman stands out as the only classical musician in the class of 2024. The philanthropic program, which was established in 1981, has produced 1,153 MacArthur Fellows to date, of whom 55 belong to the “music performance and composition” category.

Over the past quarter century, only eight string musicians have been chosen in addition to Gandelsman (including artists who play non-bowed strings): bassist Edgar Meyer (2002); violinist Regina Carter (2006); violinist Leila Josefowicz (2008); violist, violinist, and educator Sebastian Ruth (2010); cellist Alisa Weilerstein (2011); mandolinist Chris Thile (2012); banjoist and singer-songwriter Rhiannon Giddens (2017); and cellist Tomeka Reid (2022).

Virtuosity Plus 

MacArthur Fellows are celebrated for defying conventional molds associated with, say, a classical violinist—or, as the case may be, with an oceanographer—as they follow their creative impulses into uncharted realms.

A former longtime member of the Silk Road Ensemble and cofounder of the adventurous string quartet Brooklyn Rider (now marking its 20th season), Gandelsman is a characteristic choice for the fellowship: typically atypical—a one-of-a-kind artist. He not only moves seamlessly across styles and genres but explores unsuspected ways of synthesizing them. His triple CD This Is America (2022), for example, gathers 28 pieces that Gandelsman—himself an immigrant to the US at the age of 17—commissioned to amplify a cross-cultural tapestry of voices responding to the crisis year 2020.

One does not apply to be considered for this fellowship. In general, MacArthur Fellows—whether in the performing arts, STEM, or any other domain—are chosen through a process of anonymous nomination by their peers and subsequent recommendation by a rotating selection committee. The only stipulations are that nominees must be either residents based in the US or US citizens anywhere in the world and must not hold elected office or advanced positions in government.

“Nomination and endorsement come from the community of practice,” says Marlies Carruth, director of the Mac-Arthur Fellows program. “This is the community looking at the work of a performer, how they are going beyond virtuosity to push boundaries, modernize, expand, and reimagine interdisciplinary spaces. It’s virtuosity plus.”

The median age of MacArthur Fellows over the life of the award has remained in the mid-40s—Gandelsman is 46—but some are selected much closer to the start of their careers or at a more mature stage. Invariably the epithet “genius grants” accompanies media citations of the winners. “The first class [in 1981] was very male and very connected to academia. ‘Genius’ was not our term but what the media dubbed them,” Carruth emphasizes. “But our internal advisory committee and our board understand the limitations of words like ‘genius’ and ‘virtuosic’ and like to lean into the much larger space of creativity. But we can’t control the headlines.” 

No Strings Attached 

Over the last two decades, the MacArthur program’s understanding of creativity has been expanding in dramatic ways, according to Carruth. Technology increasingly plays a role in extending awareness of the program and its reach among nominators. The ultimate aim is “to give extraordinarily creative individuals the no-strings-attached support and other assets of this fellowship, including a network across disciplines of access to doers and thinkers who are operating outside the box.” This broader appreciation of creativity “allows us to steward a process where we can identify and elevate really amazing people.”

In practical terms, “no strings attached” means that each fellow is free to use the $800,000 award, which is distributed over five years, as they deem appropriate, without restrictions or any obligation to report back to the foundation. The policy has been a distinctive cornerstone of the MacArthur program’s trust-based philanthropy since the fellowship was launched in 1981.

“Unlike traditional grant making, which is often project focused, this is creativity writ large,” says Carruth. “It’s about trusting those to whom we give this fellowship to know how best to use it, whether for travel or equipment or making sure their family is taken care of so that they can spend more time in their studio.”

Having no strings attached “obviously gives you tremendous freedom to pursue projects,” says cellist Alisa Weilerstein, who became the youngest of the string player laureates when, at the age of 29, she was named a Fellow in 2011. “In a direct sense, it helped me save for my instrument [a Domenico Montagnana built in Venice around 1730, which she acquired in 2014], which I thought would be out of reach completely. That in turn freed me up to pursue other things.”

The award’s flexibility can impact the recipient’s career in less direct ways as well. Regina Carter, who became a MacArthur Fellow in 2006, says the grant “gave me a chance to start the healing process” during an intensely difficult period in her career. While coming to terms with her mother’s death, she has also faced a cumbersome lawsuit. “I was so angry that I didn’t want to play music anymore,” Carter recalls. “The MacArthur gave me a minute to stop and be still. I came to understand that I didn’t have to just play music onstage—that the music could be used in so many other ways.”

Carter studied music therapy and decided to spend time as a hospice volunteer. “When my mom was in the hospital, I noticed that a lot of elderly people didn’t have folks coming to visit them. Sometimes I would play music for my patients, and sometimes I would just sit there and talk. They helped me get my perspective back on what was really important in life.”

Though only 30 when she was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2008, Leila Josefowicz had already set out on the path of intensive engagement with contemporary music that has consistently distinguished her career. (Highlights of her fall season included the New York Philharmonic premiere of Luca Francesconi’s stirringly imaginative violin concerto Duende as well as performances of Thomas Adès’s Concentric Paths concerto).

“I think I won the MacArthur because of my contributions to the repertoire,” says Josefowicz, “but I would have continued to make these choices no matter what.” She views the award’s impact as “more abstract in the way it boosts your confidence and gives you a firm foundation for what you’ve already been doing and are planning to do.” For Josefowicz, that means following her conviction that “the repertoire needs to be enlarged—that this is a living, breathing art form that needs full devotion and respect and concentrated effort.”

Community Impact and the Halo Effect 

The only violist to have won a MacArthur, class of 2010 recipient Sebastian Ruth was lauded by the selection committee for “forging new roles beyond the concert hall for the 21st-century musician.” Ruth founded the nonprofit organization Community MusicWorks (CMW) to serve inner-city Providence, Rhode Island, through music education and performance for families. In place of a conventional performance career, he has continued to lead CMW as artistic director and is a passionate advocate for music’s potential to bring about social change, with a focus on the needs of young people.

This past fall, CMW opened its new headquarters—plans for which Ruth and his colleagues began making in 2010. The handsome new wood-paneled building represents a remarkable advance over the humble storefront space where CMW originated when Ruth formed his string quartet there after graduating from Brown University in 1997.

Ruth transposed the standard residency model of a university or conservatory into an urban neighborhood setting, where the chamber ensemble he founded has an ongoing residency. He points out that it concentrates on “supporting the creative lives of the musicians in the ensemble not only as performers but also as educators” who nurture the local community of young people and families. “Over the last several years, we’ve put a lot of energy into nurturing the growth of programs that have grown out of CMW,” says Ruth. The result has been an enduring halo effect benefiting the community and artists alike.

The no-strings-attached policy has been especially effective, Ruth believes, in encouraging “more ideas about other ways that you apply this work in the world. In my case, we knew on the horizon that one day we would build a building. Beyond the dollars themselves, it’s an invitation to keep pursuing ideas that seem otherwise challenging or far-fetched.”

Ruth’s ongoing projects also underscore how MacArthur Fellows from different years can be connected by shared ideals. He enjoys a longstanding friendship with Gandelsman, who has collaborated with CMW in the past. One project involved a commission for composers to write “culturally specific violin concertos—for example, a violin concerto based on salsa music—which was a vibrant, exciting cultural event that brought together families from many Latin American countries where our students come from. It was wonderful to have Johnny bring some of his magic and spark to our musicians and students,” says Ruth.

Regarding the mark a MacArthur grant can make on the community, Gandelsman points to a phenomenon that is counterintuitive. The assumption that a sudden infusion of funds can instantly get a wild new project going, he believes, turns out to be misguided. “I don’t want the grant money to simply substitute for the kind of community that gets built and the creative connections that happen in these fundraising processes. When you get other people involved—say, through a Kickstarter fund—a community of people is built to support the work, and, in their own way, they participate in the work’s success when it goes out into the world.”

The Gift of Validation 

The alumni who shared their thoughts for this story were unanimous about the award’s special significance in reinforcing a certain intangible confidence in their work. “Everyone wins for different reasons, but to me it was so meaningful to be acknowledged on this level,” says Josefowicz. “That was the biggest gift to me.” Even an artist at the peak of a career can be motivated by this kind of recognition, she adds. “I can’t help thinking of how Esa-Pekka Salonen expressed deep appreciation in his acceptance speech last spring for the Polar Music Prize.”

Apart from the practical financial support it confers, Weilerstein believes that the MacArthur grant had a profound impact “in a psychological sense, which is longer lasting, through the validation it gave. A lot of things were just beginning for me at the time, and this meant being recognized by a system that was awarding intellectuals of all fields.”

If a MacArthur Award bolsters the recipient’s self-understanding, an overarching effect of the program’s legacy in recent years has been to expand the definition of creativity itself to reflect the complex experiences and challenges of contemporary life. “It allows us to nurture the between questions, interstitial spaces, interdisciplinary spaces,” says Carruth. “It’s a very broad, emergent, and plastic definition—a big umbrella.”