Innovation Fund

Founded in 2018 through a generous leadership gift, The Carmela S. Haklisch Innovation Fund advances, strengthens, and expands the artistic endeavors of The Knights. In addition to supporting activities that foster growth, engage new collaborators, and enhance The Knights’ dynamic contribution to the landscape of classical music, the Fund provides an annual grant to a Knights musician to support an artist-led project.

Recently Supported by the Innovation Fund

Kreutzer Project Recording

What is it about Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata that has made this work so endlessly influential and inspiring? Written at the beginning of the 19th century, the massive violin sonata inspired the novella by Tolstoy about jealousy, obsession, lust and insanity. The novella in turn inspired Czech composer Leos Janacek to write his romantic and manic tone-poem of a string quartet.

The Knights’ Kreutzer Project explores the obsessive, emotional and intellectual worlds that both Beethoven and Janacek probed with their respective Kreutzer Sonatas, bringing the groundbreaking identity of these works to the 21st century through new arrangements by members of The Knights that reimagine these masterpieces for chamber orchestra. New commissions written by Colin Jacobsen and Anna Clyne complete the project.

In February 2020, the Carmela S. Haklisch Innovation Fund provided a grant to support the recording of the Kreutzer Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This recording, which features Knights Artistic Director Colin Jacobsen as violin soloist, was released in August 2022.

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Knights Musician Grant Recipients

(2025) Megan Conley - in support of Carnival of the Animals: Past, Present, and Future, a concert series spearheaded by Ocean Music Action, pairing Camille Saint-Saëns’ classic Carnival of the Animals with a modern-day Carnival of the Nearly Extinct Animals by NYC-based composer Stephanie Ann Boyd. This program aims to create a concert experience that will use music and storytelling to bring people together, spread positivity and provide concrete next steps for conservation efforts.

(2025) Gustav Highstein - in support of Recording Reflections, a workshop open to Knights members and led by an experienced sound engineer focusing on developing techniques to create recordings which are specific and personal. Members of the Knights will reflect, engage in dialogue about best practices, and integrate their own individual sound journeys into a group exploration of sound and style.

(2025) Yaira Matyakubova - in support of A Journey Through Silence and Noise, a multidisciplinary performance merging music, sculpture, and abstract film to reflect on the profound forces that shape human lives across generations. The project explores the weight of inherited experience and the quiet power of transformation. Sculptures from the Susan Clinard Sculpture Studio, alongside musicians from The Knights performing a string quartet by composer Luis Prado, will set the stage for an interactive experience where silence, sound, and memory intertwine.

(2024) Alex Sopp - in support of a newly arranged suite of original songs from Sopp’s 2024 record The Hem & The Haw. Sopp will collaborate with Knights arrangers to reimagine these “layered dreamscapes.”

(2024) Caitlin Sullivan - in support of Play Out!, an interactive family concert that invites young people and the adults in their lives to explore music as a representation of their emotions. Play Out! featured a diverse program of chamber music by composers including Sufjan Stevens (arr. Michael P. Atkinson), Felix Mendelssohn, Jessie Montgomery, and Thomas Tallis; alongside performances of original poetry by Jennifer Wynn and video art projections by Jorge Carvajal.

(2023) Yaira Matyakubova - in support of The Quilt of Humanity, a partnership with Women for Afghan Women which brought music lessons, workshops, and performance opportunities provided by The Knights to Afghan women, children, and families in the US.

(2023) Karen Ouzounian - in support of In My Grandmother’s Kitchen, an exploration of Armenian history and musical traditions featuring the recording of a new chamber work composed by Ouzounian, a workshop on Armenian and Middle Eastern music, and the creation of stop-motion animation films by Lembit Beecher on related themes.

(2022) Kristi Helberg - in support of Music in Common, a project that connects musicians with formerly incarcerated individuals, with the goal of utilizing music as a tool for healing and as a connective bridge between diverse communities.

(2021) Megan Conley - in support of Ocean Music Action, a music and climate-activism initiative which pairs concerts of music inspired by the power and beauty of the ocean with donations to ocean conservation groups and beach/waterway cleanups.

(2020) Amie Weiss - in support of The Knights in Italy, an online residency which included virtual masterclasses, performances, and collaborations with visual artists for Italian audiences.