Belle Voci singers in Aspinwall among new groups getting RAD tax money in 2020

When Craig Cannon’s 34 years of directing the Fox Chapel Area High School choir program were coming to an end, he wasn’t ready to quit teaching music.

The Duquesne University alumnus started a nonprofit seven years ago for women who wanted to sing beyond high school, college and Sunday church services.

Belle Voci has since grown to three ensembles, including the Giovani Voci youth choir.

Singers from multiple generations now rehearse weekly in Aspinwall and perform at a variety of events across Allegheny County, from New Kensington to Pittsburgh.

“Ain’t no mountain high enough to keep us from singing for you in the coming year,” Cannon said in a recent message to supporters.

In 2020, Belle Voci joined a growing number of small arts groups with a coveted spot under the funding umbrella of the Allegheny Regional Asset District.

Known as RAD and run by a volunteer board, the body distributes half the money raised by the county’s extra 1% sales tax to groups deemed cultural assets. (The other half goes to Allegheny County and municipalities.)

The choir was one of three groups to receive money from RAD for the first time.

“We’re thrilled,” said Pam Bruchwalski, a member of the group’s board of directors, the group’s director of marketing and an alto in the choir.

RAD’s final 2020 budget of $109.5 million will be shared across 106 grant recipients. Sales tax revenue for 2019 reached $105.96 million through October, for an increase of $4 million, or nearly 4%, from last year, RAD’s financial reports show.

Of 113 eligible applicants countywide, just seven didn’t get funding from RAD.

The bulk of the 2020 RAD budget — 73% — goes to “contractual assets,” which means they must be funded each year. They include Pittsburgh and county parks, county and Carnegie libraries, Carnegie Museums, the Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Gardens, National Aviary and Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Paints Aquarium.

Board chairman Daniel Griffin said RAD assets provide “rich and eclectic cultural opportunities for everyone” and bolster the region’s quality of life.

RAD continues to set aside $13.4 million for debt payments related to Pittsburgh’s professional sports facilities and the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. The Sports & Exhibition Authority also is set to get an additional $800,000 in operating money.

Port Authority of Allegheny County will get $3 million, an annual award since 2013 that allows the agency to leverage $30 million in state funding.

Less than 1% of the budget, about $1 million, is set aside for administration.

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald has said that he’d be happy to see new RAD assets from parts of the county outside the city of Pittsburgh and its closest suburbs. He pointed out that all residents benefit from the tens of millions of dollars going to major regional attractions, parks and libraries.

RAD’s funding list includes $2,500 to the Rachel Carson Homestead Association, which maintains the Springdale childhood home of renowned environmentalist and author Rachel Carson and welcomes visitors on tours.

The Rachel Carson Trail Conservancy will get $15,000 of the $172,000 awarded to the Allegheny Land Trust to buy a parcel of land. The organization maintains more than 170 miles of trails with the help of homeowners, with most of them traversing private property.

Not too many more Alle-Kiski Valley groups seem to be applying for RAD money, though RAD’s board members have encouraged them to do so.

Belle Voci’s inaugural $2,500 grant is a tiny piece of RAD’s total budget, but the approval signals RAD’s faith in the nonprofit’s work, plans and financial position. Recipients often use the grants to leverage more money from matching pledges and other donors who value RAD’s vetting process.

The award will help pay staff. It follows $12,400 raised by Belle Voci from individual donors on Giving Tuesday, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Bruchwalski said the group has applied for RAD funding in the past. She felt the work the organization did recently to expand access to its programs helped it this year.

“We’ve realized that what we have to give is our music, and we’ve tried to make ourselves more accessible to more people,” Bruchwalski said.

Belle Voci provides funding to help people who might not be able to afford their concerts attend. At shows, the choir has a sign language interpreter.

The group also pays to have part recordings made so women who can’t read music can still sing. It recently moved its rehearsal space to a bus line in Aspinwall.

The other two new groups receiving RAD funding are Guardians of Sound, which “aims to build a stronger, younger and more diverse audience for acoustic musicians,” and the August Wilson House, a project of the Daisy Wilson Artist Community to support turning the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright’s Hill District home into an arts center.

RAD’s funding committee determined the “three new assets offer unique and diverse programming with a deep commitment to community.”