Fund honoring Mac Miller announces first grant recipients
The first grantees of The Mac Miller Fund are Pittsburgh’s Hope Academy of Music and the Arts and Musicares, a Santa Monica, Calif., charity of the Recording Academy.
The Hope Academy, an afterschool arts education outreach program in East Liberty, will receive $50,000 to expand its Suzuki Music Program. MusiCares will receive $50,000 to establish the MusiCares Mac Miller Legacy Fund to help young adults dealing with substance abuse.
The Mac Miller Fund honors Miller, the Pittsburgh-raised, world-famous rapper/songwriter/ producer, born Malcolm McCormick, who died in September 2018 of an accidental overdose in Los Angeles. He was 26.
His family — parents Karen Meyers and Mark McCormick and brother Miller McCormick — created the fund, for which a November 2018 benefit concert by fellow
musicians and rappers raised nearly $1 million.
The mission of the fund — originally called the Mac Miller Circles Fund and administered by the Pittsburgh Foundation — is to continue the rapper’s vision of providing opportunities to underserved youth to explore the arts and to have a positive impact on communities across the country. It also supports organizations that address substance abuse in the music industry.
The MusiCares Mac Miller Legacy Fund was announced Thursday night in Los Angeles during a tribute to Miller by his friend Vince Staples at the annual MusiCares Concert for Recovery that honored fourtime Grammy Award-winning artist Macklemore. Miller’s parents and brother attended the tribute.
Representing them at Friday morning’s news conference at East Liberty Presbyterian Church, where Hope Academy is based, was Miller’s grandmother, Marcia Weiss.
“I want to tell you a few grandmother stories,” she said, making those in the room smile as she recounted her 7-year-old grandson on the computer at her house composing a song that ended, “This is rap, this is rap.”
“That’s how I learned about rap,” she said.
Miller, who grew up in Point Breeze, topped the charts in 2011 with “Blue Slide Park,” a reference to Frick Park where he used to play and one of many East End references in his work.
He even put his grandmother at the end of one track on 2016’s “The Divine Feminine,” in which she talks about meeting and marrying her late husband. When she told her grandson she was afraid she would ruin the album and embarrass him, he went to social media to ask his fans to contact her. “I got about 100 strangers who emailed me.” She said she answered every one.
“He was really a special grandchild,” she said, later noting, “Please join me in remembering the bright light that Malcolm brought through his music.”
Hope Academy’s director, Linda Addlespurger, expressed her gratitude that the local grant will help her decade-old organization double the enrollment to 80 students in its Suzuki program, which teaches violin and cello, and also enable it to add guitar and flute. It not only teaches infants to high schoolers to read and play music but also makes them “ambassadors of nobleheartedness in the world.”
Pittsburgh Foundation spokesman Douglas Root said, “We’re going to be very excited to see what comes down the road in future grants.”
To support the Mac Miller Fund, visit https://pittsburghfoundation.org/macmiller.