The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has announced this year's recipients of its annual fellowship, often referred to as the "Genius" grant, which  offers an unrestricted award of $500,000 to individuals who, in the Foundation's words, "have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction." Among this year's recipients are a number of artists whose work has been featured on Nonesuch recordings or who have worked with Nonesuch artists over the years: violinist Leila Josefowicz, instrument maker and composer Walter Kitundu, writer Alex Ross, and saxophonist Miguel Zenón.

Violinist Leila Josefowicz (pictured) has been a champion of new music throughout her career. She is a regular performer of works by John Adams, including his Violin Concerto (1993), The Dharma at Big Sur (2003), and Road Movies (1995), which she performed with pianist John Novacek on the 2004 Nonesuch recording.

Walter Kitundu, a visiting professor at the California College of the Art and an on-staff artist at San Francisco's Exploratorium, is the inventor of the phonoharp, a blend of string instrument with turntable. Kitundu is also Kronos Quartet's resident instrument builder and has composed a phonoharp quintet for the group, which he premiered with them at the San Francisco Jazz Festival last year. In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Kronos's David Harington calls Kitundu "a wonderful force in life" and enthuses: "The nearest person I can think of that would give people a sense of the breadth of his interests and talent is Leonardo da Vinci."

Alex Ross is a music critic for The New Yorker and the author of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award–winning history of 20th-century music, The Rest Is Noise. The book covers the rich and varied musics of the last century, including that of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams. Ross has also contributed a number of liner notes to Nonesuch recordings, including the recent five-CD Reich retrospective Phases, and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's Neruda Songs. He will interview his fellow MacArthur "Genius" Dawn Upshaw (who received the award last year), as part of the 2008 New Yorker Festival. The talk will be held on Saturday, October 4, at 7:30 PM at the Ailey Citigroup Theater in Manhattan.

The saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón is a member of the SFJAZZ Collective, founded in 2004 by fellow sax man Joshua Redman and SFJAZZ, the West Coast’s largest non-profit jazz institution and the presenter of the annual San Francisco Jazz Festival. Zenón appeared with Redman, Nicholas Payton, and the rest of the Collective's original members on two Nonesuch recordings: 2005's SFJAZZ Collective and the follow-up SFJAZZ Collective 2 a year later.

For more on these Fellows and a complete list of this year's recipients of the MacArthur Foundation's award, visit macfound.org.