ChicagoCenterForTheBluesArts
Chicago Centerfor the Blues Arts
Artist Development · Interdisciplinary Education · Production
The Chicago Center for the Blues Arts supports artists through a program rooted in the music and dedicated to working for a broader understanding of the Blues and its profound influence on American art, culture and identity.
Chicago Center for the Blues Arts is an Illinois 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
The Blues Aesthetic
The Blues forms the foundation of contemporary American music. Yet its influence reaches beyond music—into literature, theater, film, dance, the visual arts and scholarship. This broader cultural dimension is the Blues Aesthetic.
CCBA brings these connections into view, illuminating how the Blues continues to inform culture and the arts in the United States and around the world.
The mission of CCBA is to connect music, art and identity through artist development, education and production.
CCBA believes it is essential to understand the Blues in this broader cultural context—and that the more fully artists understand the tradition they carry and the culture it has helped shape, the richer their creative possibilities become.
Our Approach
CCBA supports artists and educators through an integrated program of interdisciplinary education, artistic creation & performance, and in-house production. Through this work, CCBA empowers artists to carry the Blues forward as both a living musical tradition and a defining American aesthetic. This integrated approach combines education with professional opportunity, enabling emerging and established artists to develop original work, reach wider audiences and build more sustainable careers.
The Blues Arts
At CCBA, the Blues Aesthetic is inseparable from the music itself. It shapes the Center’s approach to music education and artist development, while providing a framework for understanding and exploring the profound influence of the Blues across the arts.
Four expressions of the Blues Aesthetic · Select an image to discover more.
CCBA puts its understanding of the Blues—as music, history, culture and aesthetic—into practice through one integrated Artist Development Program—educating artists, creating and performing new work, and opening pathways to professional opportunity.
The Artist Development ProgramAn integrated program
With three core components
CCBA’s in-house Artist Development Program centers on music. It connects education, artistic creation, performance, recording and professional production. The Blues Aesthetic—grounded in the music’s history, cultural meaning, formal structures and expressive values—is embedded throughout this approach.
Beyond its in-house music program, residencies, commissions and public programs bring together visual artists, writers, filmmakers, dancers, theater artists, musicians and scholars to create, exchange ideas and explore the Blues’ continuing influence across music and the arts.Learn more about CCBA’s Interdisciplinary Program across the arts
EducationCreation Residencies
& PerformanceIn-House
Production
From artistic developmentto professional opportunity.
By connecting education, creation, performance and production, CCBA supports artists from the development of original work through recording, release, touring and wider professional opportunity.
Education
→CreationResidency
→Performance
→Recording
→ReleaseDistribution
→Booking &Touring
→VisibilityOpportunity
CCBA programs and established groundwork
Integrated Component 1Interdisciplinary Education
Pioneering Blues Education
Chicago Blues harmonica legend and CCBA Education Director Billy Branch created the pioneering Blues in the Schools program more than four decades ago. That established experience in assemblies, workshops, residencies and cultural learning forms part of the educational groundwork CCBA already brings to the Center.
Learn more about Education →Integrated Component 2Artistic Creation & Performance
CCBA’s residencies provide artists with space to create and develop new work, and performance opportunities that open pathways to collaboration, touring and recording.
Integrated Component 3Production & In-House Record LabelRaisin’ Music CCBA’s record label and production division
An award-winning record label—
gifted to CCBA
Through the Center’s record label, a recording can become a release—and a platform for promotion, visibility and opportunity for the artist.
CCBA founder Larry Skoller will gift Raisin’ Music, LLC—an award-winning record label and production company whose catalog includes three Grammy-nominated albums and whose international distribution relationships are well established—to CCBA as a founding institutional asset. This gift will position CCBA to build on the catalog and become the first nonprofit Blues institution dedicated to developing and recording Blues artists.
Learn more about Production →CCBA will launch withExceptional assets,Infrastructure and experience.
What CCBA brings from the outset
Music-industry leadership, artistic-development experience and established artist and touring relationships
Four decades of pioneering Blues education experience and an accomplished team of teaching artists and educators
An established record label with a catalog that includes multiple Grammy-nominated releases, in-house production and international distribution infrastructure.
A proven approach to artist development
CCBA’s integrated approach to artist development—through education, residencies and production—builds on nearly a decade of experience in international arts programming. This work has produced three GRAMMY-nominated projects, earned numerous international awards, and generated extensive international touring opportunities and worldwide visibility for participating artists.
From residency to international recognition
Developed and produced by Chicago-based Raisin’ Music Records & Production, Aulnay All Blues—an official sister festival of the Chicago Blues Festival—brought together artists from different cultures, countries and genres to create, perform and record original work.
Three Grammy-nominated projects
CCBA adapts this proven integration of residency, artistic creation, performance and production to a permanent Chicago institution.
It shaped the sound of a nationand changed music around the world
Chicago is recognized around the world as the capital of the Blues
Its artists transformed the music and helped shape jazz, rock & roll, soul, R&B, rap, hip-hop and generations of popular music. Visitors come from across the globe to experience its history, living legacy and enduring culture.
It’s time to build the home for the Blues this city
has long deserved Right here in “Sweet Home Chicago.”
The nonprofit is establishedNow we buildthe institution
Building the foundation.
Founding Advisory Board
CCBA is extending this targeted invitation to distinguished artists, educators, scholars and cultural leaders who recognize the importance of the Blues—as a living musical tradition and as an American aesthetic with a profound influence on our art, culture and identity.
Serving as advisors and ambassadors, members can bring their experience, perspectives and voices to CCBA’s development—helping establish its artistic and intellectual foundation, broaden support and bring the Center’s programs and artist-development model to life.
Participation is entirely voluntary and carries no minimum time commitment. This is an unpaid advisory role with no fixed term and no governing or fiduciary obligations. Members may participate as much or as little as their schedules and interests allow—through occasional conversations, counsel, introductions or public endorsement. For invitees unable to dedicate time, permission to include their name would itself be a meaningful endorsement of CCBA’s founding vision.
The Founding Advisory Board is distinct from CCBA’s governing Board of Directors. CCBA would also be happy to hear from individuals interested in being considered for service on its founding Board of Directors.
We would be pleased to arrange an introductory conversation and share additional plans for CCBA’s development.