The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) is thrilled to welcome composer, trumpeter, and educator Michael R. Dudley Jr. as the seventh recipient of VCCA’s Anne Spencer Fellowship. This prestigious award was established in 2017 in honor of Harlem Renaissance poet and civil rights activist Anne Spencer. As the 2026 Anne Spencer Fellow, Dudley has been awarded a VCCA residency of up to 30 days, providing uninterrupted time and space to pursue new work.
Public Presentation
When: Friday, May 15, 2026, at 2 p.m.
Where: Anne Spencer House & Garden Museum, Lynchburg, VA
As part of the fellowship experience, Dudley will present initial research and direction for their forthcoming suite, titled “Layered Migrations,” at a community event held at the historic Anne Spencer House & Garden Museum in Lynchburg, Virginia.
“Layered Migrations” is intended to comment on the cultural as well as ecological impacts of human movement across generations through what we know as Appalachia.
The work remediates musical influences from American and European classical music, American folk and Indigenous music, as well as Black American music or Jazz, into the format of a large jazz ensemble, doing so in a way that highlights the collaborative, relational nature of music as a foundation of American culture.
Anne Spencer’s former home and garden served as a gathering place for leading African American figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Martin Luther King, Jr. VCCA’s Anne Spencer Fellow Presentation offers an opportunity to experience this Virginia landmark as we gather to learn more about a contemporary artist of African American descent.
Michael R. Dudley Jr. portrait by Fadi Kheir
Anne Spencer House & Garden Museum
1313 Pierce Street
Lynchburg, Virginia
Located in historic Lynchburg, Virginia, the Anne Spencer House & Garden Museum is the former home of renowned Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer and is named a Virginia Landmark on the National Register of Historic Places. With up to 95% of the original house and cottage furnishings still in place today, it is considered one of the most intact house museums in the United States. Anne Spencer’s garden is also the only known restored garden of an African American in the United States.