Here Are the 2025 Doris Duke Foundation Prize Recipients: The Honor Is Great. So Is the Unrestricted $525K Cash Prize
Written by djfrosty on May 1, 2025
Past Grammy nominees Kassa Overall and Brandee Younger are among the six recipients of the 2025 Doris Duke Artist Awards. The award is the largest cash prize in the U.S. dedicated to individual performing artists, specifically those in theater, jazz, and dance.
How large? Each artist is awarded a life-changing $525,000 in unrestricted funds allocated over seven years and an incentive of up to $25,000 to save for retirement. Including the 2025 recipients, the foundation has the distributed a total of more than $40 million to nearly 150 artists through the Doris Duke Artist Awards program.
Overall, 42, was nominated for a Grammy four years ago for best jazz instrumental album as a member of Social Science for Waiting Game, a collab with Terri Lyne Carrington (who was a Doris Duke Award winner in 2019).
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Younger, 41, was nominated for best instrumental composition three years ago for “Beautiful Is Black.” She was the first Black woman to be nominated in that category, which dates to the first Grammy presentations in 1959.
Here’s a quick look at this year’s six Doris Duke Artist Award recipients:
Kassa Overall: Jazz drummer, producer, rapper and bandleader. He has released three studio albums – Go Get Ice Cream and Listen to Jazz, I Think I’m Good and Animals. He melds avant-garde experimentation with hip-hop production techniques to tilt the nexus of jazz and rap in unmapped directions.
Brandee Younger: American harpist who blends classical, jazz, soul, and funk influences into her music. Early in her career, Younger worked with a diverse range of artists, including Pharoah Sanders, Common, John Legend, The Roots, and Lauryn Hill. In April 2019, Younger’s original composition “Hortense” was featured Beyoncé’s Netflix concert documentary Homecoming. In 2024, she won the 2024 NAACP Image Award for outstanding jazz album for Brand New Life.
Trajal Harrell: American dancer and choreographer best known for a series entitled “Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning” at The Judson Church. He is considered one of the most important choreographers working in contemporary dance today.
Raja Feather Kelly: Brooklyn-based choreographer known for his surrealist productions. He’s worked on such shows as Fairview and A Strange Loop, and he serves as artistic director for The Feath3r Theory and the New Brooklyn Theatre.
Aya Ogawa: Brooklyn-based playwright, director, performer and translator. Their work explores cultural identity and the immigrant experience, challenging traditional notions of American aesthetics. They use a collaborative process and incorporate diverse perspectives and languages into their performances.
Kaneza Schaal: New York City-based artist working in theater, opera, and film. Her work Flight Into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now was The Met’s first live performance as an integral part of a major exhibition.
This year, the Doris Duke Foundation (DDF) is reaffirming its commitment to and investment in the performing arts with $6.2 million in grants to support the national Creative Labor, Creative Conditions campaign.
“We are so proud to announce the 2025 Artist Awards and to stand alongside these artists — and the broader arts community — in their fight for a future where artists have the resources and opportunities they need to live and work,” Ashley Ferro-Murray, arts program director at DDF, said in a statement. “DDF has long supported the performing arts. With Creative Labor, Creative Conditions, we’re building on that commitment — highlighting how artists fuel culture, community, and entire industries, even as their contributions are too often undervalued.”
Doris Duke was a billionaire tobacco heiress, philanthropist, and socialite. She died in 1993 at age 80.