Composer Roz Freund, who has been designated a Washington Arts Leader by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, has won two grants for her cd, Flying Colors.

She grew up in Chicago and danced on the streets to the jazz that traveled from the south side clubs to her Humboldt Park neighborhood. Music and dance were all around me," she says. "It was a world of street play, street sounds, street dancing and interaction. The streets were our theater.

"A need to frame the life that was hers finally prevailed and she wrote music, untutored and untrained for the task, but filled with urgency. The motivation: her family and their quests."