The Bellingham Festival of Music is one of 832 arts organizations and individuals to receive grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The $23 million in grants announced Tuesday, Nov. 27, cover a wide variety of cultural activities.

"Through a rigorous peer-review panel process, the NEA ensures that projects recommended for funding are among the most creative, the most effective, and will make a real impact," said NEA chairman Rocco Landesman.

The endowment also announced the selection of 40 poets for fellowships totaling $1 million.

Bellingham Festival of Music's $10,000 grant is a small piece of its nearly $400,000 budget, but festival treasurer Mary Pat Thuma said it's a big help. The two-week summer music festival features orchestral and chamber concerts throughout the community. This year is the festival's 20th, and to celebrate it's bringing in bigger names, so the grant will help defray the additional cost for those artists.

"This allows us to bring all these headliners this year with no increase in ticket prices," Thuma said. "That's really important to us, that if we can bring in the cream of the crop as far as guest artists, that we don't price out the local market and that we make these concerts as accessible as possible for the local community."

Among the guest artists are world-renowned classical and flamenco guitarist Pepe Romero, Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade and classical pianist Garrick Ohlsson.

The festival, which is staffed by volunteers, also features free master classes, lectures and community chamber concerts.

Here is a sampling of some of the other grants:

Tacoma

Broadway Center for the Performing Arts - $35,000 to support World Class Artists for Local Underserved Audiences, a series of performances and outreach programs by visiting artists.

Anchorage, Alaska

Calista Elders Council - A $45,000 grant to help support a three-day Yup'ik dance festival in Chavak, Alaska, population 938, featuring 24 dance groups from 23 remote villages. According to an NEA release, "groups from remote Alaska Native villages will demonstrate songs and dances that pre-date contact with the Western world."

Boise, Idaho

Trey McIntyre Project - $15,000 to support the creation and presentation of a new multimedia dance titled "The Symptom of Death" by choreographer Trey McIntyre.

Sacramento, Calif.

Association of California Symphony Orchestras - $30,000 to support professional and leadership development and technical assistance programs for California orchestras.

Crocker Art Museum Association - $20,000 to support the exhibition, "An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan & Their Circle," and accompanying catalogue.

Mario Recio of McClatchy Newspapers contributed to this story.