Board of Trustees
Maria Pham - Board Chair
Maria Pham is a Director and Deputy Head of Regulatory Affairs for the Americas at MUFG overseeing the execution of regulatory examinations and day-to-day engagement with the firm’s banking regulators. Prior to joining MUFG, she held roles in the Advisory practices at PwC and Deloitte, where she provided forensic accounting, financial advisory, and litigation consulting services to complex global clients. She received a B.A. in Political Science from Barnard College. As a longtime Brooklyn resident, Maria has a strong commitment to stewardship and continuing the mission of BMS to provide high-quality, accessible, and affordable performing arts education to the Brooklyn and greater NYC community. She is the proud parent of a BMS student.
Mark Braithwaite, D.D.S., M.A. - Vice Board Chair
Mark is the former Chief, Dental and Oral Medicine, at VA Connecticut Healthcare System, where he specialized in periodontology and implant dentistry for the Department of Veteran Affairs.
He has held numerous positions in public service and private practice within the dental profession, including service at Harlem Hospital, Loyola University of Chicago Medical Center, and Cardinal Bernadin Cancer Center and as Chief of Dental and Oral Medicine for the Department of Veteran Affairs, Connecticut Healthcare System. He has received grant funding for post-doctoral research in cellular and molecular biology, to study oncology and periodontal disease in oral health. Mark is also an alumnus of the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.
Mark has had a lifelong interest in jazz music and its history, having been a disc jockey for jazz programming at WKCR FM radio in New York City while attending Columbia University. He is currently studying saxophone at BMS and contributing his jazz muse as a senior member of the BMS Jazz Orchestra.
Chuck Swartz - Treasurer
Chuck is the Vice President at Rothschild & Co. A life-long music enthusiast, Chuck studied guitar and drums at Tulane University, while pursuing a degree in Finance and Business Administration. Chuck believes discovering new music to be his most rewarding pastime. He is honored to be a part of the Brooklyn Music School, helping others to realize the far-reaching benefits of music education.
Daniela Bauer - Secretary
Daniela Bauer is a music therapist and professional musician. She is a Berklee College of Music alumni and has held a long-standing position as a music therapist and child life specialist for the Child Life Department at the Maimonides Children and Infant’s Hospital of Brooklyn. Daniela serves children and families facing chronic and life-threatening illnesses by providing coping support through music, therapy, and play, and additionally teaches young children about their illnesses and treatments. Daniela is a singer, songwriter, guitar, and bass player for various bands based in NYC. She has toured extensively as a background singer in the USA and Europe. Daniela is a student at BMS studying classical guitar privately and has played bass in the Motown ensemble. Daniela’s son is a student of a drum ensemble at BMS.
JEFFREY Tannenbaum
Coming Soon
Zach Kouwe
Zach Kouwe is an Executive Vice President at Dukas Linden Public Relations (DLPR), where he co-heads the agency’s asset management practice and provides strategic communications counsel to financial and professional services firms. He joined DLPR in 2011 after nearly a decade as a financial journalist, most recently for The New York Times and the New York Post. He has also written for The Denver Post, The Wall Street Journal and other publications.
Zach lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter. All three are music lovers and attend concerts and performances around the country including an annual trip to the Newport Folk Festival. He holds a B.S. in Economics from Hamilton College and an M.A. in Journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Zach also serves on the board of the New York Financial Writers Association. You can follow him @zkouwe on Twitter.
François Leininger
François Leininger studied architecture in Paris (Paris-Malaquais), Mexico City (UNAM), and in the USA (Princeton). From 2000 to 2011, François worked for Pritzker Prize architect Jean Nouvel, developing the firm’s New York projects, including 40 Mercer in Soho, 100 Eleventh Avenue in Chelsea, the MoMA Tower, and Jane’s Carousel in Brooklyn. From 2014 to 2019, François was co-founder of Paris-based Post-Office Architectes. The studio designed several projects big and small, including 30 Warren, a ground-up residential condominium located in Tribeca. Francois works as a designer and consultant on various projects in New York and abroad. He lives in Fort Greene with his wife and two children. Their daughter studies piano at BMS.
Board Committees
Audit Committee
Charles Swartz
Diversity & Inclusion Committee
Mark Braithwaite
Curriculum Committee
Daniela Bauer
Development Committee
Zach Kouwe, Co-Chair
Mark Braithwaite
Maria Pham
Real Estate Committee
François Leininger
Brooklyn Music School Board Of Trustees
Statement on Diversity and Inclusion
Diversity and inclusion have been at the heart of the Brooklyn Music School’s mission since our founding in 1909. We are a vibrant community of people united by our love of music and our belief that the benefits of music education and performance should be available to everyone, of every background and income level.
Today, our school serves thousands of students at our historic location in the Brooklyn Cultural District and through our outreach program across New York City. Some 60% of our on-site students in Fort Greene are people of color, as are approximately 70% of students in our outreach programs, and 60% of all outreach students are from families living below the poverty line.
BMS is committed to building on our record of diversity and inclusion, at every level of our organization. That includes making sure that the BMS Board of Trustees and the school’s senior staff reflect the rich demographic diversity of the BMS community – including race, gender, and LGBTQ identification. But just as important, it means making sure that the different voices and perspectives of all stakeholders are reflected in our decision making and our organizational DNA, for this is the only way to maintain a highly talented and diverse group.
This is the right thing to do, and it is the strategic thing to do. First, it builds a culture of respect and collegiality, in turn making us more efficient and effective in our work. Second, it aligns our organizational culture with the inclusion and diversity standards increasingly required by our funding partners in government and the private sector. To achieve our ambitious plans as a community organization, we will need their support more than ever.
To that end, on November 4, 2019, the BMS Board of Trustees unanimously committed to reaching a target of achieving at least 40% diversity among trustees by 2024.
To achieve this goal, the Board also created a diversity committee to track our progress and to lead efforts to align our organization with best practices to increase diversity and inclusion.
BMS believes music and the performing arts are everyone’s birthright — and we are working every day to help more New Yorkers realize that right.
Artist Advisory Board
Brooklyn Music School’s vision is: “To make it possible for everyone, regardless of their background and resources, to be able to experience the joy of music and the artistic and intellectual benefits of musical performance."
In order to remain relevant, BMS needs to continually raise the bar of the quality and the breadth of the offerings it provides and find new ways to bring the excitement of artistic discovery to the next generation. These Advisory Board members have generously agreed to contribute their time and wise counsel to moving BMS forward.
Our Advisory Board plays a key role in helping BMS to continually enrich our educational and artistic offerings, improve our pedagogical approach, increase our visibility in the community, and refine our strategy.
Our Advisory Board activities are coordinated by BMS Advisory Board Director, Peter Argondizza.
Our Advisory members include:
Hanna Arie-Gaifman
Maya Beiser
Martin Bresnick
Chris Cerrone
Nels Cline
Anthony Roth Costanzo
David del Tredici
Wendy Heller
Colin Jacobsen
Anthony Laciura
Dr. Victor Lewis
Lester Lynch
Arturo O'Farrill
Dalit Warshaw
Dan Zanes
Arkai: Jonathan Miron & Philip Sheegog
Bios
Hanna Arie-Gaifman
Hanna Arie-Gaifman’s serves as the Director of 92nd Street Y’s Tisch Center for the Arts, a 141-year old cultural organization and community center, where she draws from her experience as a dedicated pianist, a literary scholar and an arts manager who has supervised orchestras, academic programs and music festivals. Her intellectual and geographic travels have led to relationships with some of this century’s greatest cultural figures, including Václav Havel, Madeleine Albright, Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Miller, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Isaac Stern. In the United States, Arie-Gaifman has taught at University of California, Berkeley and at New York University.
Since her arrival in 2000, Arie-Gaifman revitalized 92nd Street Y’s concert series and carved a distinct place for it among the many first-rate presenters in New York. Her goal has been to give audiences new perspectives on the classical repertoire. She does this by offering unusual combinations of works that highlight subtleties of each piece, by pairing established and emerging artists to create an exchange of experience and energy, by presenting rarely heard international artists and underplayed repertoire, and by creating programs with scholarly commentary that shed light on the intellectual and historical roots of the repertoire.
Photo by Jaznina Santiago
Maya beiser
Avant-garde cellist and multifaceted artist Maya Beiser defies categories. She has captivated audiences worldwide with her “consummate virtuosity” (The New York Times) and relentless quest to redefine her instrument’s boundaries. The Boston Globe describes her as, “a force of nature,” while Rolling Stone calls her a “cello rock star.” Raised in Israel’s Galilee Mountains, surrounded by the music and rituals of Jews, Muslims, and Christians, Maya has reinvented solo cello performance in the mainstream arena. A featured performer on the world's most prestigious stages including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, BAM, Kennedy Center, London’s Southbank Centre, the Barbican, Sydney Opera House, and the Beijing Festival, among many others, she has collaborated with renowned artists, composers, choreographers and filmmakers across many disciplines. Maya has released 10 solo albums, topping the classical music charts with many of her recordings. A graduate of Yale University, Maya Beiser is a 2015 United States Artists Distinguished Fellow and a 2017 Mellon Distinguished Visiting Artist at MIT; Her TED Talk has over one million views.
Martin Bresnick
Martin Bresnick, a composer of contemporary classical music, film scores, and experimental music, delights in reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable, bringing together repetitive gestures derived from minimalism with a harmonic palette that encompasses both highly chromatic sounds and more open, consonant harmonies and a raw power reminiscent of rock. Bresnick has received many prizes and commissions, the first Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Rome Prize, The Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Koussevitzky Commission, among many others. Martin Bresnick is also recognized as an influential teacher of composition. Bresnick was born and raised in the Bronx, and is a graduate of New York City's specialized High School of Music and Art. He was educated at the University of Hartford (B.A.), Stanford University (M.A., D.M.A.), and the Akademie für Musik, Vienna, and studied composition with John Chowning, Gyorgy Ligeti and Gottfried von Einem. He went on to teach at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Stanford University and the Yale School of Music.
Christopher Cerrone
Winner of a 2015 Rome Prize and a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, the Brooklyn-based composer Christopher Cerrone is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations.
This season Cerrone has world premieres of his new string quartet with Calder Quartet for the LA Phil; a new percussion quartet for Miller Theatre as part of a Cerrone Composer Portrait performed by Third Coast Percussion; and a violin concerto for Jennifer Koh and the Detroit Symphony, led by Leonard Slatkin.
One-sixth of the Sleeping Giant composer collective, Christopher Cerrone holds degrees from the Yale School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, and is published by Schott NY and Project Schott New York.
Photo by Nathan West
Nels Cline
Nels Cline is a New York-based guitarist and composer. Known to many as Wilco's lead guitarist, Cline's vast catalog spans four decades and explores many corners of the jazz, rock, punk and experimental genres. Born in Los Angeles CA in 1956, he grew up with his twin brother Alex as a rock 'n roll obsessive before becoming immersed in the world of so-called jazz and improvised music after hearing the music of John Coltrane. He has played on over 200 recordings and performed and recorded with a wide variety of artists such as Charlie Haden, Julius Hemphill, Tim Berne, Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, Mark Isham, Ricki Lee Jones, Lee Ranaldo, Joan Osborne, Phil Lesh, Jim Black, Elliott Sharp, Anthony Braxton, and Julian Lage, to name but a few. He has released dozens of recordings as a leader since the 1980s.
He has led his band The Nels Cline Singers since 2001, generating several recordings and performing worldwide, and collaborates with improvisers in projects too numerous to mention here. Nels has also composed larger commissioned works such as "Dirty Baby", which combined his compositions for two large ensembles with the paintings of Edward Ruscha and the poetry of David Breskin.
Anthony Roth Costanzo
Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo began performing professionally at the age of 11 and has since appeared in opera, concert, recital, film, and on Broadway. He is an exclusive recording artist with Decca Gold, and his first album will be released in September of 2018.
Costanzo has appeared with many of the world’s leading opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, English National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Los Angeles Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Glyndebourne Opera Festival, Dallas Opera, Teatro Real Madrid, Spoleto Festival USA, and Finnish National Opera. In concert he has sung with the New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, London Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra, among others. He has performed at a wide-ranging variety of venues including Carnegie Hall, Versailles, The Kennedy Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Sawdust, Minamiza Kyoto, Joe’s Pub, The Guggenheim, The Park Avenue Armory, and Madison Square Garden.
Costanzo is a Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions and won first prize in Placido Domingo’s Operalia Competition. He was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for his role in a Merchant Ivory film. He has begun working as a producer and curator in addition to a performer, creating shows for National Sawdust, Opera Philadelphia, the Philharmonia Baroque, Princeton University, WQXR, The State Theater in Salzburg, Master Voices and Kabuki-Za Tokyo. Costanzo graduated from Princeton University where he has returned to teach, and he received his masters from the Manhattan School of Music. In his youth he performed on Broadway and alongside Luciano Pavarotti.
David Del Tredici
Aaron Copland has described Del Tredici as “that rare find among composers - a creator with a truly original gift. I venture to say that his music is certain to make a lasting impression on the American musical scene. I know of no other composer of his generation who composes music of greater freshness and daring, or with more personality.” David Del Tredici, considered a pioneer of the Neo-Romantic movement, has won a Pulitzer Prize in Music and is a former Guggenheim and Woodrow Wilson fellow. Del Tredici attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied piano and played primarily Romantic works, and eventually he turned his attention to study composition while at Berkeley.
Wendy Heller
Wendy Heller, Scheide Professor of Music History, is Chair of the Department of Music at Princeton University and also serves as Director of the Program in Italian Studies. Recognized as one of the leading scholars in the field of Baroque music, Heller has specialized in the study of 17th- and 18th-century opera from interdisciplinary perspectives, with special emphasis on gender and sexuality, art history, Italian literature, dance history, and the classical tradition.
Having trained as a singer at New England Conservatory before receiving her PhD in musicology from Brandeis University, Heller maintains a strong interest in performance, promoting collaborations between scholars and performer.
Heller is currently the Vice-President of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, and serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Musicology, Cambridge Opera Journal, Journal of Music Pedagogy, The Operas of Cavalli (Bärenreiter), the Board of the American Handel Society, and is a member of the Venetian Advisory Board for the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.
colin jacobsen
A recent recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship, Colin Jacobsen’s multifaceted life in music as a violinist and composer is focused in three groups: the Silk Road Ensemble, founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma; the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, which performs at venues as diverse as Carnegie Hall and SXSW; and The Knights, an innovative orchestra of which he is founder and co-Artistic Director along with his brother, Eric Jacobsen. This past year The Knights released Azul, an album with cellist Yo-Yo Ma as well as debut performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the new Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the Festival de Pacques in Aix En Provence.
Anthony Laciura
Internationally recognized tenor, Anthony Laciura, most recently known for his role in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, has also performed over 800 times at the Metropolitan Opera alone, not to speak for all the other 100s of performances he’s had in the US and abroad. Anthony has been performing often on stage and screen since he made his debut in a cameo role in the opera “Louise” at the age of 12. The Washington Post has called Laciura “one of the outstanding character tenors of our time.” Anthony also has experience directing operas, including “Dido and Aeneas”, “Amahl and the Night Visitors”, and “The Magic Flute” at New Jersey City University. Anthony brings a very diverse body of knowledge and experience that will be a great support to the Brooklyn Music School. Anthony holds degrees in music from Loyola University of the South and Tulane University.
Photo by Jaznina Santiago
Dr. Victor Lewis
“Lewis is a master of shading and color, and the kind of timekeeper that could teach a clock new ways to tick,” says jazz writer Bill Kohlhasse. Internationally acclaimed drummer and composer Victor Lewis began playing drums professionally on the local scene at the age of 15. Originally from Omaha, Victor calls New York home these days and can most often be found in the city’s recording studios. He made his recording debut on Woody Shaw’s classic “The Moontrane.” Victor has also also made his mark on the burgeoning fusion and pop jazz scenes, providing the beat on records by Joe Farrell, Earl Klugh, Hubert Laws, Carla Bley and David Sanborn. From 1980 - 1991, Victor worked a lot with the tenor giant, Stan Getz. By the end of the 1980s, Victor was one of jazz’s busiest freelancers. Lewis tries to pass on his knowledge, giving private instruction to students, participating as a freelance instructor with the New School University Jazz School. He has participated in a symposium in Modern Drummer magazine and there have been several feature articles about him in publications such as Downbeat, The Wire, Jazz Times and Modern Drummer. In 2003 Victor joined the faculty of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ where he teaches drummers and coaches jazz combos.
Photo by Jaznina Santiago
Lester Lynch
Lester Lynch, an established dramatic baritone, is known for his charismatic portrayals and commanding voice, and has mastered some of the most important baritone roles from Scarpia to Rigoletto to Count di Luna. Opera Today recently enthused, “It was booming baritone Lester Lynch who served notice that he is now in consideration for admittance to the Scarpia Preferred Pantheon - when he needed to pour it on he had the Puccinian fire power and the dramatic heat to raise the hair on the back of your neck.” An accomplished concert artist, Mr. Lynch has performed a wide and varied repertoire with orchestras across the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and the American Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Lynch has received many distinguished awards, including the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the George London Vocal Competition, and the Sullivan Awards. His work with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis earned him the Richard Gaddes Award.
arturo o'farrill
Arturo O'Farrill, pianist, composer, educator, and founder of the nonprofit Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, was born in Mexico, grew up in New York, and was educated at the Manhattan School of Music, Brooklyn College Conservatory, and the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. Mr. O’Farrill played piano with the Carla Bley Big Band from 1979 through 1983. He then went on to develop as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Steve Turre, Freddy Cole, The Fort Apache Band, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte. In 1995 Mr. O’Farrill agreed to direct the band that preserved much of his father’s music, the Chico O’Farrill Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra, which recently concluded a 15-year residency at Birdland. In 2002, Mr. O’Farrill created the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra (ALJO) for Jazz at Lincoln Center due to a large body of music in the genre of Latin and Afro Cuban Jazz that deserves to be much more widely appreciated. His debut album with the Orchestra, Una Noche Inolvidable, earned a GRAMMY Award nomination in 2006, and the Orchestra’s second album, Song for Chico, earned a GRAMMY Award for Best Latin Jazz Album in 2009. In 2011 Mr. O’Farrill and the ALJO released their third and newest album, 40 Acres and a Burro, which was nominated for a GRAMMY Award for Best Large
Dalit Warshaw
An internationally acclaimed composer, pianist and thereminist, Dalit Warshaw’s works have been performed by numerous orchestral ensembles, including the New York and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras (Zubin Mehta conducting), the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, and the Grand Rapids Symphony. After becoming the youngest winner of the BMI Award for an orchestral work written at the age of eight, Warshaw’s music has been widely praised for its lyricism, unique orchestral palette, distinctive harmonic vocabulary, sense of drama, emotional intensity and vivid portrayal of character. Currently a Guggenheim Fellow for the year of 2016-17, she has just been awarded an OPERA America Discovery Grant, in addition to the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, given to mid-career composers of exceptional gifts. A full-time faculty member of the composition/theory department at the Boston Conservatory from 2004 to 2014, Warshaw obtained her doctorate in music composition from the Juilliard School, also teaching orchestration there from 2000 to 2005. She currently teaches on the composition faculties of CUNY- Brooklyn College and the Juilliard Evening Division.
Photo by Jaznina Santiago
Dan Zanes
From thrift shop basements to Carnegie Hall, from Brooklyn to Bahrain and beyond, this Grammy Award winner has been introducing new songs and reconnecting people to songs that have always been there, and still are. Referred to as “the family-music genre’s most outspoken and eloquent advocate” by Time Magazine. Dan’s widely acclaimed music has been featured on Sesame Street, Playhouse Disney, Nickelodeon, HBO Family and Sprout. Dan just completed his most recent album Lead Belly, Baby! celebrating the children music of his main inspiration - Lead Belly.
Arkai: Jonathan Miron & Philip Sheegog
ARKAI channels the diversity of the world through genre-bending music, forging new possibilities for what a violin and cello can be. Graduates of The Juilliard School, their past engagements have included performances at The MET Breuer, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the 92nd Street Y. Their electronic debut composition, “Letters from COVID”, was recently featured at TED@PMI for a global audience of over 30,000 people from 182 countries.
Jonathan Miron’s desire to connect with audiences of all cultures has inspired and taken him on an expansive journey to broaden his artistic palate – from collaborating with members of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble, to appearing with Tony and Grammy Award winner Ben Platt at Clive Davis’ famed pre-Grammy party, to impromptu jams with Grammy-nominated Cuban percussionist Pedrito Martinez at NYC’s 92nd Street Y. A graduate of The Juilliard School, Jonathan’s performance career has taken him to acclaimed concert halls around the world – including solo engagements at The Louvre Museum in Paris, Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. In addition to his work with ARKAI, Jonathan's newest group, The Weeklies, explores and charts new paths for what is possible for 21st century acoustic concert music.
Cellist Philip Sheegog is a dynamic collaborative artist who maneuvers within a diverse array of musical personas with ease. Drawing from roots influenced by a myriad of musical styles, Mr. Sheegog has been sought out for projects from all ends of the musical spectrum, working with groups from the New York hip-hop/classical collective ShoutHouse to the International Contemporary Ensemble to the Steve Miller Rock Band. A passionate advocate for collaboration and commissioning, Mr. Sheegog has premiered over seventy new works by living artists including over thirty direct commissions. Mr. Sheegog holds his B.M. and M.M. from The Juilliard School and is a recipient of the 2017 John Erskine Prize and a Norman Benzaquen Career Advancement Grant.