STAGES 2024

STAGES 2024

BOSTON CONSERVATORY AT BERKLEE •

Uncovering the enduring power of Conservatory training in an ever-changing world

Welcome

Dear friends,

Welcome to the 2024 issue of STAGES. As many of you know, I was appointed Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s interim executive director this past August after serving as the school’s dean of music since 2017. It has been an honor to oversee the school in this new capacity and a joy to connect with a wider array of students, faculty, staff, and alumni who make up this truly special community.

This issue’s cover story, “Future Proof,” takes a deep dive into a bold claim: that a Boston Conservatory education prepares students for anything. And we really mean it.

While most of our alums have built vibrant careers within the performing arts, scores of others are equally thriving as technologists, doctors, teachers, politicians, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and multihyphenate professionals. Just what is it about a Boston Conservatory education that lays a foundation for success in any field? Some might point to the more obvious answers that are true of any conservatory-style education: the emphasis on discipline, rigor, deep immersion in one’s chosen art form, creativity, and collaboration. But there’s more.

Anyone who has studied at Boston Conservatory knows that the answer goes deeper than academic expertise or artistic mastery. Here, we’re nurturing the skills and competencies that form the core of one’s individual identity and sense of purpose in the world. It is precisely these fundamental skills that allow our graduates to boldly navigate change while holding firmly to their identity as creators.

Indeed, it is this very same dynamic—evolving while staying true to core values—that defines Boston Conservatory. One of my top priorities as I lead this institution is to work with our entire community to realize the goals outlined in Boston Conservatory’s Strategic Direction for 2020–2025 and devise its next chapter. At the heart of this strategy is how we can, at once, draw on our enduring principles while transforming conservatory education for today and beyond. So, in this issue, we look back at some key milestones as we look forward and continue this important strategic work together.

As you read through these stories, I hope you are as inspired as I am by what our community has accomplished as “proof” of the limitless possibilities of our future.

Enjoy!

Michael Shinn, D.M.A.

Interim Executive Director

Boston

Conservatory at Berklee

STAGES is published for friends, parents, and alumni of Boston Conservatory at Berklee © 2024.

Editor in Chief: Andrea Di Cocco

Editorial Director: Annette Fantasia

Contributors: Andrea Di Cocco, Annette Fantasia, Sarah Godcher Murphy, Emmett G. Price III, Madison Spahn

Design: Michelle Parkos

Copyeditor: Sara Arnold

Digital Content Manager: Ashley Slapo

Cover Illustration: Sam Kalda

Boston Conservatory at Berklee 8 Fenway, Boston, MA 02215 +1 617-536-6340 bostonconservatory.berklee.edu

Admissions Information: Boston Conservatory at Berklee Office of Admissions 8 Fenway, Boston, MA 02215 +1 617-912-9153 admissions@berklee.edu

To give a gift to the Annual Fund, visit bostonconservatory.berklee.edu/giving

6 SNAPSHOTS

Student performances spotlight stylistic diversity

8 BRIDGING GENRES

Faculty member Anthony Barfield occupies a unique space in the music world—where the symphony hall meets the dance floor

12 FUTURE PROOF

From performers to politicians and dancers to doctors, alums attest to the transferable power of Boston Conservatory training

18 TRACING OUR PAST TO BUILD A MORE INCLUSIVE FUTURE

Emmett G. Price III reflects on the Conservatory’s founding principles and bringing Africana studies into its curriculum

20 MACHINE LEARNING

Weighing AI’s impact on performing arts education

24 REMEMBERING ANTHONY MANGANARO

Boston Conservatory pays tribute to a longtime supporter and champion of arts education

26 PRESERVATION THROUGH TRANSFORMATION

Reshaping conservatory education, one milestone at a time

32 SOMATIC INTELLIGENCE

Alum Kate Gow examines the connections between dance and technology

34 IN THE LIMELIGHT

Recent happenings at Boston Conservatory

36 NOTEWORTHY

Accomplishments of Boston Conservatory alums, faculty, staff, and students

President's Column

Dear Boston Conservatory at Berklee community,

It is my great honor to open this issue of STAGES by congratulating Michael Shinn, whom I appointed interim executive director of Boston Conservatory at Berklee on August 1.

Many are familiar with Michael’s outstanding work as dean of music at the Conservatory since 2017. In this role, he worked with faculty and the administration to develop a vision for the Music Division and cuttingedge curricular support for the Conservatory’s Strategic Direction 2025, and he established key partnerships externally and across Berklee’s learning environments that have resulted in important new opportunities for students.

This work to realize the Strategic Direction serves as a starting point and inspiration for the many discussions we are having this year around the creation of a unified mission and vision for Berklee. Engagements with community members across all campuses are informing the development of mission and vision statements that will then guide the development of Berklee’s next strategic plan. Through this process, we seek to recognize, honor, and develop the unique history and rich traditions of the Conservatory within a vision of Berklee as an anchor arts institution in the city of Boston with global reach and presence.

Sincerely,

David Bogen Interim President and Provost

CENTER STAGE

SPRING 2024

Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s curated performance series Center Stage returns this spring with a stellar lineup you don’t want to miss.

MUSIC

BOSTON CONSERVATORY ORCHESTRA: CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY MONTH— FEATURING ANITA HILL

February 16

Celebrate Black History Month at Symphony Hall with powerful works by William Grant Still, Margaret Bonds, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Valerie Coleman, and Joseph Schwantner. Special guest narrator Anita Hill will recite the words of Martin Luther King Jr. as the orchestra performs Schwantner’s “New Morning for the World.” Bruce Hangen conducts.

THEATER SOMETHING ROTTEN

April 11–14

In this fun and quirky musical, audiences are transported back to 1595, when the fictitious Bottom brothers attempt to step out of Shakespeare’s shadow by writing the world’s first musical. Paul Daigneault directs the performance, with musical direction by Dan Rodriguez and choreography by Taavon Gamble.

OPERA A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

April 18–21

Boston Conservatory at Berklee presents the magical and hilarious opera adaptation of William Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, at the Huntington on Boston’s Avenue of the Arts.

DANCE

SPRING DANCE CONCERT: LIMITLESS

April 25–28

Boston Conservatory at Berklee presents its spring dance concert, Limitless, featuring incredible works by Aszure Barton, José Limón, Dwight Rhoden, and Dan Wagoner.

Snapshots

STUDENT PERFORMANCES SPOTLIGHT STYLISTIC DIVERSITY

From opera to K-pop and world premieres to crowd favorites, Boston Conservatory students delivered rousing performances across an array of genres to packed venues.

Opera students presented Emmanuel Chabrier’s rarely staged opéra bouffe L’Etoile, November 2023. Photo by Max Wagenblass.

Theater students paid homage to the era of film noir in the musical City of Angels, November 2023. Photo by Eric Antoniou.

Twelve Boston Conservatory commercial and contemporary dance students opened for K-pop headliners at KCON Los Angeles, marking the second consecutive appearance for Conservatory dance students at the largest convention for Korean culture and music, August 2023. Photo by Joe Duarte.

Boston Conservatory's contemporary music ensemble, contraBAND, performed works by Kaija Saariaho, November 2023. Photo by Dave Green.

Boston Conservatory commercial dance students performed in Berklee College of Music’s Singers Showcase 40th Anniversary Special: Holiday—Four Decades of Madonna, December 2023. Photo by Dave Green.

Musical theater students presented the iconic musical Sweet Charity, October 2023. Photo by Stefanie Belnavis.

Boston Conservatory Orchestra performed works inspired by nature at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre, October 2023. Photo by Dave Green.

Dance students performed “between hillslope and hollow,” a world premiere by dance faculty member Alissa Cardone, at the Fall Dance Concert: From the Ground Up, October 2023. Photo by Eric Antoniou.

Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble performed alongside the Boston Conservatory Faculty Brass Quintet (Richard Kelley, trumpet; Anne Howarth, horn; Kenneth Amis, tuba; Angel Subero, trombone; and Joseph Foley, trumpet) as part of Brass Festival Weekend, October 2023.

Photo by Dave Green.

Photo by Brian Hatton

Bridging Genres

Faculty member Anthony Barfield occupies a unique space in the music world—where the symphony hall meets the dance floor.

By Sarah Godcher Murphy

Rare is the musical artist whose credentials include a platinum hip-hop record and a commission from the New York Philharmonic. Boston Conservatory at Berklee Associate Professor Anthony Barfield has managed to achieve both, with one foot firmly planted in classical composition and the other in pop music production. He draws from these two very different worlds, as well as his experience as a digital media producer, to teach a foundational course required of every Boston Conservatory undergraduate, Introduction to iPad Media Technology. At the heart of Barfield’s many accomplishments—and the Conservatory course he teaches—is a creative adaptability that is rooted in cultural fluency and hands-on experimentation.

The word “multifaceted” is used a lot in the music world, but seldom are an artist’s facets as disparate as Barfield’s. Over the last decade, he has moved from classical composer to hip-hop producer and back again. His most recent project, Symphony 808, is a mashup of the two genres, combining a fully composed work for orchestra with the kind of programmed drum beats that can pack a dance floor. Uniquely qualified to write the piece, Barfield aims to show what hip-hop has to offer classical music and vice versa. In the process, he hopes to cultivate a broadminded audience—one that engages with Western classical and Black popular music traditions on equal terms.

Barfield’s first love, musically speaking, was the trombone, which he took up in middle school, but he always had a composer’s ear. As a band student, he would pick out the other instrument parts and occasionally play along with the trumpets, flutes, or saxophones. In high school, he fell hard for beat making after a cousin who was working as a pop producer sent him some production equipment to experiment with. At home on his family’s farm in Collinsville, Mississippi, he worked on beats obsessively and spent hours a day teaching himself how to use the gear.

“I would stay up late every night and go to school tired the next morning,” Barfield says. “I didn’t know anything about producing. I just thought of making beats.”

As an undergraduate at the Juilliard School, he continued along parallel tracks majoring in trombone performance while honing his hip-hop skills on the side. “I didn’t really tell too many people about it, except for my close friends,” he says. “Of course, I was still studying classical music, studying trombone. But while I was at Juilliard, that’s when I really started to discover more of composition.”

After completing his master’s degree in classical trombone at Manhattan School of Music in 2010, Barfield began winning commissions as a composer. His works from this period include “Here We Rest,” a piece for trombone choir that premiered at Carnegie Hall as part of the New York Wind Band Festival, and “Red Sky,” a work for solo trombone and wind band that has been performed by ensembles throughout the United States (including a performance by the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble in September 2023, featuring Assistant Professor Angel Subero as soloist).

In 2016, Barfield founded his own company, Velocity Music, specializing in pop production as well as film scoring and concert music. As a producer, his recordings with rapper Young M.A (“PettyWap”) and R&B artist Chris Brown (Heartbreak on a Full Moon) reached gold and platinum status, respectively. Propelled by this commercial success, Velocity signed a contract in 2019 with Polo Grounds Music, an imprint of RCA Records, where Barfield worked with a roster of artists, including A$AP Ferg, Melii, and Jay Gwuapo.

Barfield says it was difficult at first, moving back and forth between two genres with distinctly different cultures and different ways of listening. With groove-based pop music, he says, “it’s simple, it’s catchy, it feels good. But then with classical music, you’ve got to understand it in this intellectual way. It’s very deep and detailed.”

When preparing for a new project, be it a hip-hop track or a composition for symphonic band, Barfield spends hours just listening, orienting himself to the right aural environment. Once the work is under way, he centers himself in that place, focusing solely on the creative objective at hand. “I think the thing that really helped me to switch between genres was making sure that I am very much in the moment,” he says.

As his production career took off—and kept on growing—Barfield considered retirement from composing. But in 2020, he re-engaged with that world after receiving commissions from both the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He jokes that, like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part III, “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

For the NY Phil Bandwagon series, Barfield composed “Gravity,” based on the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. Drawing inspiration from the poem’s opening line (“What happens to a dream deferred?”), the piece spoke in dialogue with events of the time, from the murder of George Floyd to the growth of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Barfield’s Lincoln Center commission, “Invictus,” was “an anthem for New York City,” reflecting the city’s resilience as it mobilized for BLM protests and weathered loss of life and shutdowns during the pandemic.

Perhaps it was inevitable that Barfield’s work as a classical composer would eventually merge with the hip-hop rhythms he’s been cultivating since he was a teenager. His Symphony 808 is a four-movement work that fuses symphonic orchestration with programmed beats and influences drawn from trap, soul, and gospel music. (The piece takes its name from the classic Roland TR-808 drum machine, whose boomy bass sound laid the foundation for hip-hop in the early 1980s.)

With Symphony 808, Barfield seeks to merge cultures as well as genres, engaging listeners from both ends of the spectrum. In fact, he hopes to do away with the spectrum altogether. “We’re all connected, and I feel like it’s time for the symphonic space to explore that as well,” he says. “I’m thinking of that Fifth Avenue woman who has her season tickets to the New York Philharmonic . . . and then thinking about this person like my mama, who doesn’t know [classical] music and lives in Mississippi, in the country. How do we get those two people to be in the same space and appreciate something like this?”

I’m thinking of that Fifth Avenue woman who has her season tickets to the New York Philharmonic . . . and then thinking about this person like my mama, who doesn’t know [classical] music and lives in Mississippi, in the country. How do we get those two people to be in the same space and appreciate something like this?

Photo by Tatiana Daubek “ ”

Barfield completed the first movement of Symphony 808, Andante, and released it as a single in January 2024. While continuing to record and mix the other three movements, he stays exceptionally busy, producing for pop artists on a freelance basis and composing new works for wind ensemble. In addition to teaching at the Conservatory, he also conducts master classes and works directly with some of the orchestras playing his compositions—including the Minnesota Orchestra’s performance of “Invictus” and the Royal College of Music Wind Orchestra’s performance of “Dreamcatcher” in late 2023.

Barfield points out that he has no formal training in composition or record production but has built a career

in both, learning by doing. This hands-on approach dates back to his earliest days of crafting hip-hop beats as a teenager, and he fosters it in his students as well. “Sometimes it’s best to just start tinkering with things,” he says. “I was able to just do it and to learn from a different perspective.”

When he was first starting out as a professional composer, Barfield spent a number of years working in the recording department at Juilliard and as a media production manager for the award-winning app Juilliard Open Studios. He helped create monthly episodes featuring performances, master classes, and interviews with visiting artists like Wynton Marsalis, Adam Driver, and Emanuel Ax. He draws from that experience to teach video production and digital content creation in his Introduction to iPad Media Technology course.

The class provides all Conservatory students with an overview of digital media creation, demonstrating the ways it can improve their daily practice and grow their creative imaginations. They learn simple audio recording techniques as well as beginner strategies for editing in the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). They also learn the basics of staging, recording, and editing video using multiple cameras and audio sources. Throughout the semester, students use these techniques to create their own media projects and critique each other’s work. Barfield emphasizes that these projects are more than just homework—they can be used to advance students’ careers, as performance reels or electronic press kits.

“ ”

“I’m providing students with more tools that will help them to survive in today’s society, because we are living in a technology age,” Barfield says. Knowing that tech tools are constantly evolving, he encourages students to “keep learning and keep digging deeper to see what’s out there.”

Illustration by Sam Kalda

From performers to politicians and dancers to doctors, alums attest to the transferable power of Boston Conservatory training.

By Sarah Godcher Murphy

If you’ve studied at a conservatory, you have—by necessity—given quite a bit of thought to who you are and what you want to say. You have used your artistry to form genuine connections with others, be they audience or ensemble members. You have learned how to collaborate generously, knowing when to lead and when to play a supporting role. You’ve had years of practice giving and receiving constructive feedback, including honest assessments of your own work. You have acquired the flexibility to make adjustments to your performance in real time. And you’ve found meaningful ways to harness your passion and use it for some greater purpose.

Conservatories are where young artists go to level up,

not just as performers but as people. In the process, they build competencies that may seem incidental at first glance but turn out to be at the very core of professional success.

As Boston Conservatory alums can attest, these “future-proof” skills transfer to a remarkably wide range of professional contexts. Some have used them to become resilient, multihyphenate artists. Others have parlayed these skills into entirely new careers, often with fascinating, almost poetic results, like a dancer who assists with neurosurgery, a soprano serving as a public defense lawyer, and a musical theater actor running for United States Senate. When Victoria Daylor (B.F.A. '17, contemporary dance) moves through an operating room, she still thinks like a dancer.

Law student Amy Onyonyi (B.M. '20, voice) uses the same color-coding system to review a legal brief that she once used to analyze an opera score. And politician Keith Potts (B.F.A. '12, musical theater) draws on techniques from his Shakespearean acting class to connect with potential voters on the campaign trail.

Boston Conservatory not only nurtures excellent performers, it also makes them adaptable to new and unexpected stages. For alums who choose careers away from the spotlight, their Conservatory training makes them better leaders, teachers, advocates, and coworkers. Being an artist is a way of observing and conversing with the world around you, and that mindset never leaves you— whether you are performing professionally or not.

Dual Passions

Victoria Daylor (B.F.A. '17, contemporary dance) was just establishing herself as a professional dancer in the U.S. and abroad when she learned that her unusual flexibility was the result of a genetic condition known as hypermobile EhlersDanlos syndrome (hEDS). The disorder affects the connective tissue in her joints, allowing her to bend her body into striking shapes—but the very thing that made her unique as a dancer was leading to injuries that threatened her ability to perform professionally.

Daylor always had an interest in anatomy—something she considers a natural extension of her love for dance and the heightened awareness of her body’s movements that has come with it. After her diagnosis, that interest became an obsession and she “went down a rabbit hole,“ learning everything she could about hEDS.

“I just became really fascinated with the condition because people don’t know much about it,” she says. “I became so intrigued that I felt like it was actually something worth pursuing as a career.”

This past April, Daylor completed Columbia University’s postbaccalaureate program in premedical studies. While a student there, she interned as a “patient-scientist” at Norris Lab in Charleston, South Carolina, and eventually secured a permanent position assisting with clinical research. She is currently in the process of applying to medical school and has found that her Conservatory training makes her a stronger candidate because it has honed her ability to express herself and relate to others in ways that traditional STEM training does not.

Pivoting to the medical field has posed many challenges, but Daylor says that—as with dancing—her curiosity inspires and motivates her. “I feel very lucky that I’ve had two great passions in my life. I always thought if I left dance it would be this horrific, heartbreaking thing. But actually, I just was so excited about another thing that it naturally transferred over.”

“I always thought if I left dance it would be this horrific, heartbreaking thing. But actually, I just was so excited about another thing that it naturally transferred over.”

Daylor takes obvious delight in the parallels between dance and clinical research. When she is assisting with neurosurgeries, for instance, a cultivated awareness of her body’s movement and

positioning serves her well in the operating room. Because she is not scrubbed in, she must stand a certain distance away and make sure not to touch certain people or objects. “I have to kind of rehearse it, even physically. I have to know exactly where to stand,” she says. “It’s almost like a dance.”

Leading with Curiosity

When Sharmarke Yusuf (B.F.A. '20, contemporary theater) enrolled in the Conservatory’s contemporary theater program, he wanted to be an actor. These days, he is far more expansive about his life in the arts. If you explore Yusuf’s Instagram profile, you’ll find his keen-eyed photography, excerpts from his original writing, and performances of his spoken-word poetry, in addition to behind-the-scenes shots of his work as an actor in acclaimed regional theater productions. And at the top of that profile, you will find this very apt description: “Actor / Poet / Playwright / Photographer / Storyteller / Truth-seeker & whatever else I want to be.”

In 2022, Yusuf won an Elliot Norton Award for his role in BLKS by Aziza Barnes. Later that year, he played a poet in Fabulation; or, The Re-Education of Undine at Boston’s Lyric Stage Company. It’s no coincidence that he calls himself a poet now. Yusuf minored in creative writing while at Boston Conservatory, and ever since, he has been exploring the interplay of language, emotion, and performance.

Yusuf says his experience in the contemporary theater program, with its emphasis on artistic curiosity and multidisciplinary theater making, introduced him to a breadth of possibilities. “I like to think that curiosity, for me, is innate. But I think that was definitely fostered at BoCo,” he says. “It allowed me to view myself more fully as an artist—and what I can be. It just fostered that drive.”

Now a resident of New York City, he has immersed himself in the poetry scene there. “I have found that all my different interests kind of intersect with each other and fuel each other,” he says. “It feels really organic, following these different interests.” Incorporating a newfound love—and intuitive talent—for photography, he is also branching out into visual arts, adapting his poetry performances into short films.

Victoria Daylor

Sharmarke Yusuf

“I have found that all my different interests kind of intersect with each other and fuel each other.”

“Lately, I want to follow things that I feel some sort of spiritual alignment with. I try not to get into my five-year plan, or my 10-year plan,” he says. Ideally, his career trajectory will lead him someplace he hasn’t thought of yet. “It’s something that hasn’t even entered my mind, you know? But I’m enjoying it and feel fulfilled—and a lot of passion for it.”

From Empathy to Advocacy

Keith Potts (B.F.A. '12, musical theater) became a rising star in Indiana state politics for the most personal of reasons. Shortly after he moved to Indianapolis to live with his husband (an Indiana native), then governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, effectively legalizing discrimination against the LGBTQ community on religious grounds. Potts was “spurred to action,” and in very short order he went from volunteering with local advocacy groups to winning a seat on the Indianapolis city council, defeating his incumbent opponent with 61% of the vote.

In July 2023, Potts announced that he would run for U.S. Senate on a platform emphasizing middle-class job growth and access to affordable health care. He campaigned throughout the state for six months until withdrawing from the race in mid-December. As an underdog candidate traversing a decidedly red state, Potts led with empathy, compassion, and humor as he traveled from county to county, building connections with potential voters. Despite exiting the race, he still works closely with Indiana Democrats, hoping to secure a Senate victory in 2024.

Campaigning is very much like theater, Potts says, only he’s not playing a character. He is telling his own story in hopes of finding commonalities with voters. “As an actor, you want to dig into a character’s background. Well, I want to figure out a way to share my background that resonates with people, so that people can connect to me,” he explains.

“As

an actor, you want to dig into a character’s background. Well, I want to figure out a way to share my background that resonates with people, so that people can connect to me.”

Potts says his Boston Conservatory training—particularly his Shakespeare class with Associate Professor Doug Lockwood—often comes into play on the campaign trail. Just as an actor adapts written dialogue to the character’s given circumstances, Potts adapts his campaign talking points to individual voters’ concerns. And when meeting constituents face to face, he pays close attention to the stories they share about their own lives, so that when he’s delivering a speech, he knows exactly who in the crowd is most likely to connect with what he is saying.

“Learning that flexibility while utilizing a very specific text is so similar to how a political stump speech works,” he says. Above all, though, his Boston Conservatory training has given him “the ability to simply communicate—to be unabashed and unembarrassed to get up in front of a room and say, ‘This is what I believe.’”

Like Potts, Amy Onyonyi (B.M. '20, voice) was drawn to a career that would allow her to advocate for others while incorporating her experience as a performing artist. As a student at Boston Conservatory, Onyonyi took a course called Legal Aspects of the Music Industry with Professor Tonya Butler, an accomplished attorney and chair of Berklee College of Music’s Music Business/ Management Department. Onyonyi noticed that many of her classmates wanted nothing to do with business or legal aspects of their performance careers. They simply wanted to focus on their art—which put them at a disadvantage professionally.

“I thought, ‘Oh, I’d love to be the person that worries about all of that story,’” she says. “Somebody who also understands the artist’s experience might be in a better position to advocate for them.”

“Somebody who also understands the artist’s experience might be in a better position to advocate for them.”

Now in her third year at Boston College Law School, Onyonyi also works for BC’s public defender clinic, representing indigent clients in district court. The performance strategies she learned at Boston Conservatory enable her to take control of the space and serve her well in the courtroom, she says. And it just so happens that the color-coding system she developed to analyze opera scores applies to analyzing court cases as well.

Though law school has kept her incredibly busy, Onyonyi still finds opportunities to perform. She won the Boston College Law School talent show, and this past spring she was invited to

Keith Potts

Amy Onyonyi

perform the Black national anthem at the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association’s 50th anniversary gala. This coming May, she will sing at BC Law’s graduation ceremony.

Onyonyi draws confidence from the options she’s created for herself professionally, and she intends to keep advocating on behalf of fellow performers—“giving artists access to the legal world and demystifying it,” she says, “because sometimes it can seem so unnecessarily intimidating.”

“Everything That You Need Is Already in You”

In the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, Eleri Ward (B.F.A. '17, musical theater) set out to record an album of Stephen Sondheim covers. Alone in her apartment, with a walk-in closet for a studio, Ward had only her voice, her guitar, and “a really cheap microphone” propped on a stand held together by duct tape. Despite this barebones setup, she felt perfectly equipped to make the record, A Perfect Little Death, which would end up launching her career to thrilling new heights.

Ward says she’s not a fan of musical theater cast recordings, so she decided to make the kind of Sondheim album she’d always wanted to hear: subtle, intimate, and very much in the vein of contemporary folk singer-songwriters like Sufjan Stevens (one of her major influences). She completed the recording in a month, then promoted it herself, she says, by “banging on doors, trying to secure media coverage.” Months of diligence paid off when Ward was offered a contract from Ghostlight Records, which released A Perfect Little Death in 2021 and its follow-up, Keep a Tender Distance, in 2022.

Ward never anticipated that the album would be picked up by a record label, but at the same time, she never doubted that she was onto something good. Guided by her own taste and intuition, she felt fully prepared to make it happen, even if she had to complete the project entirely on her own.

“I think the music industry can sometimes make you feel like you are at the mercy of the powers that be,” she says. “You feel like you have to be told ‘yes’ by someone else in order to move forward.” First saying yes to herself allowed the gatekeepers to follow suit. “Everything that you need is already in you,” Ward says. “It's just a matter of, one, self-awareness . . . and, two, using that awareness to not let the set of circumstances be the thing

that defines whether or not you are capable of something.” Propelled by the success of both Sondheim albums, a solo concert tour for Keep a Tender Distance, and a national arena tour opening for Josh Groban, Ward soon was offered yet another unexpected opportunity. An agent from Paradigm Talent Agency reached out, urging her to write an original musical. Though she had been writing pop songs for years, she’d never considered writing for theater and was daunted by the prospect of maintaining plot and character arcs across a collection of songs. But she accepted the challenge and is now collaborating with cowriters on two new musicals—and feeling more inspired than ever as a writer.

“It’s really interesting to learn about yourself as an artist and what your process is when you’re placed in a new context because contexts can vary and environments can vary, but you are you.”

“It’s really interesting to learn about yourself as an artist and what your process is when you’re placed in a new context,” she says, “because contexts can vary and environments can vary, but you are you. And you are the same you, regardless of what situation you’re in.”

“Companies Are Relying on People Like Us”

When Tyler Lenhart (B.F.A. '14, musical theater) decided to pivot away from professional acting, he found a welcoming new home in higher education. As an admissions administrator at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Lenhart works directly with high school students auditioning for Tisch’s undergraduate drama program. Guided by his own Boston Conservatory training and his experience in national tours of Annie and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, he believes that young performers should embrace their arts education with confidence, knowing it will prepare them for whatever career lies ahead.

In the 10 years since he graduated from the Conservatory, Lenhart has grown even more convinced that performance skills transfer to a vast range of jobs—and that employers have learned to see the value of arts training. With so-called “soft skills” more in demand than ever, the business world is finally catching up with what conservatories have known all along: the workplace requires creative and emotional intelligence.

Eleri Ward

Tyler Lenhart

“Employers are putting such an emphasis on not only responding to your own emotions, but how to interpret other people’s emotions, which is not something that we were [seeing] a few years ago,” Lenhart says.

“Employers are putting such an emphasis on not only responding to your own emotions, but how to interpret other people’s emotions, which is not something that we were [seeing] a few years ago.”

With its emphasis on authentic selfexpression, performing arts training strengthens these emotional and relational muscles in ways that traditional academics cannot. At a place like Boston Conservatory, he says, “you’re surrounded by people who are preparing to be incredibly vulnerable at all times, whether it’s a concert or a play or whatever it may be. A lot of companies are—at least in my experience—relying on people like us, people who are artist-minded, to help facilitate those conversations and be leaders in that particular aspect.”

classical crossover quartet, Sons of Serendip, and encountered a most unexpected challenge.

His bandmates wanted to know if he could sing.

“They were like, ‘Hey, do you think you could try harmonizing some stuff?’ And I was like, ‘You mean with my cello?’” Taylor says.

Given that most of his prior singing experience had been in the shower, Taylor felt “pretty insecure” about it. But he quickly found that this added role as backup vocalist gave him access to new and more personal forms of musical expression, allowing him to open up with his voice.

From his own days as a student—and his experience in his current role at NYU—Lenhart knows that many young artists feel pressure to land high-profile performance jobs right out of school. He maintains that sharing a more diverse range of success stories might help to reduce that pressure and illuminate the many ways that conservatory skills can be applied.

“I think a bigger and more interesting and helpful conversation can be had [about] shifting what an arts education means and how valuable artists are in the workplace,” Lenhart says. “There are so many other cool and interesting ways that we can support ourselves.”

Discovering Hidden Talents

After nine years of study at Boston Conservatory, Nathaniel Taylor (B.M. '15, G.P.D. '17, P.S.C. '18, A.D. '20, cello) had a prestigious artist diploma and several competition prizes under his belt. Although he was well positioned to launch a career as a classical soloist, that path had begun to lose its appeal. Taylor wanted to explore his musicality outside the classical sphere and collaborate with fellow artists on a more inclusive range of repertoire.

With that in mind, he joined the conductor-less chamber ensemble Palaver Strings in 2022, finding alignment with the ensemble’s mission “to strengthen and inspire community through music.” That same year, he became the cellist for a

“I discovered a hidden talent, apparently. I love singing now,” he says. “Honestly, I can’t really stop because I’m just enjoying the process of it.”

Taylor makes a point of putting himself outside his comfort zone, musically speaking, and he encourages other artists to do the same. Embracing a wider range of cultures and genres expands self-knowledge, builds technique, and ultimately advances the artform, he explains.

“I really want to take time to understand things that I don’t [already know] about music. That’s been one of the biggest impacts for me . . . collaborating with people and being able to pick their brain,” he says, and ask them, “How is it that you express yourself on your instrument?”

Taylor now moves fluently across genres, covering Stevie Wonder with Sons of Serendip one day and performing a concert of all Syrian music with Palaver Strings the next. He also remains connected to the classical world. This past May, he joined Yo-Yo Ma and three other cellists in performance at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History to celebrate Ma’s receiving that revered institution’s Great Americans Medal. Taylor performed on the museum’s 1701 “Servais” Stradivarius—an experience so amazing, he says, he “didn't want to give it back.”

“I definitely became much more self-aware as a cellist when I started doing out-of-the-box type of things. It really broadened my perspective on what’s possible for me.”

Embracing the unfamiliar not only broadened his musicality, it helped Taylor to understand himself better and clarify what he wants to say with his work. “I definitely became much more self-aware as a cellist when I started doing out-of-the-box type of things,” he says. “It really broadened my perspective on what’s possible for me. I’m at a point where I feel like there’s limitless possibilities now.”

Nathaniel Taylor

Tracing Our Past to Build a More Inclusive Future

Emmett G. Price III reflects on Boston Conservatory’s founding principles and bringing Africana studies into its curriculum.

On February 11, 1867, German-born educator, violinist, and composer Julius Eichberg (1824–1893) founded Boston Conservatory of Music as one of the first conservatories to admit women and people of color. Inspired by his own success as a student at the Brussels Conservatory—under the recommendation of German composer Felix Mendelssohn—and subsequently as a professor of violin at the Geneva Conservatory, Eichberg envisioned a training school with a world-class faculty accessible to all musicians, regardless of race, gender, or background—a radical concept at the time. His aspiration for inclusion was likely driven by his childhood experience as the son of a Jewish family living in Düsseldorf, Germany, after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. Like many who endured the trauma of ethnic, cultural, and religious discrimination, by immigrating to the United States in 1857, he sought the same sense of inclusion that he engendered through the founding of Boston Conservatory.

Opening its doors less than two years after Juneteenth, Eichberg’s conservatory was the first in the nation to offer talented formerly enslaved people the opportunity for an exceptional musical education. Toward the end of the 19th century, Eichberg invited Perry George “P. G.” Lowery, later acclaimed as the “World’s Greatest Colored Cornet Soloist,” to study at the Conservatory, making him the first documented Black student to complete studies at the school. During the challenging years of the post-Reconstruction era, the Conservatory continued to take the courageous posture of inclusion, as witnessed by the graduation of New England Conservatory transfer student William Andrew Rhodes in 1940. In addition to serving as a celebrated church organist, the decorated composer had works performed by the Boston Symphony Pops Orchestra under the baton of Arthur Fiedler, as well as by his own Rhodes Opera Society.

Meanwhile, in the decades surrounding the two world wars, many musicians studied at Boston Conservatory who would go on to make names for

Photo by Elizabeth Friar

themselves in jazz, including saxophonist and bandleader Sam Rivers, double bassist Leroy Eliot “Slam” Stewart, and composer and saxophonist Gigi Gryce, among many others.

Over the course of the 20th century, progress toward the realization of Eichberg’s aspiration varied, but in more recent years, the transformative leadership of Richard Ortner, who served as president of the Conservatory from 1998 to 2017, moved the school forward. Prioritizing social responsibility and the notion of the artist-citizen, Ortner led with conviction and a focus on inclusion and accessibility in the broadest sense possible. He established an identity of excellence and a culture of humanity that remains a hallmark of the Conservatory to this day. Under Ortner’s guidance, the number of women and people of color expanded in the student, staff, and faculty ranks, and he launched groundbreaking programs for community members with disabilities. With the growing prestige of the dance and theater programs, curricular, artistic, and programmatic innovations increased the notoriety of the school. Under his leadership, Boston Conservatory entered into a historic merger agreement with Berklee College of Music.

Upon Ortner’s retirement, Cathy Young, the former dean of dance, was appointed inaugural executive director and became the first woman to lead the prestigious learning environment now referred to as Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Under Young’s leadership (2017–2022), the Conservatory boldly expanded on Eichberg’s vision by centering diversity, equity, and inclusion as a holistic approach not only to education but also to leadership. Her tenure saw a definitive increase of Black and women academic and administrative leaders, culturally relevant and inclusive curricula, and philanthropic support earmarked for diversity, inclusion, equity, and accessibility efforts. Her attention to student success and academic excellence remains a fixture within the Conservatory ethos.

Young’s commitment to reimagining the traditional conservatory model is evidenced by the inclusion of the Africana Studies Division—designed for both Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory students—as a central offering for Conservatory students. This work now continues under the leadership of Interim Executive Director Michael Shinn.

Together, the Conservatory executive leadership team is charting a bold pathway forward for what we believe is the first conservatory in the United States with an embedded Africana studies division. This pathway will position the division to actively engage in the training, mentoring, and support of all Conservatory students across the disciplines of dance, music, and theater. Through courses, artistic and scholarly residencies, and a number of cocurricular activities, the Africana Studies Division will ensure the broad inclusion of the African diaspora as an example of culturally competent pedagogy as we expand historical canons to be more inclusive. Through curated workshops, seminars, panel discussions, and individual mentoring, our students will have access to expanded opportunities to emerge confident and well prepared for an everchanging world. This pathway encourages even more expansive thinking in regard to the ways we recruit, retain, and mentor our students, staff, faculty, and administrative leaders for success as globally engaged and technologically savvy leaders.

Over its 157-year history, Boston Conservatory has been a leader among leaders. From Eichberg’s original aspiration of inclusion through seasons of fluctuation, we have always found our way back to our standard of excellence. As we move forward, we boldly aim to leverage our creative, artistic, and innovative superpowers as culturally competent creatives to inspire, influence, and embody the change we desire to experience.

Emmett G. Price III, Ph.D., is founding dean of Africana Studies at Berklee. He can be reached at epriceiii@berklee.edu.

Julius Eichberg

P. G. Lowery

Leroy Eliot “Slam” Stewart

By Annette Fantasia

Weighing AI’s impact on performing arts education

The debut of the large language model (LLM) chatbot ChatGPT and other AI tools in late 2022 marked a seismic shift that some predict will transform our daily lives at a scale comparable to the Industrial Revolution. For the performing arts and higher education specifically, generative AI presents a swarm of ethical and existential questions surrounding academic honesty, authorship, artistic compensation, and the future of creative enterprise.

STAGES talked with a cross section of faculty from the Dance, Music, and Theater divisions about how AI is impacting their fields and their teaching. While many have mixed feelings—including genuine concern about the potential disruptions and threats to creative livelihoods and to society at large— there is also a strong current of excitement about the possibility of expanding the artist’s tool set in powerful ways.

Photos by Kelly Davidson

Confronting AI in Academic Writing

Voice faculty member Kayla Gautereaux teaches a series of courses within the M.F.A. in Musical Theater: Musical Theater Vocal Pedagogy program focused on thesis research, writing, and defense. Operating at the unique intersection of scientific writing and vocal arts, she guides graduate students through their thesis development, which involves asking an original research question on a topic that can range from the very scientific, such as biometric research on the biology of singing, to the more humanities based, such as the impact on one’s career of having a marginalized identity.

Gautereaux explains that there is no official consensus about how to confront AI in the field of scientific writing. “There is a recognition that students are going to use it, and there needs to be a conversation with someone informed to guide how to do so in a responsible way,” she says.

“There is a recognition that students are going to use it, and there needs to be a conversation with someone informed to guide how to do so in a responsible way.”

In her thesis courses, Gautereaux places great emphasis on using AI responsibly, asking students to use it as a tool to “think critically about their own writing and about AI itself.” Editing workshops are a key component of her class, and she designates an AI editing day when students run their drafts through ChatGPT. “We analyze the results together and ask: How did AI change your writing structure and content? Are you going to implement these changes? How can you attribute the work accurately?” she says.

From Vocal Training to Training Voice Data Sets

In addition to incorporating ChatGPT into her teaching to aid students’ writing and research, Gautereaux also devotes class time to analyzing AI tools and emerging technologies specific to vocal training, such as the app Vocal Image, which promises to “unleash the full potential of your voice with guided vocal trainings, advanced AI analysis, and engaging vocal challenges.”

She asks her students, who are studying to be voice teachers, “Would you give this to your students as a way to practice when you’re not in the room?”

Theater faculty member Joy Arcolano is also engaging her students in critical conversations about AI. As a professional voice actor who teaches a series of courses on voice-over acting—an industry undergoing a rapid disruption from emerging AI tools—she underscores in class discussions the consent and compensation concerns at the center of the recent prolonged SAG-AFTRA labor strikes.

AI has made it easier than ever to clone and auto-generate voices from an actor’s voice, leaving them vulnerable to developers who pilfer content without artists’ permission—and without providing compensation. Alarmingly, Arcolano says, the technology only needs a few recordings of her voice to train an AI model for generating future synthetic voice recordings, which can also be combined with other voice data to generate a ˮmultivoice.ˮ “Let’s say I do five recordings for a corporation and I don’t read my contract,” she explains. “They can take those five recordings and that is enough for them to train an AI in that consistent voice for the rest of time.”

In many cases, voice-over contracts stipulate that recordings are owned by the commissioning organization, not by the artist. Because of this, Arcolano devotes significant class time to deciphering contracts, imploring her students—some of whom have already worked as voice-over artists—to read their contracts closely and offering pointers on key clauses to look out for. Putting it bluntly, she says she teaches her students “how to read a contract so you know that they’re not going to be training, making a data set on the thing that you’re doing.”

“Let’s say I do five recordings for a corporation and I don’t read my contract. They can take those five recordings and that is enough for them to train an AI in that consistent voice for the rest of time.”

Despite the very real disruptions and ethical issues posed by AI, Arcolano also acknowledges the benefits of AI tools, both current and potential. With some cautious optimism, she points to the

emergence of AI voice-over services with built-in guardrails that give voice professionals agency over their recordings so “they will never use my voice to train a multivoice, but they will use my voice to create an AI voice that I can be an agent for.” As a busy artist, educator, and parent, the prospect of generating income from an AI version of her voice—literally while she sleeps—has obvious benefits, but the long-term outcomes of these relatively new models remain to be seen.

Technology in Motion

The same set of concerns surrounding compensation and copyright are at play in the world of dance. “There are companies out there that are scraping information without the dancers knowing it, and without giving compensation for it,” says dance faculty member Jun Kuribayashi. This is a major concern for dancers and choreographers alike, as movement data can provide valuable source material for a variety of entertainment, media, and tech industries.

On the other hand, Kuribayashi, who has served as a movement consultant for major feature films and television series (including CGI-based animation), also stresses that AI and other technologies are opening new doors for dance artists. In 2023, he cotaught the Dance Division’s Dance and Technology elective, which was launched in 2019 by dance faculty member Alissa Cardone and Berklee College of Music faculty member Lori Landay. The course immerses Boston Conservatory dancers in a range of emerging technologies to expand their artistry through digital experiences for the stage, screen, and beyond.

One area in particular that is opening new creative opportunities for dancers is the realm of motion capture—that is, live-action human movement used for computer-generated characters in movies, virtual and augmented reality experiences, video games, and more. A key challenge in motion-capture technology is replicating natural human movement in a variety of settings, which requires expensive technology and vast amounts of data and computer processing power to do well. It helps to have the

input of humans with foundational training in movement. As Kuribayashi says, “when you’re a dancer, you’re a movement specialist. Dance departments across the country don’t actually talk about how you can have a career doing this.”

“Dancers have this somatic intelligence,” Landay adds, “that’s something you don’t get in 10 minutes, that’s something you get in conservatory training.” As movement knowledge and body awareness are deeply embedded in dancers’ and choreographers’ expertise, Boston Conservatory dancers can apply their unique somatic skills while experimenting with new motion-capture technology to expand their creative toolbox—and career options.

Equipping Students with Powerful (Yet Fallible) Creative Tools

As part of the Dance and Technology course, Landay, a cultural studies professor with research interests in emerging technologies, made connections with MIT’s Immersion Lab, a cutting-edge research and technology facility just over a mile from the

“When you’re a dancer, you’re a movement specialist. Dance departments across the country don’t actually talk about how you can have a career doing this.”

“We want to empower [students] to understand the technology. Whether they are choreographers, producers, or directors, we want them to be making the most creative decisions that they want to make.”

Conservatory campus. In fall 2023, Landay brought Boston Conservatory dancers to work with the lab’s state-of-the art depth cameras to record the dancers’ movements, which they placed on avatars. While acknowledging the ethical questions surrounding motion capture and its enablement of deep fakes on the internet, she believes that introducing students to these technologies is critical to preparing dance artists to be leaders in their fields. “We want to empower them to understand the technology,” she says. “Whether they are choreographers, producers, or directors, we want them to be making the most creative decisions that they want to make.”

Paul Masters, who teaches courses in immersive and experiential theater in the Conservatory’s Theater Division, also notes that AI and extendedreality technology

“I want to make students aware that [these things] are tools—they are fallible tools and they replicate society’s implicit and explicit biases and myopic perspectives.”

has great potential to open new opportunities for theater artists. With research interests in the technological aspects of theater— he is currently writing a book on immersive and experimental theater and large language models (LLMs)—Masters is excited about how technology can expand the possibilities of traditional live theater. “There’s a whole slew of opportunities outside the conventional theater, including digital performance, and those opportunities are going to increase over time,” he says. This includes experimental theater, where AI has been used as an immersive tool to create interactive experiences in which the audience participates in the action through chatbots and virtual reality.

In the classroom, Masters has introduced students to LLMs such as ChatGPT and Bard as tools for initial research, guiding them on best practices for prompts. “I want to make students aware that [these things] are tools—they are fallible tools and they replicate society’s implicit and explicit biases and myopic perspectives,” he explains. For this reason, he says, it’s all the more important to bring LLMs into the curriculum.

Piano faculty member Aleksandr Polyakov also strongly believes that AI best practices must be integrated into coursework. “We must teach our students how it can be used—or else, for one, it creates unmeasurable inequality between students who know about these tools and students who don’t,” he says.

Polyakov developed a guide that offers an overview of ways that music students can use chatbots to prepare for performances, improve their technique, and expand their understanding of the historical contexts of musical works. “I believe, if shown how, students can use AI tools as teacher assistants to their instructors, making information from lectures or from the book more relevant, applicable, and relatable to them,” he says. He also provides examples of effective prompts to generate the best results, such as “Can you tell me some background on how [insert composer] wrote their [piece]? What inspired them? List any facts, historical context, or other stories that can help with interpretation and performance of the piece.”

While Polyakov is concerned that chatbots can be misused by students in academic work, he acknowledges that, on the other hand, “it challenges us to be better educators rather than relying on assessment methods that have worked for decades.”

“I believe, if shown how, students can use AI tools as teacher assistants to their instructors, making information from lectures or from the book more relevant, applicable, and relatable to them.”

While there are no cut-and-dried answers yet as to whether AI is a net positive or net negative force, the one certainty is that it cannot be ignored. “We have to learn how to integrate this technology into our practices, or it will have every possibility of overwhelming us,” Masters warns. “As artists, we can’t bury our heads in the sand on this one.”

REMEMBERING Anthony Manganaro

Boston Conservatory pays tribute to the longtime supporter and champion of arts education.

BY MADISON SPAHN

Anthony Manganaro, longtime supporter of Boston Conservatory and a champion of performing arts education, passed away on August 20, 2023, at the age of 79. His legacy as a successful businessman, inspiring leader, and transformative philanthropist is carried on by the countless people and organizations he impacted through his generosity.

Manganaro grew up just outside of Boston and attended Northeastern University, receiving his degree in civil engineering in 1967. He went on to make his career as an entrepreneur in diverse industries, leading the Siena Corporation (commercial real estate), ezStorage (self-storage), and Boston Medical Corporation (medical supplies) to commercial success. In 2007, he turned to his lifelong passion for horse racing, transforming a cattle farm in Paris, Kentucky, into Siena Farm, a boutique breeding operation for worldclass racehorses.

As a first-generation college graduate from a blue-collar family, Manganaro was devoted to widening access to higher education. He was particularly involved at his alma mater, Northeastern University. In addition to serving on the university’s Board of Trustees, he and his family were the founders of Northeastern’s Torch Scholars program, which supports first-generation college students by eliminating admissions barriers. The university awarded him an honorary doctorate of public service in 2018.

Manganaro’s support for performing arts education was equally fervent and generous. “Anthony was a person that invests in people, so his philanthropic interests were diverse, but he was always extremely involved in education of all

sorts,” says David Scott Sloan, Berklee trustee and past chair of the former Boston Conservatory Board of Trustees. In 2001, Manganaro and his wife, Michele, established the Michael A. Alaura Memorial Scholarship at Boston Conservatory, in honor of Michele’s father, a cellist and double bassist who went on to perform with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops after graduating from The Boston Conservatory in 1968. The endowed scholarship provides renewable financial support to string students in the Conservatory’s Music Division who demonstrate “significant academic growth, artistic discipline, and an emerging talent.”

Since its founding, the scholarship program has supported numerous exceptional string players who are enjoying highly successful professional careers. Venezuelan violinist Nicolás Favero Urbiztondo (B.M. '02), one of the first Alaura scholars, currently holds the concertmaster position with the Teatro Argentino de la Plata Orchestra in addition to touring internationally with the Alberto Williams Trio. Nathaniel Taylor (B.M. '15, G.P.D. '17, P.S.C. '18, A.D. '20, cello) has performed a variety of solo and chamber music engagements across the United States, including multiple performances with Yo-Yo Ma. He also won the Grand Prize of the ASTA Master’s Competition and fellowships with Tanglewood Music Center and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, among other recognitions. Other scholarship recipients have performed with prestigious orchestras and chamber groups across the globe, including the Tessera Quartet, l’Orchestre des Pays de Savoie, Boston Chamber Orchestra, National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, and Tanglewood Music Center.

Like Anthony Manganaro, some Alaura scholars have even returned to give back to the institutions that nurtured their development. Scholarship recipient Markus Placci (G.P.D. '04, A.D. '06), in addition to wide-ranging success as a concert violinist, became the youngest-ever faculty member to be appointed at Boston Conservatory, in 2011, where he was presented with the 2016 Boston Conservatory Outstanding Faculty of the Year award.

The Manganaros’ involvement with the Conservatory has not been limited to scholarship funding alone. In 2010, the Conservatory’s late former president Richard Ortner spearheaded the purchase and construction of a new building at 132 Ipswich Street, now named the Richard

Anthony and Michele Manganaro

Ortner Studio Building in his honor. The building, which opened its doors on September 5, 2014, boasts multiple teaching studios, dance studios, professionally soundproofed practice rooms, and an orchestra rehearsal hall. But what excited Ortner most about the building was its common spaces that would offer opportunities for community building and collaboration among students from different divisions.

Anthony Manganaro enthusiastically supported Ortner’s vision and was excited by the idea that “a lot of learning occurs in the spaces between the programmed rooms” of an educational building. He hoped that the building’s glass-walled design, which he oversaw, would accomplish Ortner’s goal of bringing wider attention to the Conservatory and its innovative work. As the building’s primary financial supporter, Manganaro was offered the building’s naming rights, but he insisted that the honor go instead to Richard Ortner, to celebrate Ortner’s decades of service to the Conservatory.

David Scott Sloan recalls that during the Manganaros’ relationship with Boston Conservatory, Manganaro and Ortner became good friends, and several strategic planning meetings for the Conservatory were held at Siena Farm. Manganaro recognized that the Conservatory was Ortner’s family and wanted to create a long-lasting legacy for Ortner’s work. According to Sloan, the naming of the building aligned perfectly with Manganaro’s longtime philanthropic philosophy: “Anthony was always honoring other people, never himself.”

In addition to the Manganaros’ philanthropic support, Michael Memmolo, Michele and Anthony Manganaro’s nephew, currently sits on Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s Executive Director’s Advisory Council. The entire Berklee community is deeply grateful to the Manganaro family for their continued commitment to supporting Boston Conservatory’s mission.

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PRESERVATION THROUGH TRANSFORMATION

Reshaping conservatory education, one milestone at a time

Foreword by Michael Shinn, D.M.A., Interim Executive Director

Is it possible to change and still be true to your roots? Can you honor tradition while embracing the new? At what point does evolution change a thing entirely? These are the questions that conservatories across the country are asking themselves as they grapple with a rapidly changing world—and performance landscape—that is challenging a centuries-old educational model.

We at Boston Conservatory maintain that you can evolve without losing your identity, and that even with all of today’s technology and career options, there is still merit in—and more need than ever for—conservatory-style training. But how this education is packaged and delivered for today’s students needs to look different from the way it looked even just a decade ago.

Conservatories differ from college programs in the complete immersion they offer in a particular art form, as well as their deep focus on mastery of specific techniques, forms, and repertoire. For this reason, conservatory training is—by its very nature— intense; with so much learning to pack into such a limited amount of time, this type of education is physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding. How do we provide more opportunities for our students without replacing essential studies? How do we incorporate new technologies and perspectives into our classrooms without abandoning our long-standing teaching traditions?

Merging with Berklee in 2016 was Boston Conservatory’s first bold step toward answering these questions and reimagining what a conservatory education could be. It was clear that a partnership with Berklee, with its technological resources and expertise in more contemporary studies, would not only provide an accelerated route for modernizing the curriculum—it would also create the world’s most complete, comprehensive ecosystem of performing arts and related fields.

To fully realize the potential of the merger and embrace this path of reinvention, Boston Conservatory identified three pillars upon which a contemporary conservatory education must be built in order to thrive in modern times: diversity in all its forms, academic innovation, and elevation, or global positioning.

I believe that through the thoughtful adaptation of our conservatory methodologies within this framework, we can fortify the core values and teaching traditions on which they were founded rather than dilute them. Our values can be preserved not only in their traditional forms but also in the spirit of their enduring relevance.

Here is a look at some of the transformative work we are doing to reshape our educational model and offer a new standard for what a conservatory education can be, now and in the future.

EMBRACING DIVERSITY IN ALL ITS FORMS

Boston Conservatory believes that a healthy diversity of people, aesthetics, and ideas is the foundation for an intellectually stimulating and sustainable learning environment. The knowledge shared through thoughtful dialogue and the exchange of differing perspectives not only inspires creativity and informs artistic expression—it also prepares students to collaborate across industries and across cultures. In today’s world of continuously evolving technology and the emergence of gamechanging tools like AI, it is clear that a conservatory education can only thrive through a radical paradigm shift that moves away from a monolithic immersion in one aesthetic. Instead, we must embrace the undeniable diversity of our world to guide the artistic growth and excellence that is central to our mission while leading curricular, artistic, and cultural change.

» In recent years, Boston Conservatory has dedicated more than $2.5 million to support its diversity and inclusion initiatives, thanks to generous contributions to the Executive Director’s Momentum Fund and additional philanthropic support throughout the year. This funding has helped to increase available Thrive Scholarship dollars for Conservatory students in the greatest financial need; establish additional scholarship funding to support more diverse and representative incoming classes; and fund Faculty Strategic Innovation Grants, which provide funding for faculty-led initiatives that are driving academic innovation.

» The Zacharis Fund for Diversity, made possible by Trustee Marillyn Zacharis, has championed Boston Conservatory’s efforts to diversify its curriculum and broaden students’ exposure to underrepresented artists and works. Boston Conservatory Orchestra’s 2022 concert in Symphony Hall is just one of the many impactful projects made possible by the fund; that concert featured works by esteemed composer Adolphus Hailstork—who was in residence at Boston Conservatory for the week leading up to the event—as well as works by Bill Banfield and Conservatory alum Stefan Thompson.

» Underwriting support by generous donors such as Trustee Cindy Curme has enabled Boston Conservatory students to participate in the Berklee Gospel Performance Program, offered by Berklee’s Africana Studies Division. This summer program allows students to connect with roots of the gospel tradition by learning about the evolution of gospel music and exploring gospel’s cultural relevance to today’s contemporary music.

» Committed to engaging with artists of diverse backgrounds, Boston Conservatory has hosted dozens of guest artists across the fields of dance, music, and theater, including the Urban Bush Women dance company, Jennifer Archibald, Aszure Barton, Jessica Castro, Jessica Franco, the Marian Anderson String Quartet, Karen Slack, Xavier Foley, Nina Yoshida Nelsen, Julia Bullock, Awadagin Pratt, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Jonathon Heyward, Chita Rivera, Michael R. Jackson, and Rami Malek, to name a few.

» A groundbreaking Africana Studies minor offered through Berklee’s Africana Studies Division—is now available to Boston Conservatory students as of the 2023–2024 academic year. The minor allows students to explore the impact of the global African diaspora on different artforms, learning how the people, histories, and customs of the African continent have shaped cultures worldwide. This provides students with a specialized Afro-diasporic lens that can be applied to their art and also lays the groundwork for related graduate studies. The Africana Studies minor is among more than 30 that Boston Conservatory students can now declare through the larger Berklee institution, including Latin Music, Mediterranean Music, and Spanish Arts and Culture.

» Boston Conservatory at Berklee partners regularly with colleagues and groups at Berklee College of Music and Berklee NYC to record both new and underrepresented works, an effort intended to elevate new voices and those rarely heard. One example of such powerful collaboration includes a 360-degree video recording in Berklee NYC’s state-of-the-art studio by BoCoCelli, the Conservatory’s premier cello ensemble, featuring a unique program of works by Native American composers and women.

» Boston Conservatory has presented at key conferences such as the Sphinx Conference, the largest and longeststanding convention dedicated to diversity and inclusion in classical music. This year, Berklee’s Africana Studies Division will join Boston Conservatory at key events to strengthen and reinforce the institution’s leading work in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

ACADEMIC INNOVATION: A REFRESHED APPROACH

As we prioritize diversity as the framework of our educational approach, each Boston Conservatory division has been undergoing a deep and methodical curricular review to contextualize its teaching of classical materials, expand studies beyond the Western canon, and redefine artistic values and standards of excellence that are not limited to traditional Western art forms. This curricular revamp is enabling Boston Conservatory to deliver a contemporary conservatory education and establish academic structures for continual review and refinement.

» Boston Conservatory developed its signature BCB Method, a curricular framework built around four modalities that create a transformational educational and artistic journey for students: immersion, deconstruction, integration, and identity. Designed to help students cultivate future-proof skills that equip them to thrive in a constantly evolving performing arts landscape, the BCB Method has been applied to programs in all divisions (dance, music, and theater).

» In 2021, Boston Conservatory introduced annual Faculty Strategic Innovation Grants for faculty members, which provide funding to academic initiatives that support the school’s key values and goals. These grants have led to impactful revisions of the curriculum, including the Dance Division’s work in decentering ballet and its exclusionary structures; the Music Division’s new required ethnomusicology course, now part of the music history sequence; and the Theater Division’s sequencing of the B.F.A. acting curriculum, which ensures a consistent and meaningful progression of learning throughout a student’s four-year journey.

» In 2022, Boston Conservatory successfully launched a three-year commercial dance program that continues to be in high demand. This program is the first and, currently, the only one of its kind, making our top-ranking dance training more affordable and accessible.

» Boston Conservatory is continually growing its roster of professional partners, offering our students vital connections with top artistic organizations. Recent partnership examples include collaborations with Silkroad, whose members teach and perform with students; Boston Lyric Opera, through which Boston Conservatory’s new Opera Innovators Series is made possible; Boston String Academy, which engages our students in important community service work; the Radio City Rockettes, who are teaching an exclusive, first-of-its-kind Rockettes Precision Dance Technique course; the Ryan Seacrest Foundation, through which dance students teach popular TikTok dance trends to patients at Levine Children’s Hospital in North Carolina and their nationwide network; and SpeakEasy Stage Company, which immerses theater students in an array of real-world experiential learning opportunities.

» Berklee offers more than 250 courses available to Boston Conservatory and Berklee College of Music students through cross-registration. These courses include offerings in music business, technology, film scoring, recording engineering, songwriting, and more.

» Boston Conservatory and Berklee College of Music students can choose from more than 80 shared student organizations representing a wide range of topics, affinities, and industries, including Asian Culture & Performance Club, Disabilities Club, Indian Cultural Association, Women in Action, Bettering Boston, BoCo Cares, Black Student Union, Black Student Alliance (BSA), Latinx Student Alliance (LSA), and much more.

Ebony Williams

ELEVATION: AMPLIFYING OUR IMPACT

Every day, Boston Conservatory works tirelessly to actualize the school’s vision for a new-andimproved conservatory educational model. The success of this work is apparent well beyond the Conservatory’s walls and across the greater educational and performing arts landscapes. With continued awareness and support, the impact of these efforts will be felt across the globe.

» For the past several years, Boston Conservatory has earned high praise and coveted accolades from some of the industry’s top authorities, reinforcing the success of the Conservatory’s innovative work. Among the recent highlights: DanceUS.org has named Boston Conservatory at Berklee in its list of Best College Dance Programs in the United States for the past four consecutive years, noting that Boston Conservatory’s contemporary dance program is widely recognized as the best in the United States; TheBestSchools.org ranked both Boston Conservatory at Berklee and Berklee College of Music among its top 10 schools for musicians for the second year in a row, ahead of several other well-known institutions; and Playbill included Boston Conservatory on its list of the 10 most represented colleges on Broadway in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2019, and 2018 (no list was produced in 2020 due to the pandemic).

» Boston Conservatory alums are leading in their fields, proving that a Boston Conservatory education delivers. To highlight a few, Jonathon Heyward (B.M. '14, cello), who recently made headlines as the first Black music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, has also been appointed music director of Lincoln Center’s summer orchestra (formerly known as Mostly Mozart) and was named in Baltimore Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” roundup; Emmitt Cawley (B.F.A. '20, contemporary dance) is dancing with the Nederlands Dans Theater, one of the world’s top dance companies; Laura Bibbs (B.M. '19, trumpet) toured with Harry Styles across the U.S. and Europe, performing for record-breaking crowds; Gabriella Reyes (B.M. '16, voice) is performing as Rosalba in the Metropolitan Opera premiere of Florencia en el Amazonas, the first Spanish opera presented by the Met in more than a century; Ana Nogueira (B.F.A. '07, musical theater) is writing the screenplay for the Warner Brothers DC Studios’ film Supergirl; and Andrew Durand (B.F.A. '08) starred as Beau in the Tony-nominated musical Shucked and originated the role of Musidorus in Head Over Heels

» Current students are also making waves and helping to put Boston Conservatory on the map. Take, for example, Juliette Ojeda (B.F.A. '26, musical theater), who dazzled Gwen Stefani with her bilingual rendition of “Hopelessly Devoted to You” on NBC’s The Voice; Sophie Reynolds and Isabelle Richards (both B.F.A. '24, commercial dance), who recently made their debut with the Celtics dance team; April Ong (B.M. '24, percussion) and Chandler Beaugrand (M.M. '24, marimba), who placed first in the Open Duo division of the 2023 Great Plains International Marimba Competition; and Chenglin Yang (M.M. '24), who won a position with Wuxi Symphony, a newly formed orchestra in his home province of Jiangsu, China.

Juliette Ojeda

Jonathon Heyward

Faith Clark: Honoring a Legacy

Boston Conservatory dance alum Faith Clark ('50), who devoted her life to dance education, passed away in May 2023 at the age of 95.

Clark’s deep affection for Boston Conservatory was evidenced by her passion for connecting with and investing in Conservatory dance students. In 2018, she established the Jan Veen/Faith Clark Endowed Scholarship Fund to support a rising junior or senior dance student with a declared emphasis in pedagogy.

The scholarship honors her teacher, Jan Veen, who founded Boston Conservatory’s Dance Division in 1943, and whose ˮcounsel, advice, and artistic disciplineˮ guided Clark throughout her career. In dedicating her Ph.D. dissertation to Veen, she wrote, ˮTo a teacher who asks only that his students find that which is best in themselves and who refused to turn out carbon copies of himself.ˮ

Through her generous support of Boston Conservatory dancers, Clark’s legacy connects Boston Conservatory artists of the past and future—paying homage to a teacher who nurtured her artistic development while paying it forward to the school’s next generation of dancers.

Somatic Intelligence

ALUM KATE GOW EXAMINES THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN DANCE AND TECHNOLOGY

“I have always loved dance and never knew why. I need to know why I like it. I’ve come to realize that it’s a method of processing for me,” says Boston Conservatory at Berklee contemporary dance alum Kate Gow (B.F.A. '19). Through Gow’s lifelong investigation into the why of her relationship with dance, she has developed a “somatic intelligence” as the foundation of a unique career that bridges dance performance, technology, and digital archiving. Although these varied interests seem decidedly disparate, she brings them together in a new podcast called Dances with Robots, for which she serves as archivist and web designer. The podcast, which examines the intersection of dance and technology, is cohosted and executive produced by fellow Conservatory alum Ariane Michaud (B.F.A. '16, contemporary dance). Here, Gow connects the dots of her emerging multihyphenate career.

WHAT DREW YOU TO THE INTERSECTION OF DANCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND ARCHIVAL WORK?

It has taken me a while to unspool the connecting thread from these seemingly unrelated interests, but I figured out that what I love is the process of keeping something; I’ve been obsessed with the idea of an archive since before I had the words for it. At the Conservatory, I was introduced to the idea of the archive of the body—a physical repository for the kinesthetic and cognitive experiences that made up the person I thought of as “me.” The advent of accessible technology has the possibility of shifting the way we think about what an archive is and how it functions in our daily life: Is an old Tumblr blog an archive? I think it is. We are sharing the archive of our bodies every day using technology.

HOW DOES YOUR WORK ACROSS EACH OF THESE AREAS INFORM YOUR WORK IN THE OTHERS?

I couldn’t have one without the others. I struggled when making the choice to pursue a Conservatory education because I craved a sort of traditional academic rigor, but I realized quickly that so many of the smartest people that I knew had a kinesthetic intelligence that informed their work. Dance and my archival work are so intertwined, as they are both the way that I organize my inner world.

"I can say that dance is the language I give to myself to understand myself. When I learned to code, it was a similar feeling—it is all a sort of languaging process. Choreography is computation."

WERE YOU ABLE TO EXPLORE YOUR INTEREST IN EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES DURING YOUR TIME AT BOSTON CONSERVATORY?

Arriving at the Conservatory, I had a narrow view of what a dance education could prepare me for in the future. Through faculty members Sydney Skybetter, Joy Davis, and Carlee Travis, I understood that the so-called “dancerly intelligence” was applicable, and maybe even vital, in other spheres. By taking classes in critical theory and dramaturgy, creating my own emphasis in dance and technology, and doing independent studies that allowed me to deepen my research into the tie between artistry and its relationship with emerging technology, I became able to find the words to communicate why I always thought dance was so important. I had spent my entire life up until that point understanding how movement

in space creates meaning, and when we live in a world where surveillance cameras are pointed at bodies and attempting to parse meaning from them, a dancerly intelligence becomes essential to reduce harm to those bodies.

HOW DID THE DANCES WITH ROBOTS PODCAST COME TO BE? WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

While I was a student at Boston Conservatory, I volunteered for the first Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces (CRCI) in 2016 with Ariane, and we both have been working on the CRCI team ever since. We produced an annual conference at Brown University, but during the pandemic we shifted to finding a way to expand upon the conversations and community that we fostered through our conferences and created the Dances with Robots (DWR) podcast. The best part of CRCI is our community, so DWR serves as a way we explore how the artists, activists, and technologists in our community thrive through collaboration and interdisciplinary practice. I stepped into the role of digital archivist and web designer for DWR and also cohosted a vaguely historical but mostly conversational episode with Sydney Skybetter. My favorite part of the process has been going back through the ephemera of past conferences and seeing how the threads of conversations we started in 2016 are still going and how CRCI has cultivated prolific, long-standing partnerships between artists and technologists.

HOW ARE AI AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES IMPACTING DANCE TODAY, AND HOW MIGHT THEY PLAY OUT IN THE FUTURE? WHAT EXCITES AND CONCERNS YOU MOST?

There has been a historical trend where new technology has been introduced through the lens of entertainment in order to make it less threatening to the layperson, so really, emerging technologies have always impacted dance. Right now, I am thinking a lot about the proliferation of surveillant technologies: how the everyday person is forced to— knowingly or unknowingly—perform for a camera whenever they step foot in the public sphere and its relationship to things like hours-long TikTok livestreams and general internet voyeurism. You’ll never be able to totally divorce the idea of incorporating technology into artistic practice, but I’ve seen it done so well and I’ve seen it done so poorly. New avenues of connection, inspiration, and reflection will always excite me, but I exercise deep caution when harm to bodies is seen as a necessary evil in pursuit of new technology. Foundationally, I think artists have the power to create productive interventions in these spaces and create a more just technological landscape.

Photos by Aly Hansen

In the Limelight

1 2 3 4

1. Renowned pianist Awadagin Pratt received an honorary doctorate at Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s 2023 commencement ceremony. Actress and singer Cynthia Erivo also received an honorary degree and addressed the audience virtually at the ceremony, May 2023.

2. Choreographer Jarek Cemerek worked with Dance Division students on his piece “Metamorphosis,” which premiered at Boston Conservatory’s Fall Dance Concert: From the Ground Up, October 2023.

3. Boston Conservatory held its inaugural Brass Festival Weekend, which featured master classes, performances, and presentations by guest artists, including Sasha Romero (pictured), principal trombone of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, October 2023.

4. Award-winning actor Jared Troilo (B.F.A. '08, musical theater) and his wife, actor, choreographer, and writer Kira Troilo, joined faculty member Jessica Webb for a Q&A on building a career in theater while maintaining work-life balance, November 2023.

Photo by Dave Green

Photo by Michelle Parkos

Photo by Sanjana Bellapu

5. Mezzo-soprano and music education alum Sandra Piques Eddy (B.M. '94; bottom row, center) gave a master class for Boston Conservatory at Berklee students as part of the Opera Innovators Series, December 2023.

6. Actor Sean Hayden (second from left), a leading advocate for health and wellness in theater, led a workshop for theater students on mental health for actors with faculty member Christopher Webb (left). Hayden attended the Conservatory’s production of Sweet Charity with Webb, Chair of Theater Tim Espinosa, and Assistant Chair of Theater Bridgette Hayes, October 2023.

7. Internationally acclaimed baritone Roderick Williams, OBE, gave a master class to Conservatory voice and opera students, December 2023.

8. Rodney Cottier, head of drama school emeritus at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, gave an interactive Shakespeare workshop for theater students, September 2023.

Photo by Madeline Lee

Photo by Madeline Lee

Noteworthy

CURRENT STUDENTS FACULTY/STAFF

Jessye DeSilva (theater) released their album Renovations, which explores themes of identity, acceptance, and empowerment, July 2023.

Pascale Florestal (theater) directed the world premiere of Phaedra Michelle Scott’s Diaspora! at the New Repertory Theatre, September 2023.

Kayla Gautereaux (music) won the National Association of Teachers of Singing 2023 Voice Pedagogy Award, May 2023.

Johnny Kuntz (theater) starred in SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of The Prom as Barry Glickman, May 2023.

Eun Young Lee (music) was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her distinguished work as a composer, April 2023.

Daniel Pelzig (dance) choreographed the Huntington and SpeakEasy Stage Company’s coproduction of The Band’s Visit, one of WBUR’s top 15 shows of the season, September 2023.

Nancy Zeltsman (music) released her newest album, Purple Music, featuring works by Cohen, Messiaen, Fukushima, and others, September 2023.

DANCE

Sophie Reynolds (B.F.A. '25, commercial dance) and Isabelle Richards (B.F.A. '25, commercial dance) made their debut as company members of the Boston Celtics dance team at the Celtics’ seasonopening game, October 2023.

MUSIC

Chandler Beaugrand (M.M. '24, marimba) and April Ong (B.M. '24, percussion) placed first in the Open Duo division of the Great Plains International Marimba Competition, summer 2023.

Darya Narymanava (M.M. '23, P.S.C. '24, voice) advanced to the New England regionals of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, January 2023.

Chenglin Yang (M.M. '24, clarinet) won a position with Wuxi Symphony, a newly formed orchestra in his home province of Jiangsu, China, October 2023.

THEATER

Abriel Coleman (B.F.A. '24, musical theater) and Liesie Kelly (B.F.A. '25, musical theater) starred in SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of The Prom as Alyssa Greene and Emma Nolan, respectively, May 2023.

Juliette Ojeda (B.F.A. '26, musical theater) was featured on The Voice with a genre-blending performance in Spanish, landing her a spot on Gwen Stefani’s team, September 2023.

Lillian Salazar (B.F.A. '24, musical theater) performed in Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston’s new collaborative concert series Uplift!, May 2023.

Eun Young Lee

Juliette Ojeda

Chandler Beaugrand and April Ong

ALUMNI

1990s

Jennifer Simard (B.F.A. '92, musical theater) starred in the new Britney Spears jukebox musical Once Upon a One More Time, August 2023.

2000s

John Michael Dias (B.F.A. '02, musical theater) and Dominic Nolfi (B.F.A. '00, musical theater), both members of the Doo Wop Project, performed with the Toronto Symphony, September 2023.

Constantine Maroulis (B.F.A. '02, musical theater) premiered his role as 1950s rock pioneer Alan Freed in the new Broadway musical Rock & Roll Man, July 2023.

Allison Blackwell (M.M. '04, musical theater) performed in the ensemble cast of New York, New York on Broadway, April 2023.

Rachel Bertone (B.F.A. '07, contemporary dance) was the artistic director for Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston’s new collaborative concert series Uplift!, May 2023.

Leslie Ann Leytham (M.M. '07, voice), cofounder and artistic director of San Diego’s Project [BLANK], reprised her role as Inez in No Exit: A Chamber Opera. Leytham originated the role with Guerilla Opera while she was a student at Boston Conservatory, June 2023.

Sangeeta Kaur (M.M. '08, voice) released her sixth classical crossover/new age album, Aurora, August 2023.

Brian Calhoon (M.M. '09, percussion) released his debut album, Marimba Cabaret, May 2023.

2010s

Kristhyan Benitez (G.P.D. '10, A.D. '15, piano) received a Latin Grammy nomination in the Best Classical Album category for AfroCuban Dances, September 2023.

Lydia Zimmer (B.F.A. '11, dance) was granted a 2023 Emerging Artist Recognition Award from Arts Nova Scotia for her work as a choreographer, October 2023.

Reynaliz Herrera (M.M. '12, percussion) released a recording of her original fourmovement concerto featuring the bicycle as an instrument, accompanied by a chamber orchestra, June 2023.

Egle Jarkova (B.M. '12, G.P.D. '14, violin), founder of the summer music festival Vivace Vilnius in Vilnius, Lithuania, held a benefit concert celebrating the 90th birthday of Lithuanian American painter and Holocaust survivor Samuel Bak, Vilnius’s 700th anniversary, and Vivace Vilnius’s 11th anniversary, November 2023.

Marchánt Davis (B.F.A. '13, musical theater) released his first children’s book, A Boy and His Mirror, January 2023, and starred as FBI agent R. Wallace Taylor in the HBO film Reality, May 2023.

Spencer Glass (B.F.A. '13, musical theater) founded the consulting company Break the Glass to help actors navigate their career paths, March 2023.

Celia Hottenstein (B.F.A. '13, musical theater) joined the national tour of Wicked, playing the role of Glinda, April 2023.

Ian Bowling (M.M. '14, vocal pedagogy and voice) was a featured soloist during the annual Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular Fourth of July celebration, July 2023.

Christian Bufford (B.F.A. '14, musical theater) premiered the role of Maurice White in the Black Ensemble Theater’s tribute show to Earth, Wind & Fire, March 2023.

Jonathon Heyward (B.M. '14, cello), who made his debut as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in September, was also chosen to lead Lincoln Center’s summer ensemble, formerly called the Mostly Mozart Festival, June 2023.

Alexis Scheer (B.F.A. '14, musical theater) provided additional book material for the Broadway debut of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bad Cinderella, March 2023.

Egle Jarkova

Kristhyan Benitez

Spencer Glass

Camille Sherman (B.M. '15, voice) advanced to the Northwest regionals of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, February 2023.

Michael Morris Jr. (B.F.A. '16, contemporary dance) made his Broadway debut in The Lion King musical, May 2023.

Niani Feelings (B.F.A. '17, musical theater) was named New York City Center’s first-ever Ann Reinking Encores! Choreography Fellow, October 2023.

Sonya Venugopal (M.F.A. '17, musical theater) made her Broadway debut in Life of Pi, March 2023.

Jazz Bynum (B.F.A. '18, contemporary dance) was featured in Front Row magazine, reflecting on building a career in ballet as a dancer of color, April 2023.

Loosey LaDuca (B.F.A. '18, musical theater) and Marcia Marcia Marcia (B.F.A. '18, musical theater) competed in season 15 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, March 2023.

Yewande Odetoyinbo (M.F.A. '18, musical theater) performed in Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston’s new collaborative concert series Uplift!, May 2023.

Laila J. Franklin (B.F.A. '19, contemporary dance) made Dance Magazine’s list of the top 25 dancers, choreographers, directors, and companies poised for a breakout in 2024, December 2023.

Makai Hernandez (B.F.A. '19, musical theater) was featured in Playbill magazine for taking his final bow in Broadway’s A Beautiful Noise, then beginning his role in & Juliet the next day, November 2023.

2020s

Victoria Byrd (B.F.A. '20, musical theater) made her Broadway debut in Back to the Future at the Winter Garden Theatre, July 2023.

Imani Francis (B.M. '20, voice) advanced to the Gulf Coast regionals of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, January 2023.

Kyle White (M.M. '20, voice) advanced to the Upper Midwest regionals of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, February 2023.

Bailey Forman (B.F.A. '21, musical theater) premiered The B Plot, a cabaret-style oneman show that celebrates overlooked voices, August 2023.

Kristofer Leslie (B.M. '21, trombone) won a position with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, April 2023.

Nicholas Johnson (G.P.D. '22, cello) was a recipient of the St. Botolph Club Foundation’s 2023 Emerging Artist Award, April 2023.

Christina Jones (B.F.A. '22, musical theater) joined the cast of The Wiz for the production’s national tour, August 2023.

Sierra Lancaster (B.F.A. '22, musical theater) was chosen by Theatre Producers of Color to join the 2023 cohort of Producing 101, a mentoring and educational program for aspiring producers, March 2023.

Winona Martin (M.M. '22, opera) advanced to the Rocky Mountain regionals of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, February 2023, and won first prize in the 35th Annual Annapolis Opera Vocal Competition, April 2023.

Sean McCarty (B.M. '22, bass trombone) won a position with Symphony New Hampshire, April 2023.

Steph Davis (B.M. '21, percussion, M.M. '23, marimba) was included in the Washington Post’s list of 23 emerging classical artists to watch, January 2023.

Rose Van Dyne (M.F.A. '23, musical theater vocal pedagogy) presented “Black Intersectional Identity and Vocal Expectations: Incompatibility Between Musical Theatre Voice Training and Industry Standards for Black Singers” at the Pan American Vocology Association conference, where she was awarded Best Oral Research presentation, September 2023.

Christopher Humbert (M.M. '23, opera) advanced to the Midwest regionals of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, February 2023.

Annaliese Wilbur (B.F.A. '23, musical theater) landed their first professional touring role in Funny Girl, September 2023.

Laura Bibbs (B.M. '19, trumpet) performed with Harry Styles in the North American and European legs of his Love On Tour, 2022–2023.

Jazz Bynum

Laura Bibbs

Rose Van Dyne

Nicholas Johnson

LEADERSHIP

BERKLEE BOARD OF TRUSTEES

David Bogen, Interim President and Provost, Berklee

Martin J. Mannion, Chair

Susan Whitehead, Chair Emerita

Charles Anderson

David Clem

John Connaughton

Cynthia K. Curme^

Emilio Estefan

Gloria Estefan

David Gross

Thomas M. Hagerty

Charles Hirschhorn

Velina Hasu Houston

Bill Kaiser

Grace Kelly

Miky Lee (Mie Kyung Lee)

Hassell McClellan

Frederick T. Miller^

Pete Muller

Robert S. Murley

Anthony Pangaro^

Jon Platt

(Snow) Dan Qin^

Steve Ruchefsky

David Scott Sloan^

Darius Sidebotham^

Beth Carrillo Thomas '10

Paul D. Wachter

Tarik Ward

Andy Youniss

Marillyn Zacharis^

BOSTON CONSERVATORY AT BERKLEE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S ADVISORY COUNCIL

Teresa Koster, Chair

Anne N. Cuervo, Vice Chair

Howard H. Bengele, Ph.D.

Elizabeth S. Boveroux

Davi-Ellen Chabner

Caroline McMillan Collings

JoAnne Dickinson

Diana Dohrmann '71

Miles A. Fish, III '63

Kate Sides Flather

John S. Foster

Jennifer A. Fraser

Mimi Hewlett

Sophie Kornowski

B. J. Krintzman

Laura D. Kunkemueller

Ricardo Lewitus, M.D.

Michael Memmolo

Dr. Lyle J. Micheli

Brendan Murphy

Christopher D. Perry

Philip J. Poinelli

Xiaohang Quan

Wanda Reindorf

Geraldine R. Ricci

Anthony Richardson

Warren A. Seamans

Tricia Swift

Ann Connolly Tolkoff

Rosamond B. Vaule

Peter J. Wender

Amy K. Wertheim

Edward G. Wertheim

Tania Zouikin

BOSTON CONSERVATORY AT BERKLEE LEADERSHIP

Michael Shinn, Interim Executive Director

Kimberly Haack, Associate Vice President of Administration/Chief of Staff

Tommy Neblett, Dean of Dance

Isaí Jess Muñoz, Interim Dean of Music

Emmett G. Price III, Dean of Africana Studies, Berklee

^ Legacy Conservatory Trustee

List as of January 2024

8 Fenway

Boston, MA 02215

TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2024

6:30 p.m.–10:30 p.m.

Omni Boston Hotel at the Seaport 450 Summer Street Boston, MA

Join us for a spectacular evening featuring performances by Boston Conservatory dance, music, opera, and theater students. All proceeds support the Richard Ortner Thrive Scholarship Fund.

RESERVE TICKETS