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CROSSROADS SCHOOL FOR ARTS & SCIENCES
ALUMNI VOICES
Alumni Voices Every year, we try to catch up with alumni near and far to see what they’re up to. In this issue, in addition to the inclusion of our first Winter edition of Class Notes, we highlight some of our alumni who have paved a way for themselves in the world of performing arts. Whatever path they’ve chosen, we celebrate all of our alumni and hope their stories inspire the members of our community to follow their own passions.
Dong-Yi ’93 World-renowned pianist Dong-Yi has been named the new director of the Elizabeth Mandell Music Institute (EMMI), from which he graduated in 1993. Dong-Yi fills the role formerly held by Mary Ann Cummins, who remains with the School as a faculty member, where she teaches music theory, which she has done since Crossroads’ founding. During her years as EMMI director, Cummins once trained and mentored Dong-Yi. Part of Crossroads since 1978, EMMI developed from the School’s unique music major program. Students are accepted into the program only after passing an audition and must have a strong passion to both study and perform classical music. EMMI music majors receive improvisational music training, perform their own work twice a year, participate in monthly solo recitals, and attend master classes that are guest-lectured by leading U.S. and international artists. “I am very proud to be an EMMI graduate of Crossroads and even more honored to follow in the footsteps of Mary Ann Cummins to continue to help our students achieve their dreams,” Dong-Yi said. Dong-Yi was discovered by famed composer Herbert Zipper in 1989, when Zipper, who was a music theory teacher at Crossroads, traveled to China. Zipper saw Dong-Yi win first place in the professional category at the Pearl River National Piano Competition, which he was competing in while attending the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Dong-Yi performed with members of the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He was a soloist with the Pacific Symphony and the Beijing Symphony. Dong-Yi’s teaching career started at Yale University, where he taught secondary piano classes for college students. His students are frequent performers at Carnegie Hall and have played their way to achieving laureate status. Dong-Yi also is the founder of Opus119 Conservatory of Music in Irvine and president of the Lake Como International Piano Foundation.
Brooke Bloom ’96 Brooke Bloom vividly remembers the first time she set foot in Crossroads’ theater. She was in sixth grade and slightly reluctant to be touring schools, but the moment she saw the space with students rehearsing on stage, she felt at home. “We walked into the theater, and they were rehearsing ’Once Upon a Mattress,’” she says. “It was really exciting to me that I could participate in that. That’s really why I was like ’I want to be at this school.’” Brooke would spend the next six years—seventh through 12th grade—at Crossroads, honing her craft in that very theater. After graduating, Brooke stayed in Los Angeles for most of her 20s working in TV and film. Then, when she was 28, she played the role of Ophelia in “Hamlet” at the South Coast Repertory, which was her first professional play. As she was waiting in the wings of the 850-seat theater, it dawned on her how similar she felt to waiting in the wings of the Crossroads Black Box and how much she missed that feeling. “For some reason I thought that the feelings that I had during high school theater were just about being in high school or about being that age,” she says. While Brooke certainly still possesses her high school passion for theater, it isn’t the only thing that has helped her to have professional success. “Our theater (program) at Crossroads is quite good and in many ways quite familiar to my professional surroundings,” she says. “It gave me, as an adolescent, a passion, a focus, a community and a reason to explore that.” Brooke believes that Crossroads created the kind of environment where having a career you are passionate about seemed not only possible, but paramount, despite the slight risks that choice may bring. Since playing Ophelia, Brooke relocated to New York and become an award-winning actress, performing in theater productions, films and a number of TV series. Some of her recent projects include “Louie,” created by Louis C.K., “Somewhere Fun,” a play written by Jenny Schwartz at the Vineyard Theater in N.Y., and the role of Julie Carrell in Amazon’s first TV series “Alpha House.”