Press Release
For Immediate Release:
November 16, 2005
Education Reform Activist, Pianist-Broadcaster, Suzuki String Training Pioneer to be Honored at NEC’s Kids in Harmony Gala, Dec. 1, 2005
WCVB Anchor Liz Brunner to Host the Event
New England Conservatory will honor three world leaders in the advancement of music education at the first annual NEC Preparatory School Gala, Kids in Harmony, December 1, 2005 at the Conservatory. The honorees are Hubie Jones, advocate for quality universal education and founder of the Boston Children’s Chorus; Christopher O’Riley ’81 A.D., concert pianist and host of the popular radio show From the Top; and Louise Behrend, pioneer of the Suzuki string training movement in the United States and founder of New York’s School for Strings.
Liz Brunner, co-anchor of NewsCenter 5 at WCVB-TV and a graduate of the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music, will host the gala.
Comprising a concert and awards dinner, Kids in Harmony will showcase the Prep School’s distinguished history of training young musicians, ages 3 to 18, in Boston and New England. It will also turn the spotlight on NEC’s numerous local, national and global youth music partnerships, including those with the Boston Children’s Chorus and From the Top, as well as honoring the three music education leaders.
The awards and their recipients are as follows:
Leadership Award for Music in Public Life
Hubie Jones
A native of New York City, Hubie Jones came to Boston in 1955 to get his master’s degree from the Boston University School of Social Work. While serving as executive director of the Roxbury Multi-Service Center in the late 1960s, he led an investigation and published a scathing indictment of the Boston School Department for excluding approximately 10,000 students. His advocacy for children with disabilities, retardation, behavioral problems, English language difficulties, and pregnancy became ammunition that led to Massachusetts’s first special education and the bilingual education laws. Jones went on to become Dean and Professor of the BU School of Social Work (1977—1993), Board President and Acting President of Roxbury Community College, Director of the Community Fellows Program at MIT, Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Urban Affairs at UMass Boston, Board member of City Year, and panelist for over 20 years on “Five on Five,” the public affairs program on WCVB-TV.
In 2002, while attending a City Year National Convention in Chicago, he heard the Chicago Children’s Choir and was “blown away” by its diversity and artistic excellence. Jones determined to duplicate the ensemble in Boston, so local children could benefit from the twin goals of self-esteem through music and interaction with diverse populations. His dream for the Boston Children’s Chorus was realized in 2003 when he assembled a board, hired staff, raised funds and started rehearsals with 90 children. Among the chorus’s many performances this year will be its third annual Martin Luther King concert in NEC’s Jordan Hall, which will also feature the Chicago Children’s Chorus and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City. That concert will be broadcast nationwide in partnership with WCVB-TV. New England Conservatory serves as lead artistic partner of the chorus.
Leadership in Youth Music Education Award
Louise Behrend
Trained as a violinist, Washington D.C. native Louise Behrend studied at the Juilliard School and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria and made her Town Hall debut in 1950. She performed extensively as soloist and chamber musician, including two seasons as soloist with the Gotham Baroque Ensemble.
Always a teacher in great demand, she has been faculty at the Mary Washington College, University of Virginia, Dartmouth College, The Henry Street Music Settlement, New York University, the Manhattan school of Music and, for the past 60 years, the Juilliard School.
In 1964, she was first introduced to Shinichi Suzuki when he brought his astonishing pupils to Juilliard to demonstrate his method of teaching very young children. Fascinated, Behrend followed up with a more extended visit in Japan, and afterward began experimenting in her own studio and at the Henry Street Settlement Music School. In 1970, she established one of the first Suzuki programs on the east coast, The School for Strings.
Behrend was awarded the 1996 Distinguished Service Award by the Suzuki Association of the Americas and in 2002, the association recognized her contribution to music education with a Creating Learning Community Award. In 2003, she received the Betty Allen Award by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in recognition of her life-long dedication to chamber music and music education.
Award for Leadership in Support of Music Education
Christopher O’Riley
Pianist Christopher O’Riley received his Artist Diploma in 1981 from New England Conservatory where he studied with Russell Sherman. He is the recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Prize as well as prizes from the Van Cliburn, Leeds, Busoni, and Montreal competitions.
A pianist who has performed the standard concerto literature with the major orchestras in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Atlanta and St. Louis, O’Riley is also an enthusiastic advocate of new music. He has twice participated in the annual Absolut Concerto concerts at Avery Fisher Hall, premiering working of fellow NEC alumnus Richard Danielpour and Michael Torke. In 1999-2000, he performed Michael Daugherty’s Le Tombeau de Liberace with the Detroit Symphony and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. He has also given premiers of works by Aaron Jay Kernis and regularly performs his own transcriptions of music by Radiohead. He has recorded two discs of Radiohead transcriptions: True Love Waits on Sony and Hold Me to This on World Village.
O’Riley is host of From the Top, the popular nationally broadcast radio show that celebrates kids who've shown commitment to music and the arts. NEC is the home and educational partner of From the Top.
The Host
WCVB NewsCenter 5’s co-anchor Liz Brunner was born in Connecticut and raised in Hawaii and Illinois. She began her broadcasting career in 1985 at WCIA-TV in Champaign, Illinois where she worked as Community Services Representative and weather anchor as well as host of a morning talk show. She came to Boston by way of WTVT-TV in Tampa, Florida. At WCVB, she has been a reporter, fill-in anchor for Chronicle, and co-anchor for the EyeOpener newscast. In 1995, she won a New England Emmy for a Chronicle program, “Cape Cod by Air.”
Deeply involved in community work, she has supported the March of Dimes “WalkAmerica,” the American Heart Association’s “Heart Walk,” and the Berkshire Hills Music Academy for Children with Williams Syndrome.
NEC Preparatory School
Established in 1950 under the direction of Francis Brockman Lanier ’37 M.M., ’92 hon. degree, the NEC Preparatory School provides a complete music curriculum to 1400 students from 200 towns and cities throughout New England in addition to national and international students from the NEC at Walnut Hill program. One of the finest pre-college programs in the country, it emphasizes serious, pre-professional training. It also offers instruction to students who are not necessarily preparing for musical careers but who will be the audience and amateur musicians of the future.
“The school welcomes children of all ages and backgrounds and at every level of aptitude who have a sincere desire to make music a profound part of their lives,” says Mark Churchill, Dean of Preparatory and Continuing Education. “Its programs are designed to nurture each student’s innate musicality, leading to the satisfaction and personal rewards that come from accomplishment and sharing.” Funds raised from the gala will sustain NEC’s commitment to serving students of all financial backgrounds.
Kids in Harmony
Chairs of Kids in Harmony 2005 are Prep parents Corinne and Tim Ferguson of Brookline, Jane Manopoli Patterson and Robert E. Patterson of Boston, and Rosario and Alan E. Skolnick of Andover.
The evening begins with a cocktail reception at 5:45 p.m. in NEC’s Williams Hall followed by the Awards Dinner at 6:30 p.m. in Brown Hall and the Concert at 8 p.m. in NEC’s Jordan Hall.
Performers at the gala concert will be the Preparatory School’s flagship ensembles including the NEC Youth Chorale, Massachusetts Youth Wind Ensemble, Festival Jazz Band, and Youth Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Benjamin Zander. Highlights of the all-American program are a performance of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with pianist Christopher O’Riley ’81 A.D., one of the night’s honorees; and Make Our Garden Grow, the final chorus from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide.
Tickets to the gala are $250 of which $150 is tax deductible. Table packages for ten guests are also available at $5000 (corporate sponsorship) and $3500 ($2000 tax deductible), the proceeds of which benefit scholarships for Preparatory School students. Tickets for the concert alone are $25 and $10 for seniors/students. Free with NEC i.d. For additional information or to make reservations for the gala, contact Liz Ryan, Director of Special Events at (617) 585-1152 or email at eryan@newenglandconservatory.edu.
To purchase individual tickets to the concert in Jordan Hall, please contact the box office at (617) 585-1260.
For more information, call the NEC Concert Line at (617) 585-1122 or visit NEC on the web at http://www.newenglandconservatory.edu/give/events/kids.html
NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY
Recognized nationally and internationally as a leader among music schools, New England Conservatory offers rigorous training in an intimate, nurturing community to 750 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral music students from around the world. Its faculty of 225 boasts internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. Its alumni go on to fill orchestra chairs, concert hall stages, jazz clubs, recording studios, and arts management positions worldwide. Nearly half of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is composed of NEC trained musicians and faculty.
The oldest independent school of music in the United States, NEC was founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee. Its curriculum is remarkable for its wide range of styles and traditions. On the college level, it features training in classical, jazz, Contemporary Improvisation, world and early music. Through its Preparatory School, School of Continuing Education, and Community Collaboration Programs, it provides training and performance opportunities for children, pre-college students, adults, and seniors. Through its outreach projects, it allows young musicians to engage with non-traditional audiences in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes—thereby bringing pleasure to new listeners and enlarging the universe for classical music and jazz.
NEC presents more than 600 free concerts each year, many of them in Jordan Hall, its world- renowned, 100-year old, beautifully restored concert hall. These programs range from solo recitals to chamber music to orchestral programs to jazz and opera scenes. Every year, NEC’s opera studies department also presents two fully staged opera productions at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston.
NEC is co-founder and educational partner of “From the Top,” a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by more than two hundred stations throughout the United States.