Manhattan School of Music to Host 2022 Galaat New York City’s Iconic Rainbow Room
The Gala, hosted by renowned mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, will honor Carla Bossi-Comelli and celebrate the 30th Anniversary of MSM’s Orchestral Performance Program
Manhattan School of Music (MSM) will host its 2022 Gala on Wednesday, May 18th, 2022, at The Rainbow Room, Rockefeller Plaza, in New York City. The gala will honor Trustee Emerita Carla Bossi-Comelli (HonDMA ’20) and celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the School’s prestigious Orchestral Performance Program (OPP). Hosted by Isabel Leonard (HonDMA ’21), an alumna of MSM’s Precollege program and recently appointed member of the School’s Vocal Arts College faculty,the gala will feature performances by faculty and distinguished OPP alumni from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Opera Orchestra, Harlem String Quartet, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic.
After the School’s Centennial celebrations in 2018–19 culminated with an all-star Gala concert hosted by Alec Baldwin at Carnegie Hall, the School’s most recent two gala celebrations have been ‘virtual’ due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The May 18 event represents a return to in-person celebration and a return to the Rainbow Room, where the School has held several Gala celebrations in past years.
Orchestral Performance Program:
In 1991, Manhattan School of Music inaugurated the Graduate Program in Orchestral Performance, the first accredited degree program of its kind in the United States. Chaired by former concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic Glenn Dicterow for its first 30 years – Met Opera Orchestra concertmaster David Chan picks up the mantle of program leadership next week – the program seeks to produce polished musicians of the highest artistic caliber, who are prepared intensively in the orchestral repertoire for careers as symphonic players. Students are trained to participate fully in both performance and other nonmusical aspects of life in the modern orchestra, such as orchestra governance, artistic planning, community engagement, and audience development. Graduates from the program populate many of the most prestigious orchestras in the world.
Carla Bossi-Comelli:
Since 2009, Carla Bossi-Comelli has chaired MSM’s International Advisory Board (IAB), a group of philanthropists and music lovers who represent 12 countries. The IAB comes together to support the School and to ensure the success of MSM’s immensely talented international students, including by raising essential funds for scholarships. Ms. Bossi-Comelli has ardently supported MSM’s physical transformation in recent years, helping to ensure that the School’s facilities are state-of-the-art. In 2011, she made a generous gift for the renovation of what is now The Carla Bossi-Comelli Studio, one of the School’s most versatile performance spaces. The Studio was dedicated in 2012 and is in constant use for jazz, classical, and musical theatre rehearsals and performances as well as for lectures and master classes. Ms. Bossi-Comelli was also a leading sponsor of the renovation of MSM’s principal performance venue Neidorff-Karpati Hall, which reopened in 2018 in conjunction with the School’s Centennial. She led the charge to raise funds for this much-needed and highly visible project amongst the IAB and the School’s other international friends. The “International Advisory Board Lobby,” an elegant space that adjoins the Hall, is the result of her successful efforts.
About Manhattan School of Music:
Founded as a community music school by Janet Daniels Schenck in 1918, today MSM is recognized for its more than 985 superbly talented undergraduate and graduate students who come from more than 50 countries and nearly all 50 states; its innovative curricula and world-renowned artist-teacher faculty that includes musicians from the New York Philharmonic, the Met Opera Orchestra, and the top ranks of the jazz and Broadway communities; and a distinguished community of accomplished, award-winning alumni working at the highest levels of the musical, educational, cultural, and professional worlds.
The School is dedicated to the personal, artistic, and intellectual development of aspiring musicians, from its Precollege students through those pursuing doctoral studies. Offering classical, jazz, and musical theatre training, MSM grants a range of undergraduate and graduate degrees. True to MSM’s origins as a music school for children, the Precollege program continues to offer superior music instruction to 475 young musicians between the ages of 5 and 18. The School also serves some 2,000 New York City schoolchildren through its Arts-in-Education Program, and another 2,000 students through its critically acclaimed and pioneering Distance Learning Program.
For more information on the Manhattan School of Music Gala 2022, visit: connect.msmnyc.edu/donor-events/2022-annual-gala
For more information on the Manhattan School of Music, its history, and its curriculum, visit: www.msmnyc.edu/
