Manhattan School Of Music Celebrated 100 Years With Gala Concert At Carnegie Hall

MSM’s Centennial Celebration was hosted by Alec Baldwin, conducted by MSM Distinguished Visiting Artist Maestro Leonard Slatkin.

The event featured Susan Graham, Terence Blanchard, Glenn Dicterow, Olga Kern, André-Michel Schub, Kelly Hall-Tompkins, Kent Tritle, George Manahan, among 325 performers drawn from the distinguished ranks of the MSM extended family.

Manhattan School of Music’s Centennial – explored, noted, and amplified through a range of programs during the 2018-19 season – reached a celebratory crescendo this April with the MSM Centennial Gala Concert at Carnegie Call and the Gala Dinner that followed, across 57th Street at the Park Hyatt’s Onyx Room.

“The milestone of 100 years is both a culmination and a new beginning,” said James Gandre, President of Manhattan School of Music. “But most of all, for the extended MSM Community and for our audiences, MSM’s Centennial has been a season-long celebration of excellence, an extended festival that culminated in the Centennial Gala Concert at Carnegie Hall.”

Event host Alec Baldwin, who received an Honorary Doctorate from MSM in 2012 and is one of classical music’s most popular champions, joined MSM Distinguished Visiting Artist conductor Leonard Slatkin and the MSM Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall for a sold-out musical celebration of 100 years of Manhattan School of Music. The multi-faceted evening featured selections of classical music, jazz, opera, and musical theater – the pillars of the MSM curriculum – performed by a roster of artists drawn from the distinguished ranks of the MSM community. The evening featured: Susan Graham (MM ’87, HonDMA ’08); Grammy Award-winning, Oscar-nominated jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard (HonDMA ’17, MSM Board of Trustees); violinist and former New York Philharmonic Concertmaster Glenn Dicterow (Chair, MSM Orchestral Performance Program); award-winning pianist Olga Kern (MSM Faculty); pianist André-Michel Schub (MSM Faculty), Naumburg International Violin Competition Honorarium Prizewinner Kelly Hall-Tompkins (MM ’95, HonDMA ’17); MSM Director of Choral Activities Kent Tritle; and MSM Director of Orchestral Activities George Manahan (BM ’73, MM ’76). In all, 325 MSM alumni, faculty, and current students performed.

Following the concert, performers and guests crossed 57th Street for a sumptuous dinner celebration at the Park Hyatt’s Onyx Room, whose back-lit walls were festooned with colorful “MSM 100” decals and whose tables were alive with spring florals.

Founded as a community music school by Janet Daniels Schenck in 1918, today MSM is recognized for its more than 960 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 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 Distance Learning Program.

MSM Centennial Project

After several years of strategic planning and ongoing fundraising, the MSM Centennial Project – comprising a renovation of Manhattan School of Music’s principal performance space and the opening of a grand new campus entrance – has been completed. More than a mere refurbishment of Neidorff-Karpati Hall, this endeavor represents a wholesale re-imagining of the hall’s aesthetic and acoustic environment; its re-opening continues to reverberate through every corner of MSM.

A larger, more open stage easily accommodates the largest symphony orchestras, opera, and musical theatre productions, while new, comfortable chairs in an acoustically sound and resonant listening environment enhances the live music and theatre experience. And now, all who enter MSM are welcomed through a grand new entrance on Claremont Avenue, one that radiates the warmth of the MSM Community and underscores the artistic excellence for which the School is known.

Visit MSM Centennial Celebrations for the full story of Manhattan School of Music: https://www.msmnyc.edu/about/history/centennial-celebrations/

Photo credit: 1) Patty Kopec, Leonard Slatkin, Kelly Hall-Tompkins, Alec Baldwin. 2) Terence Blanchard. 3) MSM students Jasmin Rogers, Chandler Sinks. 4) Guillermo Vogel, Carla Bossi-Comelli, Charles Fabius.. 5) Richard H. Levy, Lorraine Gallard. 6) LeRoy Kim, Lindsey Boylan, Jodi Siskind, Benjamin Kornitzer. 7) MSM Gala – James Gandre – Melody Sawyer Richardson.. 8) Hilaria Thomas Baldwin, Ann Ziff..  By Anna Yatskevich.