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News from the Center

Last updated September 1, 1997


Center has New Web Site Address
Richard Kessler is New Executive Director


The Center has a New Web Site Address

The American Music Center's web site has moved. Please make a note or our new address:

www.amc.net
In addition, you can now reach all of our staff through email. The new addresses are:

Richard Kessler
richard@amc.net
Deborah Atherton
deborah@amc.net
David W.C. Matthews
david@amc.net
Jeff McErlain
jeff@amc.net
Eero Richmond
eero@amc.net
Wes York
wes@amc.net


Richard Kessler is Appointed as the New Executive Director

The American Music Center announces the appointment of Richard Kessler as Executive Director. Mr. Kessler has worked extensively in the field of contemporary music as a founding member of the Naumburg Award winning Saturday Brass Quintet and in arts education as Vice President of Artsvision, one of America’s leading arts and education consulting firms.

“Richard Kessler brings a remarkable combination of experience and passions to the American Music Center,” said Mr. Randall Davidson, President of the Board of Directors. “For the past six years, Mr. Kessler has created and implemented many of America’s foremost arts and education programs for a wide variety of institutions, including cultural organizations, foundations, and school systems. It is this experience along with the excitement that comes from performing brand new music that singled Richard out as the leader to take the Center into the next century,” said Mr. Davidson.

Mr. Kessler’s clients over the past six years have included The GE Fund, The Aaron Diamond Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Dayton Hudson Corporation, The Acting Company, The Royal Conservatory of Music, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Ballet Chicago, The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, The Gibbes Museum of Art, and many others. Included in Richard Kessler’s recent work is the research, design and early implementation of the Annenberg Foundation’s Arts Education Initiative for New York City Public Schools, as well as a redesign of The Cleveland Orchestra’s education program, the creation of a new School of the Arts for The San Francisco Unified School District, and the development of a new middle school arts partnership program for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

Prior to his tenure at Artsvision, Richard Kessler was a founding member of Saturday Brass Quintet, having performed and taught throughout the United States and Canada for over ten years. Active in the commissioning, performance, and recording of new music, Richard Kessler has premiered works by a wide range of composers including Arvo Part, John Harbison, Aaron Jay Kernis, Richard Danielpour, Elliot Goldenthal, Ned Rorem, and many others. Throughout this period, Kessler was also busy as an artist-educator having conducted residencies, master classes, workshops, and community outreach programs for organizations such as Lincoln Center Meet-The-Artist, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, the San Francisco Conservatory, New York and New Jersey Young Audiences, The New York Philharmonic, and others.

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Richard Kessler holds two degrees from the Juilliard School, and was a faculty member of the Manhattan School of Music from 1988 to 1993.