PRJC Conferences

Jamal J. Rossi is the Joan and Martin Messinger Dean of the Eastman School of Music. Having served in leadership roles in music for more than two decades, Rossi has spearheaded significant collaborative educational and community initiatives and has wide-ranging experience in academic scholarship and leadership, teaching, performance, recording, and fundraising.

Prior to his appointment as Dean, Rossi served as the Executive Associate Dean at Eastman. Previous academic leadership appointments include serving as Dean of the School of Music at the University of South Carolina, and Assistant and Associate Dean of the Ithaca College School of Music.

An active saxophone soloist and chamber musician, Rossi is featured on numerous recordings, he has commissioned/premiered more than twenty compositions, and he has been a soloist with symphony orchestras and military/college/university bands. His articles and reviews have appeared in leading wind publications. A founding and current member of the Kilbourn Saxophone Quartet, Rossi was formerly a member of the Carolina and Empire Saxophone Quartets. Rossi earned a Bachelor of Music Education and Performance degree from Ithaca College (summa cum laude), the Master of Music from the University of Michigan, and the Doctor of Musical Arts from the Eastman School of Music.

Rossi is active with numerous national, regional, and local arts and civic organizations, including the National Association of Schools of Music, the New York State Association of College Music Programs, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council, and the North American Saxophone Alliance.

Paola Prestini is “the enterprising composer and impresario” (The New York Times) behind the new Brooklyn venue National Sawdust and the ”Visionary-In-Chief” (Time Out NY) of the production company VisionIntoArt (VIA), home to VIA Records. Named one of NPR’s “Top 100 Composers in the World under 40,” her compositions are deemed “radiant… amorously evocative” by The New York Times, and ”spellbinding” by The Washington Post. She has collaborated with poets, filmmakers, conservationists, and astrophysicists in multi-media works that have been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, and the Kronos Quartet. She works frequently with Creative Producer Beth Morrison of BMP to create large scale multimedia works which include include Gilgamesh, an opera with Michael Counts and Cerise Jacobs to premiere in Boston in 2016; the Labyrinth Installation Concertos performed this Spring at the Isabella Gardner Museum; The Hubble, commissioned by Bay Chamber Concerts, with astrophysicist Mario Livio for the Hubble’s 25th anniversary; and Aging Magician with Rinde Eckert, Julian Crouch and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, commissioned by the Walker Art Center and Krannert Center. Other works include Two Oars, a new opera with Robert Wilson; Epiphany, for the Young People’s Chorus, performed at BAM’s 2015 Next Wave Festival; The Colorado, an eco/film cantata developed at MASS MoCA for Roomful of Teeth, Glenn Kotche, and Jeffrey Zeigler, to premiere at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Houston’s Da Camera series; and the folk opera Oceanic Verses (a BMP co-production) for Watermill’s 10th anniversary. Her music is released on VIA Records, Innova, and Tzadik. She studied at the Juilliard School and was a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow for New Americans. paolaprestini.com.

Jason Price is a trumpet performer, composer, improviser, and sound designer. He currently teaches Sound Design at Michigan State University. Jason performed internationally with the new music group, Alarm Will Sound, for fifteen years. As a soloist and trumpeter, he has performed in North America, Europe, and Asia, specializing in innovative contemporary works. Jason has been a guest artist and presented master classes at institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York University, California Institute of the Arts, Eastman School of Music, and several International Trumpet Guild Conferences. He earned his Doctoral degree from the Eastman School of Music. Jason has created music and sound for theater, film, dance, television, and radio. His work has been presented at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Het Musikgebouw–Amsterdam, The Cork Opera House, the FONT Festival, STEIM – Amsterdam, and Manhattan School of Music. He has also created interactive electronics for several theater productions and sound installations. Jason’s work can be heard on Nonesuch, Warner Brothers, Cantaloupe, Amulet, and Ace-Fu labels.

Peter McDowell is currently the Managing Director of Chicago-based, four-time Grammy-award winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird, www.eighthblackbird.org, which just completed a unique and highly successful year-long residency at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Recently selected as one of 13 recipients internationally of the highly competitive DeVos Institute Fellowships, Peter has built a 20-year career on strategic, creative, and effective service to performing artists and arts organizations. He has held leadership positions at the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, New York’s Opera America, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and is Founder of Peter McDowell Arts Consulting, www.petermcdowell.com, a company that provides the performance field with high-level public relations, website development and career coaching. He holds degrees from the University of Illinois and from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He serves on the board of the Beverly Blossom Foundation and is currently making a documentary film, www.JimmyInSaigon.com.

A passionate advocate for chamber music, Melissa Snoza is a founding member of Fifth House Ensemble. A dynamic educator and coach, Melissa currently teaches a music entrepreneurship course at DePaul University, and has served as professor of flute at Carthage College. As 5HE’s Executive Director, Melissa drives the organization’s entrepreneurship programs, having created workshops for New England Conservatory, the Colburn School, Indiana University, the Eastman School of Music, TEDx Michigan Ave, and the fresh inc festival on arts entrepreneurship and creative programming. Her writing has been featured on the Entrepreneur the Arts blog and Huffington Post.

Having held positions with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Civic Orchestra of Chicago and the Peninsula Music Festival, Melissa’s performance activities have spanned South America, Europe, Russia and Japan. Previous award credits include First Prize at the National Flute Association’s Orchestral Audition Competition. Melissa is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and Northwestern University, with principal teachers including Bonita Boyd and Walfrid Kujala. Melissa is not only a well-known flutist and educator – she also makes a mean spread of Brazilian food and a mouth-watering chocolate pecan bourbon pie.

Kate Sheeran became Provost and Dean of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in July of 2015. In this role, she serves as the chief academic officer of the institution, overseeing all curricular and programmatic areas, and leading the faculty. Before arriving in California, Kate spent eight years as a member of the leadership at Mannes School of Music in New York City, where she was an assistant dean, directed all pre-college and continuing education, and developed a minor for degree students in Post-Genre Music. Throughout her career in music school leadership, her style blends tradition with innovation, creates spaces for risk-taking and curiosity, and builds supportive musical communities for students and faculty.

As a horn player, Kate has performed with a wide range musicians in many styles, including Ensemble Signal, The Wordless Music Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, Red Light New Music, The Dirty Projectors, Jónsi, Trinity Wall Street’s NOVUS NY, and Ensemble LPR. She has recorded for the Nonesuch, Cantaloupe, Western Vinyl, New Amsterdam, XL, Tzadik, and Warp labels, and for commercial television and film. Kate has been horn faculty at Dickinson College, Susquehanna University, Bucknell University, and Mannes Prep. A native of Vermont, she has served on the Board of Trustees of Kinhaven Music School, and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Alarm Will Sound. Kate received her undergraduate degree, Certificate in Arts Leadership, and Performer’s Certificate from Eastman, and an MM from Yale. She feels very lucky to have a life in music, and is especially inspired by helping young musicians to find their individual paths in today’s musical world.

Phillip Ying is a recognized and distinguished voice in chamber music performance, audience building initiatives, and music leadership. As violist of the Ying Quartet, he has performed across the United States, Europe and Asia. He is a recipient of the Naumburg Award for Chamber Music, has won a Grammy for a collaborative recording with the Turtle Island String Quartet, and has been nominated three additional times, most recently for a collaborative album with pianist, Billy Childs. He maintains a vital interest in new music with recent premieres of works by Lera Auerbach, Chen Yi, Augusta Read Thomas, Kevin Puts, Ned Rorem, Jennifer Higdon, Sebastian Currier, Paquito D’Rivera, Lowell Liebermann, Paul Moravec, and Kenji Bunch and is currently engaged in a multi-year commissioning project with the Institute for American Music. Mr. Ying also pursues creative projects across musical styles with other artists such as Garth Fagan, Billy Childs and Tod Machover. During the summers, he is Co-Artistic Director of the Bowdoin International Music Festival and has performed at the Colorado College, Aspen, Marlboro, Tanglewood, Caramoor, Norfolk, Music in the Vineyards and Skaneateles Music Festivals. He has recorded on the Sono Luminus, Telarc, Albany, Elektra, and EMI labels.

Mr. Ying is an Associate Professor Chamber Music and Viola at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, and for the past seven years has been Chair of the Chamber Music Department. From 2001-2008, he was with the Ying Quartet the Blodgett Ensemble in Residence at Harvard University. Additionally, he has served a six-year term as President of Chamber Music America, a national service organization for chamber music ensembles, presenters and artist managers, and has been published by Chamber Music magazine. He is a frequent speaker, panelist, and outside evaluator on subjects such as arts-in-education, advocacy through performance, and chamber music residencies. Mr. Ying received his education at Harvard University, the New England Conservatory, and the Eastman School of Music, and has studied principally with Martha Katz, Walter Trampler, and Roland Vamos.

Vanessa Rose joined ICE as Executive Director in September 2015. Her work has spanned from The Metropolitan Opera to the Lark Play Development Center to The Knights, with an emphasis on leading organizational change and building new capacity in development and governance. In 2006, Vanessa Rose completed the League of American Orchestra’s prestigious Orchestra Management Fellowship Program, which included residencies with the Dallas Symphony, Elgin Symphony, Aspen Music Festival and School, and San Francisco Symphony. As a violinist, Vanessa has performed with, among others, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Harrisburg Symphony, and Spoleto Festivals (Italy and USA). She attended the Eastman School of Music, Mannes College of Music, and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands.

Donna Milanovich, Executive Director, was a flutist with the Chicago Philharmonic for 17 years and has performed with a number of other prestigious ensembles, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera Orchestra. Donna became Executive Director of the Chicago Philharmonic in 2010. Since that time, the organization’s revenue has grown from $463,000 to $1.8 million, the Society’s orchestras have become the exclusive ensemble for the Joffrey Ballet, and the total number of performances per year has more than tripled. Donna is on the music faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago and holds a B.M. degree from Stetson University, an M.M. degree from the University of Kansas, and a postgraduate degree in Orchestral Studies from Royal Northern College of Music in England. In 2015, she was accepted to and completed the Harvard Business School’s Executive Program “Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management.”

Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez was born in Mexico City in 1964 and now lives in the New York tundra, where he chairs the Composition Department at the Eastman School of Music. He studied with Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, Steven Mackey and Henri Dutilleux at Yale, Princeton and Tanglewood, respectively. He has received many of the standard awards in the field (e.g. Barlow Prize, Guggenheim, Fulbright, Koussevitzky, Fromm, American Academy of Arts and Letters.) He likes machines with hiccups and spiders with missing legs, looks at Paul Klee’s Notebooks everyday, and tries to use the same set of ears to listen to Bach, Radiohead, or Ligeti.

Jeffrey Zeigler is one of the most versatile cellists of our time. Known for his independent streak, he has commissioned dozens of works, and is admired as a potent collaborator and unique improviser. Described as “fiery”, and a player who performs “with unforced simplicity and beauty of tone” by the New York Times, he has performed thousands of concerts in many of the finest venues all across the world and has given many notable premiers including works by John Adams, John Corigliano, Bryce Dessner, Henryk Gorecki, Paola Prestini, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and John Zorn to name a few. His notable collaborations include Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Hauschka, Vijay Iyer, Glenn Kotche, Yo-Yo Ma, Kimmo Pohjonen, Roomful of Teeth and Tom Waits.

Mr. Zeigler has released over three dozen recordings for Nonesuch Records, Deutsche Grammophon and Smithsonian Folkways and has appeared with Norah Jones on her album Not Too Late on Blue Note Records. Zeigler can also be heard on the film soundtrack for Paola Sorrentino’s Academy Award winning film, La Grande Bellezza, as well as Clint Mansell’s Golden Globe nominated soundtrack, The Fountain, featuring performances with the Scottish band, Mogwai. In the Fall 2014, Zeigler released his first solo album, Something of Life. A collaborative release with Innova Records and VisionIntoArt Records, the album features world premier recordings of works by Philip Glass, Glenn Kotche, Felipe Perez Santiago, Paola Prestini, Gity Razaz and John Zorn.

Victoria Paterson is a violinist in New York City and she is known for her diversity and musicality. Equally comfortable with classical, modern and popular music, she performs everywhere from Carnegie Hall, Birdland, and Madison Square Garden, to Late Night with Seth Meyers, and The Today Show. She played for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding and regularly performs for luminaries ranging from Michelle Obama, Diane Sawyer and Nancy Pelosi to Sean Combs and Jennifer Lopez. She is the founder of the Lumiere String Quartet, and her recordings boast top selling classical sales on Amazon and iTunes. Executive Director of the American Modern Ensemble, Victoria is passionate about celebrating American music. She also keeps busy contracting for opera companies including OnSite Opera, American Opera Projects, Prototype, and more.

Victoria regularly gives masterclasses and lectures about her life in music, including The Juilliard School, the Eastman School of Music, Broadway Backstage, and Chamber Music America. Paterson studied at the Eastman School of Music and Indiana University. She resides in New York City with award-winning husband & composer, Robert Paterson, and their beautiful boy, Dylan.