Manhattan School of Music 2024 Gala Lights up New York City’s Iconic Rainbow Room
Manhattan School of Music hosted its 2024 Gala at the iconic Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Plaza.The gala honored two-time Tony Award-winner Brian Stokes Mitchell and longtime Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization President Ted Chapin.
A celebration of the school’s prestigious Musical Theatre Program, the evening was hosted by MSM alumnus, Broadway mainstay and Tony Award-winner Shuler Hensley, and featured performances by current students of the MSM Musical Theatre Program as well as solo performances by Alysia Velez, MSM alumna and star of the acclaimed 2022 Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods.
All performers were either MSM alumni or current students, and the evening featured musical direction by David Loud, legendary Broadway Musical Director and MD of the MSM Musical Theatre Program. Pianist and MSM artistic staff member Shane Schag accompanied the performances. Which were overseen by Liza Gennaro, MSM’s Dean of Musical Theatre.
Some of the notable attendees included: honorees Ted Chapin (former President of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization) and Brian Stokes Mitchell (two-time Tony Award winner and Broadway legend); the evening’s Host, Shuler Hensley (Tony Award-winner and Broadway mainstay); Alysia Velez (recent graduate of MSM’s Musical Theatre Program and Rapunzel in the acclaimed 2022 Broadway revival of Into the Woods); Ann Ziff (Chairman of the Metropolitan Opera Board of Directors); Dominique Laffont (Advisory Director, The Metropolitan Opera; namesake of the Met Opera’s Laffont Competition); Adrienne Vittadini (fashion designer); Jack Viertel (theatrical producer and author); Scott Dunn (Associate Conductor, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and MSM trustee); Anne-Marie McDermott (internationally acclaimed classical pianist); Noreen Buckfire (philanthropist and MSM International Advisory Board Member); James Roe (President and Executive Director, The Orchestra of St. Luke’s); Chloe Flower (pianist and composer); Linda Oh (Grammy Award-winning jazz bassist and composer); Joe DiPietro (Tony Award-winning playwright and lyricist of Memphis; I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change); David Loud (legendary Broadway Musical Director; Musical Director, MSM Musical Theatre Program); and Liza Gennaro (choreographer; MSM Dean of Musical Theatre).
Founded as a community music school by Janet Daniels Schenck in 1918, today MSM is recognized for its more than 1,000 superbly talented undergraduate and graduate students who come from over 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 Metropolitan 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.
