Artistic Team

Kathy Schuman joined Caramoor in the newly-created role of Vice President, Artistic Programming & Executive Producer in November 2016. Previously she was Artistic Administrator of Carnegie Hall, where she helped program its three venues in a wide variety of musical genres. During her 15-year tenure at Carnegie, she was deeply involved in the opening of Zankel Hall in 2003, which led to an expansion of the hall’s presentations to include significantly more new music, early music, jazz, world, and folk. As the primary coordinator of Carnegie’s robust commissioning program, she oversaw approximately 200 commissions, including new works by David Lang, Kaija Saariaho, John Adams, Brad Mehldau, Nico Muhly, Missy Mazzoli, Meredith Monk, and many others. Directly prior to joining Caramoor, she was Vice President and Artistic Director of G. Schirmer/AMP, managing a roster of Pulitzer, Grammy, Oscar, Tony and Emmy-winning composers.

Kathy began her career in arts management at Frank Salomon Associates, where she worked both as an artist manager and as Coordinator of the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. She moved to Europe in 1994, where she was the Managing Director of the European Chamber Music Association (Bremen), Administrator of the Contemporary Music Network at the Arts Council of England, and then Associate Director of Intermusica Artist Management (London), where she managed artists and programmed the International Chamber Music Season at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, in addition to other concert presentations throughout London.

A native New Yorker, Kathy has been a lifelong choral singer, with a love of music instilled at an early age from her father, a professional oboist, and her mother, a book designer and opera-lover. She’s also a gourmet home cook, avid world traveler, weekend cyclist, cinephile, and theater enthusiast.

Beginning in Summer 2020, Caramoor is pleased to collaborate with City Winery for American Roots Music programming. Founded in 2008 by CEO Michael Dorf (founder of the legendary NYC rock venue the Knitting Factory), City Winery is a winery, restaurant, music venue, and private event location in New York City, recently relocated to Pier 57 in Hudson River Park. They strive to deliver the highest-end combined culinary and cultural experience to urban wine enthusiasts with their quality food and music. Music, comedy, and spoken word performances are presented 25-30 nights each month. Other locations include Atlanta, Chicago, Nashville, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. There are also 5 offsets run by the company: City Vineyard at Pier 26, Rockefeller Center, City Winery Chicago at the Riverwalk, City Winery Greenway in Boston, and City Winery Hudson Valley. www.citywinery.com

Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL), Caramoor’s orchestra-in-residence, began in 1974 as a group of virtuoso musicians performing chamber music concerts at Greenwich Village’s Church of St. Luke in the Fields. Now in its 43rd season, the Orchestra performs diverse musical genres at New York’s major concert venues, and has collaborated with artists ranging from Renée Fleming and Joshua Bell to Bono and Metallica. In the fall of 2018, internationally celebrated expert in 18th-Century music, Bernard Labadie, will join the Orchestra as Principal Conductor, continuing the Orchestra’s long tradition of working with proponents of historical performance practice.

OSL’s signature programming includes a subscription series presented by Carnegie Hall, now in its 31st season; an annual multi-week collaboration with Paul Taylor American Modern Dance at Lincoln Center; an annual summer residency at Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts; and a chamber music festival featuring appearances at The Morgan Library & Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Music Center. The Orchestra has participated in 118 recordings, four of which have won Grammy Awards, has commissioned more than 50 new works, and has given more than 175 world, U.S., and New York City premieres.

Nearly half of OSL’s performances each year are presented free of charge through its education and community programs, reaching over 10,000 New York City public school students. Additionally, OSL provides free instrumental coaching and presents student performances through its Youth Orchestra of St. Luke’s and its Mentorship Program for Pre-Professional Musicians.

OSL built and operates The DiMenna Center for Classical Music in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City’s only rehearsal, recording, education, and performance space expressly dedicated to classical music. The DiMenna Center serves more than 500 ensembles and more than 30,000 musicians each year.

Visit OSLmusic.org and find @OSLmusic on Instagram, Facebook, Spotify, and elsewhere.

Steven Blier is the Artistic Director of the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), which he co-founded in 1988 with Michael Barrett. Since the Festival’s inception, Mr. Blier has programmed, performed, translated and annotated more than 130 vocal recitals with repertoire spanning the entire range of American song, art song from Schubert to Szymanowski, and popular song from early vaudeville to Lennon-McCartney. NYFOS has also made in-depth explorations of music from Spain, Latin America, Scandinavia and Russia. New York Magazine gave NYFOS an award for Best Classical Programming, while Opera News proclaimed Blier “the coolest dude in town.” Currently the Artistic Director of Caramoor’s newest mentoring program, the Schwab Vocal Rising Stars, Mr. Blier has been with the program as a Distinguished Artist pianist and vocal coach, since the inaugural concert in 2009.

Mr. Blier enjoys an eminent career as an accompanist and vocal coach. His recital partners have included Renée Fleming, Cecilia Bartoli, Samuel Ramey, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Susan Graham, Jessye Norman, and José van Dam, in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to La Scala. He is also on the faculty of The Juilliard School and has been active in encouraging young recitalists at summer programs, including the Wolf Trap Opera Company, Santa Fe Opera, and the San Francisco Opera Center. Many of his former students, including Stephanie Blythe, Joseph Kaiser, Sasha Cooke, Paul Appleby, Dina Kuznetsova, and Kate Lindsey, have gone on to be valued recital colleagues and sought-after stars on the opera and concert stage.

In keeping the traditions of American music alive, Steven Blier has brought back to the stage many of the rarely heard songs of George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Kurt Weill and Cole Porter. He has also played ragtime, blues and stride piano evenings with John Musto. A champion of American art song, he has premiered works of John Corigliano, Paul Moravec, Ned Rorem, William Bolcom, John Musto, Richard Danielpour, Tobias Picker, Robert Beaser, Lowell Liebermann, Harold Meltzer, and Lee Hoiby, many of which were commissioned by NYFOS.

Mr. Blier’s extensive discography includes the premiere recording of Leonard Bernstein’s Arias and Barcarolles (Koch International), which won a Grammy® Award. His most recent releases are Spanish Love Songs (Bridge Records), recorded live at the Caramoor International Music Festival with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Joseph Kaiser, and Michael Barrett; the world premiere recording of Bastianello (John Musto) and Lucrezia (William Bolcom), a double bill of one-act comic operas set to librettos by Mark Campbell; and his latest recording, Quiet Please, an album of jazz standards with vocalist Darius de Haas.

Marcy Rosen, cellist, has established herself as one of the most important and respected artists of our day. Los Angeles Times music critic Herbert Glass has called her “one of the intimate art’s abiding treasures” and The New Yorker Magazine deemed her “a New York legend of the cello.” She has performed in recital and with orchestras throughout Canada, England, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South America, Switzerland, and throughout the United States. Sought after for her riveting and informative master classes, she has been a guest of the Curtis Institute of Music, the New England Conservatory, the San Francisco Conservatory, the Central Conservatory in Beijing, the Seoul Arts Center in Korea, and the Cartagena International Music Festival in Colombia. Rosen was a founding member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet, which toured worldwide for 31 years. Since 1986, she has served as Artistic Director of Chesapeake Music in Maryland. Since first attending the Marlboro Music Festival in 1975, she has participated in 25 Musicians from Marlboro tours, including concerts celebrating the 40th, 50th, and 60th anniversaries of the festival.
A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Rosen is currently a professor of cello at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, while also serving as Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Live concert series. She is on the faculty at the Mannes College of Music in New York City.