President
Elvira O. Green, a North Carolinian by birth, a 1962 graduate from NCCU, began her professional career as a mezzo-soprano at the NY Metropolitan Opera.
Miss Green has spent more than forty years on the world wide operatic, concert and musical theatre stages; San Francisco Opera, Teatro dell’opera di Roma, The Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam, Holland, Washington Opera’s Spoleto Festival in Melbourne, Australia, Metropolitan Opera on tour in Japan, International and European Tour of George Gershwin’s masterpiece Porgy and Bess and a return engagement to Sydney, Australia for eight months in Hal Prince’s Broadway production of Show Boat.
World premieres with lead, featured or supporting roles: Civil Wars, by Philip Glass; Sojourner, by Valerie Capers; The Outcast by Noa Ains and Incident at San Bajo by Patrick Byers. Two historical recordings at the Smithsonian Performing Arts Archives: Handel’s Messiah; Naughty Marietta by Victor Herbert and selections from Sojourner by Valerie Capers.
Ms. Green has travelled to eight countries on the African Continent as a music ambassador for the African/African Summit sponsored by IFESH (International Foundation For Education And Self Help), a component of OICI (Opportunities Industrialization Centers International).
Elvira serves on several important boards: The Greensboro Opera, Education component, NANM Inc. (National Association of Negro Musicians, Inc.)—which was established in 1919; President of North Carolina Carol Brice Music Association; Director of THE “SINGERS” STUDIO, the Summer Opera Program for Pre-teens and Young Teens.
As an academician, beginning 2000-2017 professor Green was appointed at the University of the Virgin Islands in St Thomas to design a vocal studies program and while there, from 2001 to 2004 co-produced two Rogers and Hammerstein masterpieces, The King and I and The Sound of Music at Reichhold Theater. Beginning in August of 2005 - May 2017 Professor Green was a faculty member in the music department at her alma mater, North Carolina Central University , in Durham, NC.
Artistic Advisor
Since his acclaimed debut at Carnegie Hall in 1989, Tian Jiang has become recognized as one of the first virtuoso pianists to emerge from the People’s Republic of China after the stark years of the Cultural Revolution. Praised for his "shining, crisp, energetic and colorfully illuminated playing” by The New York Times, a subsequent profile on CBS’s “Sunday Morning” with Charles Kuralt further celebrated the sweet irony of this remarkable artist’s rich, imaginative interpretations: that this music he had been forbidden to hear, let alone play as a child, had become his life.
Tian first came to international attention when he appeared with Vladimir Ashkenazy in a BBC film about his historic visit to China in 1980. In 1981, Tian was one of the five young musicians chosen by Isaac Stern to come to the US and take part in the first cultural exchange program between China and the United States. Consequently Tian studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Later he continued at the Manhattan School of Music and The Juilliard School.
In 1995, Tian joined the famed CAMI (Columbia Artists Management Inc.) roster as the first mainland Chinese concert pianist. When he substituted for Arcadi Volodos at a Gala Concert in 1998, playing an all Mozart’s program, Tian became an overnight success and the invitations started to pour in. Daniel Cariaga in The Los Angeles Times characterized his playing as ''a deeply persuasive Mozartean'' saying that “Tian Jiang achieved an exquisite performance who delivers the full spectrum of the composer’s virtues - wit, pathos, brilliance, and serenity in this buoyant performance.”
Captivating audiences from North America to South Africa and from Europe to the Far East, Tian has been enthusiastically received in concerto appearances with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Mozart Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. Tian is proud to be the first Chinese pianist to have toured his homeland with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on its historic visit to China in 2000 and he has collaborated with conductors such as Daniele Gatti, Zubin Mehta, Ettore Stratta and Gerald Schwartz.
As a recording artist, Tian has 12 albums to his credit, including his original composition “Shanghai Dream” and the two latest CDs “Tian Jiang Live at Carnegie Hall”.
Founder, Executive Director
Lynn Yen is the Founder and Executive Director of the Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture, whose mission is to revive the study and practice of the Classical principle in music and science, especially among the young, and to place the immortal words and music of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and others at the disposal of those that most need and want them.
Ms. Yen began studying piano at the age of 7, at the same time as she began studying Chinese calligraphy. She competed for and won awards in both fields throughout her pre-teen and teenage years. Later, pursuing other interests, Ms. Yen attended New York University’s Stern School of Business on a full scholarship. Upon graduation, she went to work in the non-profit sector, as the director of programming and operations for the highly successful Greenwich Film Festival. She then worked in finance, where her main areas of focus were advising non-US based natural resource and alternative energy groups in the execution of partnerships and acquisitions with US based firms, and in assisting clients with their capital raising needs. Ms. Yen spent several years in fundraising and operational capacities, during which she worked with a variety of organizations ranging from start-ups to the Fortune 500. She eventually decided to act in order to realize her love for, and ability to contribute to a “higher calling”, that of education and culture. In 2010, she began the groundwork for what led to the formation of the Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture, which she established in 2011.
Artistic Committee
Jonathan DePeri is the Honorary Assistant Organist at St. John’s in the Village and had studied piano at the Manhattan School of Music before transferring to Columbia University. In 2013, he formed the Gotham Arts Salon, which creates artistic and musical gatherings that blur the line between private and public.
Board Member
Mr. John Carley is the CEO of Cascade NYC. He was the president and founder of the highly successful Greenwich Film Festival in Greenwich, CT which held glittery screenings and celebrity studded events from 2001 to 2006.
Past President (2011-2018)
Anthony Morss was born in Boston and studied at the New England Conservatory and the National Orchestral Association in New York. While still a student, he was chosen by Leopold Stokowski to be his chorus Master and Associate Conductor with the Symphony of the Air. Since then, his widely diverse career has seen him as Chorus Master of Juilliard抯 Amercian Opera Center and as Music Director of the Majorca and Saragossa Symphonies in Spain, and the Norwalk Symphony in the U.S. He has guest conducted the Madrid, Barcelona, Marseille, Cape Town and Slovak Radio Symphonies, among many others.
In 1976 he conducted the American premiere of Massenet抯 Marie Magdeleine with Regine Crespin and Aragall and Wixell, which Eva Marton proclaimed a major turning-point in her career. In 1990 in Alice Tully Hall, he conducted a concert version of Fidelio with original instruments, the first such performance of a standard repertory opera in New York.
In addition to his symphonic posts he has served as Music Director for the New York State Opera Company, Verismo Opera of New York, the Maine Opera, Asociacion Pro-Zarzula en America, and Eastern Opera Theatre of New York. He is currently Music Director of the New Jersey Association of Verismo Opera and the Lubo Opera Company. He has guest conducted numerous other companies, including the Marseille Opera, New Jersey Lyric, the Majorca Opera Society, Tampa Bay Opera and National Grand Opera.
His repertory is wide both in symphony and opera, currently including sixty-seven works for the stage: mostly operas –Italian, French, German, Japanese and contemporary American but also some operettas — Gilbert and Sullivan, Victor Herbert, Viennese and Zarzuelas.
His has conducted for instrumental soloists like violinist Henry K. Szeryng and pianist Phillipe Entremont, and a host of internationally famous singers, including Regine Crespin, Eva Marton, Lucine Amara, Patrice Munsel, Phyllis Curtin, Giacomo, Aragall, Louis Roney, Carlo Bini and Ingvar Wixell.
