Performances + Events
Pictured, left to right: Willie Martinez, Zaccai Curtis ’03, ’05 GD, and Reinaldo DeJesus, winners in the Best Latin Jazz Album category for Cubop Lives! Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Thirty-three New England Conservatory alumni and faculty were among the winners announced at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony, held on February 2 at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles and televised live on CBS. Additional alumni and NEC-affiliated musicians contributed to award-winning recordings.
NEC alumni played key roles in several orchestral and classical recordings that won this year. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, led by Gustavo Dudamel and featuring María Dueñas, received multiple awards including Best Orchestral Performance, Best Classical Compendium, and Best Contemporary Composition for Ortiz: Revolución Diamantina. The recording, which features the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Steve Pence ’04, includes violinists Chao-Ching Lin ’96 MM, Kristine Whitson ’90, Weilu Zhang ’18, and Melody Ye Yuan ’19; oboist and NEC faculty member Anne Marie Gabriele; double-bassist Jack Cousin ’76; trumpeter Christopher Still ’95 MM; percussionist Matthew Howard ’15; violist Ben Ullery ’05 MM; cellist Dahae Kim ’11, ’13 MM; and bassoonist Shawn Mouser ’91 MM, ’93 GD.
Twelve alumni performed on the San Francisco Symphony’s recording of Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Mater, which won in the Best Opera Recording category. Alumni include violists Jonathan Vinocour ’03 MM, ’04 GD, Katie Kadarauch ’03, ’04 GD, David Kim ’05, ’06 GD, and Leonid Plashinov-Johnson ’19; violinists In Sun Jang ’06 GD and Jeein Kim ’21 MM; cellist Davis You ’24; flutist and piccolo player Catherine Payne ’87 Tufts/NEC, ’91 MM; clarinetist Matthew Griffith ’16 MM, ’18 GD; bass trombonist Christopher Bassett ’16, ’17 MM; and timpanist Edward Stephan ’01 MM. Shauna Fallihee ’04 is a member of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, which is also featured on the recording.
The award for Best Choral Performance went to Donald Nally & The Crossing for Orchre, which features Maren Montalbano Brehm ’97 Tufts/NEC, Rebecca Myers ’01 MM, and a former Expanded Education student, Barbara Hill.
Tamara Acosta ’92 MM co-produced Beyond The Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price, which won in the Best Classical Solo Vocal Album category. The recording showcases 19 previously unpublished songs by Price — who earned two diplomas from NEC in 1906, one in organ and one in piano — including 16 world-premiere recordings.
Sabrina Carpenter took home the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album for Short n’ Sweet, which features Sean Hutchinson ’07 (percussion/engineering) and double-bassist Francisco Ojeda ’12.
Violinist and former NEC Prep student Andrew Bulbrook performed on The Beatles’s Now and Then, which won Best Rock Performance. Trumpeter David Adewumi ’16 performed on the Dan Pugach Big Band’s Bianca Reimagined: Music for Paws and Persistence, which won in the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album category. Zaccai Curtis ’03, ’05 GD received his first Grammy for Cubop Lives! in the category of Best Latin Jazz Album.
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s live recording of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 and Mason Bates’s Resurrexit, conducted by Manfred Honeck, won the award for Best Engineered Album, Classical. While the Grammy was awarded to the album’s engineers, the recording features outstanding performances by NEC alumni, including violinists Kelsey Blumenthal ’14 MM, Boxianzi Vivian Ling ’23 MM, and Yingchen Zhang ’16, ’18 MM, ’20 GD; violist Andrew Wickesberg ’06 MM; cellist Charlie Powers ’01; double-bassist Nicholas Myers ’16; and trombonist James Nova ’98 MM.
This year, more than 80 members of the NEC community received Grammy nominations.
Editor’s note: A previously published version of this story omitted a member of the NEC community.
