"As laid out in “Mannes in a New Key,” plans include a revamping of the entire curriculum. “Where cutting-edge classical music was below the radar, new music will become a priority,” Kessler and team write, along with assurances that Mannes will produce “citizen artists” trained at what will be “widely known as a creative campus, where all students study music composition and improvisation, where the divide between composer and performer is difficult to discern, and where the school is committed to a living canon of works both new and old.”
"Kessler is also bringing new faculty on board—40 to date, some full-time, the majority part-time. Among them is composer Lowell Liebermann. Described by the New York Times “as much of a traditionalist as an innovator,” Liebermann was hired in 2012 as a part-time lecturer and director of MACE (the Mannes American Composers Ensemble), a large ensemble that celebrates the music of living American composers, whether established, like John Adams and Elliott Carter, or cutting-edge newcomers.
Also new on the faculty roster are violinist Miranda Cuckson, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, pianist Jeremy Denk, composer Missy Mazzoli, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra concertmaster David Chan, Wall Street Journal theater critic and playwright Terry Teachout, New York Philharmonic principal violist Cynthia Phelps, and composer David Little."
