Artistic Team 

Drawing on twenty years of arts management experience and a lifelong love of music as both an avid audience member and musician, Jeffrey P. Haydon begins his second season at Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts as CEO. Since his arrival, Caramoor has launched several new artistic initiatives, including In the Garden of Sonic Delights, an immersion Fall Festival, Artist-in-Residence, community collaborations including the launches of Cultural Katonah and Caramoor@KMA, and expanded its overall programming by over 60%–all while increasing ticket sales, fundraising, and improving its financial performance.

Previously, Mr. Haydon served as Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival (an hour north of Los Angeles), where he led the festival through a number of major transformations to further position it as one of the preeminent musical destinations for artists and audiences alike. During a time when many cultural organizations experienced declines in donations and audiences, Mr. Haydon helped the Ojai Music Festival double its budget and triple the number of artistic and education programs produced – all while improving its balance sheet. A key focus of Mr. Haydon’s work was rallying the surrounding community and Festival constituents to raise over $4 million from 2008 to 2011 to rebuild the 1,000-seat Libbey Bowl, which serves as the home for the Ojai Music Festival and many other events throughout the year.

Mr. Haydon previously held positions with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and Aspen Music Festival. As part of the League of American Orchestras’ Orchestra Management Fellowship Program, Mr. Haydon worked with the Baltimore Symphony, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and Seattle Symphony. He has also managed the Cultural Events performing arts series in Tacoma, Washington.

A native of California, Jeffrey Haydon earned a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration through the Business leadership honors program and a minor in music from the University of Puget Sound. He also completed the Stanford Business School’s competitive Executive Non-Profit Leaders in the Arts program in association with National Arts Strategies.

Appointed Managing Director in 2001, Paul Rosenblum has been General Manager of the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts since the summer of 1992. As part of the management team with then Executive Director Howard Herring and Artistic Advisor Andre Previn, it was his particular mission to enhance Caramoor’s unique status and stature, making it as attractive and accessible to the public as possible through the modernization and upgrading of the facility, artistic administration, staff and marketing. Moved by a special affinity for Caramoor’s timeless and magical serenity, beauty, intimacy and elegance, Paul Rosenblum has used his experience in music performance, advertising and management to contribute to Caramoor’s blossoming and recognition as the home of one of America’s top five summer music festivals.

Paul Rosenblum is a native New Yorker, born in Brooklyn. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School and received the degrees of Bachelor of Music and Master of Science in Music Performance from the Juilliard School, where he studied the French Horn. In addition to extensive professional experience in orchestral and chamber music, and ten years in the advertising business, he was Director of Operations for the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the resident orchestra of the Caramoor Festival, prior to becoming General Manager of Caramoor.

Cellist Edward Arron has garnered recognition worldwide for his elegant musicianship, impassioned performances, and creative programming. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Arron made his New York recital debut in 2000 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Earlier that year, he performed Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Cellos with Yo-Yo Ma and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at the Opening Night Gala of the Caramoor International Festival. Since that time, Mr. Arron has appeared in recital, as a soloist with orchestra, and as a chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.

For over a decade, Mr. Arron’s has served as the artistic director of the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert, a chamber music series created in 2003 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Museum’s prestigious Concerts and Lectures series. In the fall of 2009, Mr. Arron succeeded Charles Wadsworth as the artistic director, host, and resident performer of the Musical Masterworks concert series in Old Lyme, Connecticut, as well as concert series in Beaufort and Columbia, South Carolina. He is also the artistic director of the Caramoor Virtuosi, the resident chamber ensemble of the Caramoor International Music Festival.

Mr. Arron has performed numerous times at Carnegie’s Weill and Zankel Halls, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully and Avery Fisher Halls, New York’s Town Hall, and the 92nd Street Y, and is a frequent performer at Bargemusic. Past summer festival appearances include Ravinia, Salzburg, Mostly Mozart, BRAVO! Colorado, Tanglewood, Bridgehampton, Spoleto USA, Santa Fe, Seattle Chamber Music, Bard Summerscape, Seoul Spring, Great Mountains, and Isaac Stern’s Jerusalem Chamber Music Encounters. Mr. Arron has participated in the Silk Road Project and has toured and recorded as a member of MOSAIC, an ensemble dedicated to contemporary music.

Edward Arron began his studies on the cello at age seven in Cincinnati and, at age ten, moved to New York, where he continued his studies with Peter Wiley. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Harvey Shapiro. Mr. Arron has served on the faculty of New York University since 2009.

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.

Will Crutchfield spent his teens as a vocal coach and rehearsal pianist, made his name as a writer and musicologist in the mid-1980’s (becoming the youngest music critic in the history of The New York Times), and returned to his theater roots in the mid-1990’s to conduct opera. After initial conducting successes with productions in small companies and conservatories, Crutchfield was named to two positions: Director of Opera for the Caramoor International Music Festival (1997-present) and Music Director of the Opera de Colombia in Bogota (1999-2005). At these two theaters he built his style, which the Financial Times called “a fine balance of bravado, intensity, sensitivity and scholarly savoir-faire,” in cycles of standard repertory classics as well as pioneering revivals of less familiar works.

Crutchfield has accepted guest engagements in several theaters at home and abroad, including The Canadian Opera Company (Tancredi with Ewa Podles), The Washington Opera (Giulio Cesare with Hei-Kyung Hong), The Minnesota Opera (I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Sumi Jo and Vivica Genaux; La Traviata with Judith Howarth), the Baltimore Opera (La Cenerentola and Werner Herzog’s production of Die Zauberflöte), Florida Grand Opera (Don Pasquale), L’Opéra Français de New York (Gluck’s Pélérins de la Mècque), the Mark Morris Dance Group (Dido and Aeneas), Wolf Trap Opera (La Finta Giardiniera), the State Theatre Pretoria (Il Barbiere di Siviglia) and the Orquesta Filarmonica de la Gran Canaria (Norma). In 2006, he began a long-term relationship with the Polish National Opera in Warsaw, beginning with productions of Tancredi, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Lucia di Lammermoor, and Guillaume Tell.

In reviews of the celebrated Caramoor revivals – alongside praise for the musical interpretation – the press has consistently recognized the qualities of the rare operas themselves more positively than has been the case in productions elsewhere. The New York Times, reviewing the production of La Donna del Lago that inaugurated the series, discerned “a palpable conviction that Rossini’s serious operas are not static vehicles for elaborate vocal display, but elegant and humane musical dramas.” According to The Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Crutchfield brought his sure sense of bel canto style to bear upon Lucrezia Borgia, and the semi-staged concert version at Caramoor’s Venetian Theater was both delightful and thought-provoking.” Subsequent revivals of Bellini’s Il Pirata, Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra and Otello, Handel’s Deidamia, Gluck’s Paride ed Elena and Donizetti’s Élisabeth, a lost opera whose autograph manuscript Crutchfield himself discovered and reconstructed have been highly acclaimed. Last summer Caramoor presented two classics in new critical editions supervised by Philip Gossett: Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, the latter in its rarely-heard original version, composed for the Imperial Theatre of St. Petersburg at the height of Verdi’s career. In prior seasons Bel Canto at Caramoor presented the first American performance of Bellini’s La Sonnambula in the new Ricordi critical edition and the composer’s original keys, an uncut Traviata based on period performance practice, and the infrequently produced treasures I Puritani by Bellini and Tancredi by Rossini.

Crutchfield has also been involved in training the next generation of singers. He prefers to work repeatedly with young artists he believes in so that the process can develop from production to production. He served on the faculties of all three New York conservatories (Juilliard, Manhattan and Mannes) and he continues to devote the summer months to extensive training programs at Caramoor. Some of the singers with whose debuts and early careers he has been associated include: Vivica Genaux, Nancy Herrera, Marguerite Krull, Bruce Fowler, Daniel Mobbs, Georgia Jarman, Patricia Risley, Yegishe Manucharyan, Olga Makarina, Kate Aldrich and Alexandra Deshorties. An often-noted component of Crutchfield’s research, as of his practical work with singers, has been the recovery and development of the art of ornamental improvisation.

Notwithstanding his concentration on opera, Crutchfield has also led symphonic repertory including works of Mahler, Strauss, Bartok, Beethoven, Britten, Schubert and Mendelssohn with various orchestras in the U.S. and Latin America. He has also remained active as a pianist, and his speaking voice is familiar to audiences who have heard his frequent intermission broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera. Crutchfield is currently completing a book on performance practice in Italian opera.

American violinist Pamela Frank has established an outstanding international reputation across an unusually varied range of performing activity. In addition to her extensive schedule of engagements with prestigious orchestras throughout the world and her recitals on the leading concert stages, she is regularly sought after as a chamber music partner by today’s most distinguished soloists and ensembles. The breadth of this accomplishment and her consistently high level of musicianship were recognized in 1999 with the Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists.

Ms. Frank has appeared with such orchestras as the Baltimore Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony, the Orchestre National de France, the Houston Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the National Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the San Francisco Symphony and the Vienna Symphony. She has performed under many esteemed conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Christoph von Dohnányi, Christoph Eschenbach, Bernard Haitink, Seiji Ozawa, André Previn, Leonard Slatkin and, most regularly, Yuri Temirkanov and David Zinman. She appears often at numerous festivals in Europe and the United States, including Aldeburgh, Berlin, Blossom, Bravo! Vail Valley, Caramoor, the Hollywood Bowl, Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, Salzburg, Tanglewood and Verbier.

Her passion for chamber music continues to find a variety of outlets. Her frequent collaborators, drawn from a large group of chamber music colleagues, include Yo-Yo Ma, Tabea Zimmermann and Alexander Simionescu. For many years she took part in the Marlboro Festival in Vermont as well as the subsequent Music from Marlboro tours. Ms. Frank has also participated in several of the Isaac Stern chamber music seminars at Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Music Centre as part of a group of performer-colleagues assisting Mr. Stern. She now continues that tradition with the Leon Fleisher Classes at Carnegie Hall, as well as her own.

In the recording studio, Pamela Frank has made two discs for London/Decca: the Dvorak Concerto with the Czech Philharmonic and the Brahms Sonatas with Peter Serkin. She has also recorded the complete Mozart Violin Concertos with David Zinman and the Tonhalle Orchestra (Arte Nova), a Schubert album with Claude Frank (Arte Nova), and the Beethoven sonata cycle, also with Claude Frank (MusicMasters), now available as complete set on three discs. For Sony Classical, she has recorded the Chopin Piano Trio with Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma, the “Trout” Quintet, and is featured on the soundtrack to the film Immortal Beloved.

While committed to the standard repertoire, Ms. Frank also has an affinity for contemporary music, often including works by today’s composers on her programs. In March 1998, she gave the world premiere of a new concerto by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich commissioned for her by Carnegie Hall with Hugh Wolff and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. In 1997, as part of her annual visit to Japan, Ms. Frank joined Peter Serkin, Yo-Yo Ma and Richard Stoltzman at Toru Takemitsu’s Tokyo Opera City, playing works of Takemitsu and others. She has also premiered and recorded two works by Aaron Jay Kernis, a piano quartet (Still Movement with Hymn) and a piece for violin and orchestra (Lament and Prayer). A noted pedagogue, Pamela Frank presents master classes and adjudicates major competitions throughout the world. She is also on the faculties of Curtis Institute of Music and the Peabody Conservatory, and teaches and coaches annually at the Tanglewood, Aspen, Ravinia and Verbier Festivals as well as at several festivals in Europe.

Born in New York City, Pamela Frank is the daughter of noted pianists Claude Frank and Lilian Kallir. She began her violin studies at age five and after 11 years as a pupil of Shirley Givens continued her musical education with Szymon Goldberg and Jaime Laredo. In 1985 she formally launched her career with the first of her four appearances with Alexander Schneider and the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. A recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1988, she graduated the following year from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

In 1999, Pamela Frank was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists. Pamela Frank is married to physical therapist Howard Nelson.

With an established reputation for artistic and educational excellence, Katie Kresek has received accolades around the world for her ability to engage her audience. Ms. Kresek has been the Family Program Designer at Caramoor Center for Music and The Arts since 2009, where she curates and hosts the Dancing at Dusk series in addition to creating family programs for the International Music Festival.

As a violinist, Ms. Kresek has given recitals at Carnegie Hall, the National Arts Club, Merkin Hall and the New York Public Library. She appeared as a soloist with the Westchester Philharmonic in 2006, and her playing has been featured on WQXR’s McGraw-Hill Young Artists Showcase and WNYC’s program Sound Check. She attended Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and was a founding member of the Arabella Piano Trio, with whom she made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2002. As an orchestral musician, Ms. Kresek frequently performs with the Harrisburg, Albany, and Princeton Symphony Orchestras, among others. She also performs in the Broadway productions of The Lion King and The Phantom of the Opera, and performed past productions of American Idiot, A Minister’s Wife, and Follies. In addition to her love of classical music, Ms. Kresek is a member of Hector del Curto’s Eternal Tango Orchestra and a frequent guest with the post-modern string quartet ETHEL. She collaborates frequently with singer/songwriter Colin McGrath, and was formerly lead violinist of the jazz-rock fusion group Sketchy Black Dog. She has collaborated with Adele, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Shakira, KD Lang, Enya, Jewel, Lenny Kravitz, Lana Del Rey, and others, and has performed on The Today Show, The Late Show with David Letterman, The View, Saturday Night Live, The Early Show, The Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting, and the 51st Annual Grammy® Awards.

Born in Cooperstown, New York, she was raised in Ossining and obtained her undergraduate degrees summa cum laude in music and literature. Ms. Kresek has studied violin with Daniel Phillips, Laurie Smukler, Lucie Robert, Elmar Oliviera, Felix Galimir and Donald Weilerstein, and holds a masters degree from The Mannes College of Music and a masters degree in music education from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Ms. Kresek serves on the teaching artist faculty of the New York Philharmonic. Since joining the faculty in 2006, she has sustained ongoing residencies in the New York City Public Schools, written and performed interactive concerts, and represented the faculty abroad in tours to Japan and the United Arab Emirates. She is also a teaching artist for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Lincoln Center Institute for Arts in Education, where she has designed aesthetic education curricula for students ranging from the pre-school to post-graduate level.

A lifelong fan of folk, bluegrass, blues, string band and other genres of American roots music, Maggi Landau is a resourceful and creative music curator and concert producer. Her role has evolved from developing the annual Caramoor American Roots Music Festival – an all day, all ages, multi-location music gathering – to developing and overseeing roots music performances in all of Caramoor’s beautiful spaces throughout the year.

Over the course of a career which includes leadership roles in the not-for-profit, government and for-profit sectors, Ms. Landau developed a unique set of organizational, marketing, communications and planning skills. These skills, coupled with her immersion in the music of both established and emerging artists on the roots and Americana scenes, provide a unique framework for successfully crafting distinctive programming tailored to specific situations and the needs of different organizations.

Ms. Landau has served as a consultant to several cultural institutions, including the New York Botanical Garden, the Emelin Theater and various regional presenting organizations. As the Executive Vice President of the Madison Square Park Conservancy in NYC, she helped the Conservancy develop, program and produce their signature Mad. Sq. Music concert series. In 2006 she launched a new acoustic folk, blues and Americana series for the Conservancy, known at the Studio Series, which showcases well known and unknown talent from around the country – giving artists who do not regularly appear in NYC a professional, high profile concert opportunity. The Studio Series was successful in attracting grant funding and continues as a main stay of the Conservancy’s programs.

Ms. Landau serves as a mentor to young people looking to work in the music programming business and collaborates with a network of presenters in the New York area looking to strengthen opportunities for musicians. She is also a founding member and the former President of public radio station WFUV’s Community Advisory Board.

When not at work, you can find her enjoying the music at various music festivals and conferences including the International Folk Alliance, South by Southwest, Newport Folk Festival, Clearwater Festival, Grey Fox Festival, NERFA, Falcon Ridge Folk Festival and APAP, as well as house concerts and performance venues throughout the NY regional area.

Caramoor is delighted to announce an inspiring new collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center, led by Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis. Jazz at Lincoln Center programming will provide audiences the chance to hear world-class jazz from one of the nation’s foremost cultural institutions in Caramoor’s idyllic setting year-round… Read more