Board of Directors and Staff

Dan Bruce is a recent transplant to Ohio after spending a decade as an important member of Chicago’s jazz community. He is active throughout the Midwest and nationally as a performer, recording artist, composer and educator. He has performed on more than twenty albums as a sideman, and is releasing his second album as a leader this summer. As a performer and recording artist, Bruce has had the opportunity to work with a number of eminent musicians including Seamus Blake, Ali Jackson, Dan Wall, Lynn Seaton, and The Cleveland Jazz Orchestra.

Coming Soon!

Bill March is a singer/songwriter from Cleveland, Ohio whose original songs have received airplay on radio stations/streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music. He has performed solo and with a countless number of bands, in a career spanning over three decades. Bill has played with Jonah Koslen and the Heroes, Wally Bryson of the Raspberries and is a founding member of Amherst Records recording artists, Beau Coup.

Richard King joined The Cleveland Orchestra in 1988 at age twenty as associate principal horn. He served as principal horn, 1997-2015, and now sits as a section member. Mr. King has been featured many times as soloist with the Orchestra, including works by Britten, Haydn, and Mozart. He has also appeared as soloist with the Richmond Symphony, Tokyo Symphony, and New Zealand’s Auckland Philharmonia.

A native of Long Island, New York, Richard King began playing the horn at the age of nine and spent six years as a student of Arthur Green. He then attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where his primary horn teacher was former Cleveland Orchestra principal Myron Bloom.

An active chamber musician and recitalist, Mr. King has performed as a member of the Center City Brass Quintet since 1985; their five recordings on the Chandos label have been met with wide critical acclaim. His albums of Chamber Music for Horn and Schubert Lieder transcribed for horn and piano have been released by Albany Records. In July and August of 2014, he was a first-time participant at the Marlboro Music Festival.

Julie King has performed with artists including The Who, Rod Stewart, Paul Shaffer, The Three Tenors, Clay Aiken, Sarah Brightman, Dennis DeYoung, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, Roberta Flack, Don Henley and Mannheim Steamroller. In addition, she can be heard on the Albany Record label as well as the soundtrack for the movie, “Across the Universe,” and seen on the HBO special “The 2012 Rock Hall Inductions.” Julie is a member of the Akron Symphony, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony (and serves as Personnel Manager), the Blossom Festival Orchestra, the Cleveland Pops and the Cleveland Opera Orchestra. She holds degrees in cello performance from Indiana University and Louisiana State University. She is an active freelancer in the Northeast Ohio area, and spent thirteen winters as the Assistant Principal Cellist of the Sarasota Opera Orchestra as well as seven summers participating in The Spoleto Festival. She is the cellist with The Athena Quartet, and she has also performed as baroque cellist with the Cleveland Camerata and the Case Western Reserve Baroque Orchestra. She has been on the faculty of The Cleveland Music School Settlement since 1993.

Cited by the New York Times as “a gifted young trombonist,” Shachar Israel joined The Cleveland Orchestra in 2009 as assistant principal trombone. Born in Nahariya, Israel, he received his bachelor of music degree from Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Nitzan Haroz, principal trombone of the Philadelphia Orchestra. His primary teachers have included Joseph Alessi, Mark Lawrence, Mitchell Ross, Micha Davis and Joseph Nashkes.

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Prior to joining The Cleveland Orchestra, Shachar Israel served as principal trombone of the Hartford Symphony in Connecticut and the Haddonfield Symphony in New Jersey. He has also performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He has played as a member of the Verbier Festival Orchestra and the Spoleto Festival Orchestra, and attended two summers at the Music Academy of the West.

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As a soloist and chamber musician, Shachar Israel's performances have included Berio's Sequenza V for solo trombone at New York's Lincoln Center as part of the New York Philharmonic's "Day of Berio." He has also performed with Canadian Brass and recorded four albums with that group. He was the winner of the Lewis Van Haney Philharmonic Prize Competition at the 2008 International Trombone Festival, and has been a soloist with the Jupiter Symphony Players in New York City, the Cleveland Winds, and Cleveland State University's Wind Ensemble. Mr. Israel is a founding member of the Great Lakes Trombone Ensemble, which performed at the 2014 International Trombone Festival held at the Eastman School in Rochester.​

Melissa Vandergriff is a vocalist, and co-founded the Cleveland Chamber Choir in 2015, of which she is board President. She is currently Director of Continuous Improvement at Cleveland Clinic Main Campus, previously serving for six years as Director of Operations and Continuous Improvement at Cleveland Clinic Hillcrest Hospital. Before joining the Cleveland Clinic, Melissa spent 10 years in process improvement and project management in the IT and healthcare industries. She received her MBA from Case Western Reserve University, holds a Master of Arts in sociology from Lancaster University, and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP). 

Amber joined the Local 4 Music Fund in 2019 as a grant writer. As the Music Fund's self-produced programming grew, so has her role in the nonprofit. As an administrator, Amber has produced and directed chamber and new music productions and community and education outreach programs in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Minnesota and Wisconsin. She has also sat as a member on a number of PA and OH nonprofit arts organization boards. Amber was a founding member of Eclectic Laboratory Chamber Orchestra and the founding member and director of Black Orchid String Trio. She is among the founders and acts on the formation panel of Collaborative Music Cleveland, a new cooperative coalition of small and mid-size Cleveland-based music nonprofits. Amber also serves on the board of directors for the Cleveland Chamber Symphony. She is intimately familiar with the formation, operations, and growth of ‘grassroots’ arts nonprofits.  

An avid chamber musician, advocate of modern music, music education, and community involvement in classical music, Amber has performed across the United States.   Amber's performance interest lies primarily in chamber music; working with composers to premiere their work, and getting the community involved in classical and new music. She has had the opportunity to work with composers including; Hannah Lash, Steve Reich, Burr Van Nostrand, Mat Rosenblum, Roger Zahab, Nancy Galbraith, Jeffrey Mumford, Alan Tormey, Eric Moe, Marina Lopez, David Gerard Matthews, and Chris Massa. In addition to her small ensemble endeavors, Amber freelances with Music On The Edge, the Canton Symphony, the Akron Symphony, OvreArts, Resonance Works, Pittsburgh Opera Theatre, Erie Philharmonic, Opera Western Reserve, and the Youngstown Symphony, as a pit musician at Playhouse Square, and in numerous other ensembles.