The ETHEL +Factor Award honors outstanding individuals who excel in collaborating, connecting, and sharing artistic and life experience, and whose singular vision recognizes and catalyzes creativity in others. The award celebrates people who add value, significance, and meaning to the world by the very way they define and live their lives.
ETHEL and ETHEL’s Foundation for the Arts is honored to list the +Factor Award recipients to date.
LIST OF HONOREES 2014-2023
LIMOR TOMER (2014)
Born in Israel, Ms. Tomer moved to the United States at age 13. She earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree at Juilliard School and studied for her doctorate in aesthetics at New York University. For 10 years she was a professional classical pianist in solo and orchestral performances throughout the United States and Europe.
Tomer transitioned from performance to arts management, where she worked closely with Harvey Lichtenstein at BAM on projects ranging from BAM Rose Cinemas to launching and programming the BAMCafe. Following her tenure at BAM, she became Executive Producer for Music at WNYC radio, where she produced such award-winning programs as “24:33,” a John Cage celebration; “A Beautiful Symphony of Brotherhood,” about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; and launched the Peabody-award winning web-based new music station Q2 (recently renamed New Sounds). Tomer served as Adjunct Curator for Performance at the Whitney Museum from 2005-11, where she created the performing arts department and curated performance shows including “Christian Marclay: Festival, a collaboration with David Kiehl,” “Steve Reich@ the Whitney” and “Meredith Monk Music @ the Whitney.”
She joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art as General Manager of Concerts and Lectures in July 2011, where she launched MetLiveArts, the world’s largest museum-based performance series, which features >90 classical and contemporary performances ranging from dance, theater, music, sound installations, performance art and hybrids from around the world, many of which are commissions, site specific or premieres.
Tomer was invited to serve as Performance Curator for the inaugural 2016 and 2017 June Events at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (Athens, Greece) where she presented dance and music performances in multiple venues around the SNFCC campus. She serves as a member of the National Curatorial Council of The Hermitage Artist Retreat in Sarasota, FL.
JOHN SCHAEFER (2015)
John Schaefer is the host and producer of WNYC’s long-running new music show New Sounds (“The #1 radio show for the Global Village” – Billboard), founded in 1982, and its innovative Soundcheck podcast, which has featured live performances and interviews with a variety of guests since 2002. He created the New Sounds Live concert series in1986, which features new works, commissioned pieces, and a special series devoted to live music for silent films. Done largely at Brookfield Place and Merkin Concert Hall in NY, the series continues to this day.
Schaefer has written extensively about music, including the book New Sounds: A Listener’s Guide to New Music (Harper & Row, NY, 1987; Virgin Books, London, 1990); the Cambridge Companion to Singing: World Music (Cambridge University Press, U.K., 2000); and the TV program Bravo Profile: Bobby McFerrin (Bravo Television, 2003). He has also written about horse racing (Bloodlines: A Horse Racing Anthology, Vintage, NY 2006), hosted panels for the World Science Festival, and has been a regular panelist on the BBC’s soccer-based program Sports World.
JOSEPH V. MELILLO (2016)
Joseph V. Melillo, BAM’s executive producer since 1999, was responsible for BAM’s artistic direction, overseeing programming in all its performance spaces: the Howard Gilman Opera House, Harvey Theater, BAM Fisher and Rose Cinemas. He previously served as BAM’s producing director and founding director of the Next Wave Festival, which debuted in 1983. In June 2019, Joe concludes his 35 year tenure at BAM. Melillo has fostered the work of emerging and established artists, and forged numerous international partnerships. Awards include the Chevalier and Officier de L’ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), OBE (Great Britain), Knight of the Royal Order of the Polar Star (Sweden), and Knight of the National Order of Québec (Canada). Melillo is a lecturer at colleges and universities nationally and internationally. In March 2019, Joseph was appointed International Artistic Advisor for Columbia Artists.
RACHEL CHANOFF (2017)
Rachel Chanoff has been working in performing arts and film for 35 years and is the founder and director of THE OFFICE performing arts + film, her New York City-based programming, consulting, and production company. She is the Curator of Performing Arts and Film for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), Director of Programming of the CenterSeries at the ’62 Center for Theater and Dance at Williams College, Consultant to the Feature Film and Theater Programs for the Sundance Institute and to the RAWI screenwriters lab in Jordan, Curator of The New York Jewish Film Festival and The Margaret Mead Film Festival, and the Artistic Director of the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, New York’s longest running free outdoor performing arts festival. Rachel is proud to serve on the board of the 52nd Street Project and Working Films. She is also a long time participant in the Theater Development Fund’s Open Doors program, which introduces underserved high school students to the theater.
CECE WASSERMAN (2017)
Cece (Cecille) Wasserman is President of The Cheswatyr Foundation,which supports contemporary music, commissions and community engagement projects.
The Cheswatyr/ETHEL friendship began in 2009 with the premiere of RADIO bY Oswaldo Golijov at the opening of WNYC’s Green Space, a Cheswatyr commission and ETHEL performance. More recently, Cheswatyr supported BLUE DRESS, a concert of women composers at National Sawdust.
Over the years Cheswatyr’s funds have supported many diverse projects locally, nationally and internationally, including an opera and music education projects in Havana, Cuba; Lunalab, a mentoring program for young women composers and Rhythm on Rikers, a drumming program for prisoners.
Among the institutions where Cece has worked are New York Public Library, American Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall.
Present and past associations include Composers Now, Miller Theatre at Columbia University Advisory Board; New Music Connect Steering Committee; Firebirds at the Metropolitan Museum, Concert Artist Guild and Brooklyn Philharmonic.
Born and educated in Boston, MA, she has three daughters, Emily, Stefanie and Wendy Wasserman and 1 granddaughter, Josie Schiffer. Cece is also a published poet.
MICHAEL GORDON (2018)
Over the past 30 years, Michael Gordon has produced a strikingly diverse body of work, ranging from large-scale pieces for high-energy ensembles and major orchestral commissions to works conceived specifically for the recording studio and kaleidoscopic works for groups of identical instruments.
This season, in addition to a new concert-length work, Road Trip for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, composed with David Lang and Julia Wolfe for Bang on a Can’s 30th Anniversary, Gordon sees premieres of his music in the US and abroad: a new arrangement of his opera Acquanetta, presented by the Prototype Festival in New York City; a new orchestral work for the Miami City Ballet, choreographed by Brian Brooks; and the German premiere of his piano concerto, The Unchanging Sea, performed by the MDR Symphony in Berlin with pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama.
Gordon’s recent works have included Big Space, commissioned and presented by the BBC Proms; a concert-length work for choir, Anonymous Man, commissioned and premiered by The Crossing, and three new works for orchestra — Natural History, written for the 100th Anniversary of the United States’ National Parks and premiered at Crater Lake in Oregon; Observations on Air, a concerto for bassoon for soloist Peter Whelan, commissioned by the British ensemble The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; and The Unchanging Sea, a piano concerto for Tomoko Mukaiyama with a new film by Bill Morrison.
DAVID LANG (2018)
David Lang is one of the most highly esteemed and performed American composers writing today. His works have been performed around the world in most of the great concert halls. Lang’s simple song #3, written as part of his score for Paolo Sorrentino’s acclaimed film Youth, received many honors in 2016, including Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Critics Choice nominations, among others.
Lang’s the little match girl passion won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Commissioned by Carnegie Hall and based on a fable by Hans Christian Andersen and Lang’s own rewriting of the libretto to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, the recording of the piece was awarded a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance. Lang has also been the recipient of the Rome Prize, Le Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and Musical America’s 2013 Composer of the Year.
Recent premieres include his opera the loser, which opened the 2016 Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and for which Lang served as composer, librettist and stage director, the public domain for 1000 singers at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, his chamber opera anatomy theater at Los Angeles Opera and at the Prototype Festival in New York, and the concerto man made for the ensemble So Percussion and a consortium of orchestras, including the BBC Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In addition to his work as a composer, Lang is Artist in Residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and is a Professor of Composition at the Yale School of Music.
JULIA WOLFE (2018)
Julia Wolfe’s music is distinguished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience. She draws inspiration from folk, classical, and rock genres, bringing a modern sensibility to each while simultaneously tearing down the walls between them.
Her Pulitzer prize-winning work, Anthracite Fields, a concert-length oratorio for chorus and instruments, draws on oral histories, interviews, speeches, and more to honor the people who persevered and endured in the Pennsylvania Anthracite coal region. Mark Swed of the LA Times wrote Anthracite Fields “captures not only the sadness of hard lives lost…but also of the sweetness and passion of a way of daily life now also lost. The music compels without overstatement. This is a major, profound work.”
Recent projects include her evening-length Steel Hammer for the Bang on a Can All-Stars and singers which toured in an expanded theatrical form with director Anne Bogart and her SITI Company. Wolfe’s body concerto riSE and fLY — commissioned by the BBC and performed recently by the Cincinnati Symphony — features rapid-fire body slaps and street percussion. In 2019, the New York Philharmonic premieres her large-scale work for orchestra and women’s chorus, Fire in my mouth, continuing her interest in American labor history with the subject of women in New York’s garment industry at the turn of the century.
Wolfe has written a major body of work for strings, from quartets to full orchestra. Her quartets, as described by The New Yorker, “combine the violent forward drive of rock music with an aura of minimalist serenity [using] the four instruments as a big guitar, whipping psychedelic states of mind into frenzied and ecstatic climaxes.” Wolfe’s Cruel Sister for string orchestra, inspired by a traditional English ballad, was commissioned by the Munich Chamber Orchestra and received its U.S. premiere at the Spoleto Festival. Fuelfor string orchestra is a collaboration with filmmaker Bill Morrison. She has collaborated with theater artist Anna Deveare Smith, choreographer Susan Marshall, designers Jeff Sugg and Jim Findlay, and director François Girard, among others. Her music has been heard at presitigious venues throughout the world and has been recorded on Cantaloupe Music, Teldec, Point/Universal, Sony Classical, and Argo/Decca.
Wolfe was a 2016 MacArthur Fellow and was a recipient of the 2015 Herb Alpert Award in Music. She is also a professor of music composition at the NYU Steinhardt School.
ELMORE DeMOTT (2019)
Passionate about encouraging people to connect with art and nature, Elmore DeMott is a photographer with award-winning work in private and corporate art collections, galleries and museums. Flowers and mighty pine forests – her signature subjects – are featured in publications, presentations and arts collaborations. Her Camera Journey takes Elmore throughout her home state of Alabama and beyond.
An avid arts supporter who describes the arts as being fundamental to all lives, Elmore was the founding
president of ClefWorks, an Alabama arts organization, created to promote the education and enjoyment of chamber music through innovative programming. Elmore is a founding member of the internationally acclaimed JACK Quartet and the newly formed New York-based Collaborate Arts Ensemble.
Passion for the wonders of Mother Nature inspired Elmore to begin her “Flowers for Mom” series, comprised of daily flower photos, since August 2016, to honor her mother’s Alzheimer’s journey. Maria
Shriver recognized her as an Architect of Change for this series. Her photography continues to serve as a backdrop for unique collaborative performances such as one with the San Francisco based Del Sol String Quartet. This summer at the DAP Dance Festival in Italy, her work will premiere as part of a ballet by Norwegian dancer and choreographer, Thomas Johansen. Elmore is the artist-in-residence for this summer’s Photography Festival in Pierrevert, France and is excited about other upcoming speaking engagements and exhibits to share her work.
In addition to compelling images, Elmore considers her finest creations to be her two daughters and the life she has built with her husband, Miles DeMott, a writer with whom she collaborates from time to time.
GINA GIBNEY (2019)
Gina Gibney is a choreographer, director, and entrepreneur. She founded Gibney Dance in 1991 as a performing and social action dance company, and today the organization has rapidly emerged as a cultural leader that operates through three fields of action: Company, Community and Center. Her choreographic work is featured in the repertory of the organization’s resident dance ensemble, Gibney Dance Company, now alongside work by leading contemporary colleagues.
Gibney is a recent recipient of Dance/USA’s Ernie Award, the Case Western Reserve Distinguished Alumni Award, BAX Arts & Artists in Progress Award, and Out100’s list of influential members of the LGBT community. Gibney is a frequent panelist and speaker on topics of dance, entrepreneurship, and arts-community partnerships, and she serves on several cultural boards and advisory groups. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Fine Arts from Case Western Reserve University where she graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.
ELIZABETH STREB (2023)
MacArthur “Genius” Award-winner, Elizabeth Streb has dived through glass, allowed a ton of dirt to fall on her head, walked down (the outside of) London’s City Hall, and set herself on fire, among other feats of extreme action. Her popular book, STREB: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero (Feminist Press), was made into a hit documentary, Born to Fly directed by Catherine Gund (Aubin Pictures), which premiered at SXSW and received an extended run at The Film Forum in New York City in 2014. Streb founded the STREB Extreme Action Company in 1979. In 2003, she established SLAM, the STREB Lab for Action Mechanics, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. SLAM’s garage doors are always open: anyone and everyone can come in, watch rehearsals, take classes, and learn to fly.
Elizabeth Streb was invited to present a TED Talk (‘My Quest To Defy Gravity and Fly’) at TED 2018: THE AGE OF AMAZEMENT as a mainstage speaker. She has been a featured speaker presenting her keynote lectures at such places as the Rubin Museum of Art (in conversation with Dr. John W. Krakauer), TEDxMET, the Institute for Technology and Education (ISTE), POPTECH, the Institute of Contemporary Art (in conversation with physicist, Brian Greene), The Brooklyn Museum of Art (in conversation with author A.M. Homes), the National Performing Arts Convention, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP), the Penny Stamps Speaker Series at the University of Michigan, Chorus America, the University of Utah, and as a Caroline Werner Gannett Project speaker in Rochester NY, and gave the 2019 Commencement Speech at Otis College for Arts and Design among others. Her essay, “Unreasonable Movement, Unreasonable Thought” is featured in the book Are the Arts Essential? published by NYU press in 2022.
Streb was profiled by Alec Wilkinson in an extended essay “Rough and Tumble: Elizabeth Streb’s daredevil dances” for the New Yorker magazine in June 2015, was featured in the Smithsonian Magazine (“The New American Circus”), and in 2019 was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
Streb received a Doris Duke Artist Award in 2013, and a USA Fellowship in 2020. She holds a Master of Arts in Humanities and Social Thought from New York University, a Bachelor of Science in Modern Dance from SUNY Brockport, and honorary doctorates from SUNY Brockport, Rhode Island College and Otis College of Art and Design. Streb has received numerous other awards and fellowships including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987; a Brandeis Creative Arts Award in 1991; two New York Dance and Performance Awards (Bessie Awards), in 1988 and 1999 for her “sustained investigation of movement;” and over 35 years of on-going support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). In 2009, Streb was the Danspace Project Honoree. She served on Mayor Bloomberg’s Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission and was a member on the boards of the Jerome Foundation (2012-2021) and the Camargo Foundation (2013-2017).
Major commissions for choreography include: Lincoln Center Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, MOCA, LA Temporary Contemporary, the Whitney Museum of Art, Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, the Park Avenue Armory, London 2012, the Cultural Olympiad for the Summer Games, CityLab Paris 2018, the opening of Bloomberg’s new headquarters in London, Musée D’Orsay, the re-opening of the Théâtre du Châtelet, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
Born to Fly aired on PBS on May 11, 2014 and is currently available on iTunes. OXD, directed by Craig Lowy, which follows STREB at the 2012 London Olympics and the two years prior, premiered at the IFC Center in New York City on February 2, 2016. Streb and her company have also been featured in PopAction by Michael Blackwood; on PBS’s In The Life and Great Performances; CBS’s The Late Show with David Letterman, Sunday Morning and This Morning; BBC World News; CNN’s Weekend Today and Larry King Live, Business Insider; MTV; and on the National Public Radio shows Studio 360 and Science Friday, among others.
JAMES ROE (2023)
James Roe is the third President and Executive Director of Orchestra of St. Luke’s,
taking the role in November 2015. Previously, he was President and CEO of the New
Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and before that he was Artistic and Executive Director of
The Helicon Foundation and a professional oboist in New York City. His leadership is
animated by his belief that music-making addresses the human need for beauty,
meaning, and connection. His work prioritizes audience development, alignment of
programming and strategy, strong artistic partnerships, healthy capitalization, and the
civic mission of the performing arts.
Now in its 45th season, Orchestra of St. Luke’s is New York City’s second largest orchestra by budget size and one of the nation’s most innovative ensembles. Regularly referred to as “New York’s hometown band” (NYT) and “Carnegie Hall’s house band” (WQXR), Orchestra of St. Luke’s gives 70-80 concerts a year, in over twenty venues across all five boroughs, and nearly half are presented free of charge. Mr. Roe has led the Orchestra of St. Luke’s through a major expansion of its programs, founding an annual three-week, multi-venue Bach
Festival; the DeGaetano Composition Institute, which fosters the careers of emerging composers and will result in the creation of 60 new orchestral works; and “Music In Color”, a multi-year program that celebrates the life and work of important composers of color. In 19-20, Orchestra of St. Luke’s appointed internationally recognized expert in historical performance style, Bernard Labadie as principal conductor, which has been met by critical praise and box office growth of over 50% for their series presented by Carnegie Hall. An internet series of original musical content will be launched in the 20-21 season.
Ongoing signature programming includes the three-week Paul Taylor American Modern Dance season at Lincoln Center; chamber music series at The Morgan Library and Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and Merkin Hall; Free School Concerts; Youth Orchestra of St. Luke’s serving students in Hell’s Kitchen; a summer residency at The Caramoor Center for Music and The Arts; a Mentorship Program for pre-professional orchestral musicians; and ongoing artistic partnerships with the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, The Streicker Center, MasterVoices, St. Thomas Choir School, The Tilles Center, Naumburg Orchestral Concerts, and Manhattan School of Music.
In 2011, Orchestra of St. Luke’s opened the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, a 20,000 square-foot, state- of-the-art rehearsal and recording venue in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. The DiMenna Center serves as the home for Orchestra of St. Luke’s and an unparalleled resource for the entire musical community. Over 500 ensembles, comprising nearly 30,000 musicians, have created their art at The DiMenna Center and then brought it to audiences around the city and beyond. Under Mr. Roe’s leadership, Orchestra
of St. Luke’s raised $21,000,000 in a two-year comprehensive campaign, eliminating all debt, doubling the endowment, and establishing operating reserves and a capital replacement fund for The DiMenna Center.
Mr. Roe’s tenure with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra was characterized by expanded programming, new partnerships, board growth, expansion of corporate sponsorships, and innovative audience engagement programs that received national coverage on NPR’s All Things Considered, and in the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Under his leadership, the NJSO founded The Edward T. Cone Composition Institute with Princeton University, began an annual partnership with New Jersey Ballet, and launched a multi-city Diversity and Inclusion initiative with the state’s largest utility company, PSEG.
As a professional oboe player, Mr. Roe performed as concerto soloist in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Ravinia Festival, and with his hometown orchestra, The Traverse Symphony. He toured nationally and internationally as a chamber musician and with orchestras, opera, and ballet. Mr. Roe performed regularly with both of the orchestras that he eventually would lead as chief executive.
In September 2013, Mr. Roe was profiled in a full-page Sunday Arts & Leisure article in The New York Times about musicians becoming orchestra managers. https://nyti.ms/2lN2SSV
