New CEO at MA Grammy-Winning Executive Director Is Coming to the Music Academy

by Steven Libowitz

The Music Academy (MA) didn’t waste any time finding a successor to Scott Reed, who announced last spring that the 2023 Summer Festival would be his last as president and CEO after 12 years at the helm. Less than a week after the final symphony concert at the Granada earlier this month, the Music Academy officially named Shauna Quill to take over the position beginning November 1. Quill has been executive director of the New York Youth Symphony (NYYS) since 2011 and counts among her accomplishments a Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance for the ensemble’s first professional recording – a first by a non-professional orchestra – as well as new programs, extensive community partnerships, and performances on several TV shows.

Quill trained as a flutist but was forced to give up a career as a performer due to a series of repetitive stress injuries. Her administrative career includes serving as executive director of the University of Chicago Presents, and senior leadership positions at the Aspen Music Festival and School (where NancyBell Coe, Reed’s predecessor at MA, was her mentor) and La Jolla Music Society. Only a few months out of college, she spent three years working for Herbert Breslin, the famed publicist and manager of Luciano Pavarotti (as well as Marilyn Horne, among others).

Even her one apparent left turn, as a paralegal, had a musical connection: Her dad was a union lawyer and a distant cousin of Mike Quill, the famous founder of the Transportation Workers Union of America.

“I thought I’d be a union lawyer too and fight for musicians,” she explained. “But it just wasn’t for me.”

(Being related to Mike Quill was still an asset as a kid, though, she joked: “When a teacher would find out, it would get me out of detention.”)

Below are edited excerpts from an hour-long conversation with Shauna Quill last weekend.

Q. It’s a good time for you to move on from New York with the youth orchestra just having won a Grammy. I’m guessing that was incredibly gratifying.

A. Absolutely. There was so much about that project that I loved. We recorded during the pandemic, socially distanced with three groups that had to be layered together later. The music was a message for tomorrow for these kids to learn, featuring three female black composers and a NYYS alumni, all strong women, right after all the George Floyd protests. We wanted to teach these messages even though we were so scared of Covid.

But I was shocked we won the Grammy. I never thought it was possible because we were up against the Berlin Philharmonic, the L.A. Phil, and Wild Up. So I was just going to enjoy it, probably my only time I’d get to go to the Grammys. Superficial

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