Marcus Thompson Named Artistic Director Designate for the 
Boston Chamber Music Society

The Boston Chamber Music Society’s Board of Trustees has announced that violist Marcus Thompson has been chosen as the new Artistic Director of the Society to succeed Ronald Thomas at the conclusion of the current 2008-2009 season. Mr. Thompson, as Artistic Director Designate, will immediately begin planning the Society’s 2009-2010 season in consultation with current member musicians and will officially assume his new position on July 1, 2009. In recognition of Ronald Thomas’s invaluable contributions as the Society’s co-founder and artistic director for the past 26 years, the Board will name him Artistic Director Emeritus after the current season. Mr. Thomas will remain a member musician and perform with the ensemble as his schedule allows.

An artist who has achieved rare distinction as both a soloist and a chamber musician, Marcus Thompson has been performing with the Boston Chamber Music Society since its inception in 1982 and has been a member musician since 1984. Currently Mr. Thompson serves as the Robert R. Taylor Professor of Music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is also on the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music. He is a trustee of Project STEP, a string training and education program for minority students in the Boston area, and is on the advisory boards of several local performing arts groups. He has also been on the boards and committees of numerous national organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, and the American Viola Society. 

The decision to select Marcus Thompson as BCMS’s new Artistic Director was made by the Board of the Boston Chamber Music Society after an extensive search that attracted applications from 35 distinguished musicians, including several from Canada and Europe. His unanimous selection reflects the tremendous esteem in which he is held by the BCMS Board, by his fellow musicians and by a devoted audience. 

“The Board determined that Mr. Thompson’s ideas, deeply responsive to his performance experience with BCMS and others, formed a vision for the future that was exciting and compelling. His life-long commitment to young musicians and young audiences and his passionate advocacy for the art of chamber music make him the ideal candidate to lead the Society into its second quarter-century,” said Stephen Friedlaender, President of the Board of Trustees of the Boston Chamber Music Society and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the New England Conservatory.

The Boston Chamber Music Society is one of the few chamber music groups in the country that is primarily a self-presenting performing ensemble. Founded in 1982 by Mr. Thomas and fellow cellist Bruce Coppock, along with a number of their passionately enthusiastic young musicians, BCMS has grown over the last twenty-five years from playing a three-concert series to an extensive season of seventeen performances in recent years, including six pairs of weekend evening concerts (Fridays at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall and Sundays at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre) between October and May, a special Holiday Concert, and a summer series of four Saturday evenings at the Longy School of Music in August. During the 2008-2009 season, however, the Jordan Hall concerts have been suspended due to short-term budgetary constraints. 

Mr. Thompson, who foresees an expanded artistic and educational mission with a greater connection of BCMS to the community, has made it clear that the Society will return to Jordan Hall in the very near future. He also intends to expand BCMS’s regular season activities to include concerts in surrounding communities that do not have their own chamber music series, as well as at educational institutions throughout the New England region. “I hope to bring our musicians and their artistry into various public and private schools throughout the greater Boston area, and to use the BCMS as a platform for presenting the best of the astonishing young musical talent to be found in local community music schools and conservatories,” said Mr. Thompson. He also plans to expand the ensemble’s current roster and announce the appointment of several new member musicians by the end of this year and he wants to work with the BCMS Board of Trustees and its Executive Director to modify the Society’s administrative structure in order to be more responsive to the current and future needs of the organization.