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“I love change,” said Dan Gurvich, Neighborhood Music School’s new chief. “I embrace change as a position.”
The 40-year-old Gurvich is in the right place to do that: This month he started his new position as executive director following the retirement of Larry Zukof from the lead post at NMS after 18 years.
Gurvich assumes the leadership of a school that has grown tremendously. Founded in 1911, NMS is now one of the 10 largest community arts schools in the country, with over 3,000 students and 150 faculty members. So as the Zukof era ends and a new one begins, the school has been taking stock, figuring out how to continue to thrive while remaining true to its mission — encompassed in the name of the school itself — of reflecting the community around it.
Looking at Gurvich’s background, it’s easy to see why he got the post. Gurvich first trained as a baritone and acquired a masters in music from Boston University. He sang with several opera companies, including Boston Lyric Opera and the National Opera Company, and taught voice at New York University. At the same time, he got an MBA from Cornell and moved into the private sector.
“I married a singer,” Gurvich explained, “and two careers in the arts is a challenge. I know how great a life in music can be and how difficult it is to sustain.” But he also found that business administration actually could be “a wonderful way to make a contribution to the world.”
His first foray into business was straight out of Cornell’s MBA program — becoming the chief financial officer of a Cornell-affiliated veterinary center in Stamford. Most recently, he worked at Person-to-Person, a social services agency in Norwalk, as its chief operating officer.
Being NMS’s executive director, Gurvich said, was a “chance to be in music again,” though he was also drawn to the school’s history. “There are people here who have been teaching for as long as I’ve been alive. There’s a great legacy to build on — and a lot further we can go.”
As Gurvich talked about his plans for settling into his new job, however, another name kept coming up — that of 42-year-old Director of Programs Noah Bloom.
Gurvich and Bloom have an easy camaraderie together; they seem more like old friends than new colleagues. Bloom is a New Haven native with a background similar to Gurvich’s. Trained at Manhattan School of Music, Rutgers, the New School, and the Aaron Copeland School of Music at Queens College, he also worked in arts administration, at Church Street School for Music and Art in New York City. Like Gurvich, he jumped at the chance to work at NMS.
“It’s not just a chance to connect to a community that has needs,” Bloom said. “It’s also my community. There’s only one place in the world where that’s true.”
As Gurvich and Bloom have talked about where they see the school going and how they can help get it there, they have settled on two basic and complementary directions: more community engagement and more program development, or what Bloom called the “air game” and the “ground game.” Gurvich, as the school’s executive director, is on the air game; Bloom is on the ground game.
In front of this reporter, Gurvich and Bloom started brainstorming gamely for what that might mean more specifically, bouncing ideas off each other while sprinkling the conversation with the banter that makes for a healthy working relationship.
“Obviously rapport is important,” Bloom said.