Gene Murrow

President, Cofounder

Gene is Chairman of the Board of Gotham Early Music Scene (GEMS), a non-profit organization he founded in 2007 to support and promote early music in New York. Since its founding, GEMS has provided a rich variety of administrative, financial, logistical, and marketing services to over two-hundred ensembles and individual artists; published the bi-weekly e-newsletter Notes on the Scene; presented 40 free, weekly Midtown Concerts “live” as well as streamed on YouTube each season; and produced numerous special events showcasing the early music talent in our City including two tours of The Play of Daniel.

 

Gene began his musical life in junior high school as an oboist studying at The Juilliard School with Lois Wann. He later toured playing oboe and English horn with both the Paul Winter Consort and the New York Baroque Ensemble, and also contributed to recordings produced by Judy Collins and the vocal trio Peter, Paul, and Mary.

 

In 2002, after selling the computer company he had started 22 years earlier, Gene was appointed General Manager of the Early Music Foundation, the umbrella organization for Frederick Renz’s Early Music/New York ensemble. In that position, he conceived and managed the first New York Early Music Celebration in 2004 that featured 60 concerts in 10 days, and garnered several reviews in The New York Times among other media outlets. The success of that event prompted the creation of GEMS and its continuing efforts to strengthen and promote the early music scene in New York.

 

Outside his devotion to early music Gene has been a dancer, accompanying musician, and teacher of English country dance (as seen in those Jane Austen movies!), and is in demand internationally as a leader at English dance workshops, classes, and balls. Beyond his worlds of music and dance he co-authored with Serge Lang a mathematics textbook, “Geometry”, for advanced students, which sells steadily in Europe and America. A sports car enthusiast, he currently maintains two vintage Jaguar convertibles “in the style to which they have been accustomed”. He lives with his partner, the art historian Anne W. Lowenthal, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.