We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brian Adamczyk. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brian below.

Hi Brian, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

While it’s quite difficult to choose, I’d say that my premiere of entitled “Altered States” was one of the most meaningful creative projects of my career. This project’s inception began as a result of my ongoing work in fostering cultural and educational exchanges between New York City and European countries. During a trip to Paris in 2023, I went to hear a concert in Paris that two musicians’ I was currently working with at the time were performing at the prestigious jazz club, Le Duc des Lombards. It was that evening that I met Jowee Omicil, a saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist who was part of the trio. In chatting after the show, we had immediate synergy, shared visions, and a musical alignment that motivated me to begin considering what a future collaboration together might look like. In addition to Jowee, I identified three other musicians, two from Paris and one from Boston, which I believed would make an incredibly interesting combination of artists to perform as a new experimental free jazz project. After many meetings and conceptual discussions, all of the musicians agreed they were also inspired by the concept of the project. I signed on as the producer and went on to successfully obtain grant funding to premiere the project in both Paris, as well as New York City the following year. The group turned out to be an amazing success, blending and bending genres, with combinations of acoustic and electronic music with free form, spontaneous arrangements. The first show was premiered at the famous Paris venue New Morning to a sold-out crowd. Seeing all of this come together, from the dynamics between the musicians, to the new music they created as a collective, in such a profoundly historic city such as Paris was truly one of the highlights of my career.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Growing up, I was a classically trained saxophonist and clarinetist as a child. I knew from a very early age that I absolutely wanted to be a professional musician and performer. By the time I entered high school, I became very interested in jazz and eventually went on to be a jazz saxophone performance major at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. I feel fortunate to have had such an impactful private teacher and mentor, who emphasized how to be versatile, make a living in the business, and also pushed me to pursue flute, piccolo, oboe and English horn. From there, I went on to be a full-time woodwind specialist and performer, playing all of the major theaters and venues from Boston all the way down to Washington DC. I also discovered I had a real love and talent for teaching, and felt equally fulfilled as a private instructor, ensemble director, and music theory teacher. After nearly 15 years of performing and teaching, I then began pursuing arts administration positions. However, one important turning point came as a result as a teaching position I held for many years at Temple University. I taught woodwind lessons to a community program subsidized by the University that provided nearly free music lessons to underserved communities in and around Philadelphia. Because these students would have never had the financial ability to afford something like private music lessons, I began to quickly notice how much of a positive impact it was making with so many young folks. Seeing the literal trajectory of their lives shift for the better was deeply meaningful for me, and as a result I became very interested in working for arts nonprofits with a core mission of providing accessibility to underserved communities. By 2018, I was slowly transitioning away from full time performance and education to an administrative role at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. During this time, I was implementing jazz curriculum and programming to Title 1 schools throughout Philadelphia that had since cut or greatly reduced their arts funding. Moreover, I also began coordinating events within the multi-venue campus, worked as an artist liaison, managed all of the jazz program budgets, and worked closely with their world-class Marketing and Development teams throughout. Once the pandemic arrived in March of 2020, I decided to reevaluate everything, and came across the Brooklyn Music School, a historic nonprofit dedicated to providing accessible, wide-ranging programming to all those that wished to receive it. I was brought on shortly after as the Director of Programming and Productions, overseeing all programming onsite and offsite, managing the theater, and also directing operations in the building. Just a little over a year later, I was promoted to Executive Director, charged with overseeing the entire faculty, staff and organization. I have made enormous efforts over the last 5 years in this capacity to reimagine the efficiency of the administrative team, repair scores of building safety and liability issues, and have stabilized the business model and finances to charter the next 100 years of existence. In my efforts to bring world-class, diverse and innovative artists, performances, and student workshop experiences both domestically and internationally, this has prompted some of my current work as a result that I am incredibly proud of. In terms of domestic impact and community, I have formed a sort of arts collective with all of the neighboring, incredible cultural institutions that sit in close proximity to Brooklyn Music School, and beyond. I believe this new wave and mentality of fundraising, collaborating, and supporting one another as a collective as opposed to being siloed is the future of arts nonprofits. One other important effort I’d like to highlight is my ongoing ability, interest and motivation to network, interface with new artists of all disciplines, and connect as many creatives as possible. I believe so many artists are in a moment of despair in that they do not have the time, resources and good fortune to have funding for their projects and also don’t have the time given they need the space to create the art in the first place. It is becoming more and more clear that as I move through my career, I have an increasing appetite to identify new and interesting artists, give them full support, obtain the necessary funds, produce the events, and mainly ensure that their work actually reaches the audience. It gives me great fulfilment to have some small role in all of this, and I can’t wait to continue finding, connecting and supporting as many artists as possible in the future.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In my role as Executive Director at Brooklyn Music School, I have faced many challenges along the way. While I’ve always admired the mission statement and programming of the organization, historically the overall management and sustainability of the business model have always lacked tremendously. In 2024, a perfect storm of historic issues surrounding building repair costs, delays of city funding and reimbursements, and other economic factors nearly forced me to close the doors of the school. However, because I felt it was my responsibility to wear the weight of these issues on my back, hold myself accountable, and do everything in my power to ensure all of the enrolled families could continue to experience the joy of our programming, I decided to take a serious chance and host one final Save Our School fundraiser. By holding townhalls with all of the families, faculty and staff, I chose to be appropriately transparent about the finances, how we got there, and my plan moving forward to stabilize. After being interviewed on numerous media outlets, as well as our own internal messaging and fundraising concert, I successfully brought in roughly 5 times the amount of funds necessary to keep the school open for operations. I also had to make a variety of very hard decisions, involving restructuring the staff, downsizing, and reimaging the accounting and financial approach. Navigating through all of this with hundreds of people within the community that were counting on me remains one of the single most challenging moments of my professional career. I am pleased to say that the organization has been stable ever since, the new accounting approaches that implemented have worked, and the future and potential of the school has never looked brighter.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I think the central driver of my current and upcoming creative goals are shaped largely by all of the serious lack of societal support for artists in the United States right now. I come across so many incredible musicians, dancers, visual artists, etc. that have innovative, exceptional work that never sees the light of day. As a result, and because of my natural desire to help facilitate what I believe to be important artists of this day and age, I have a growing amount of motivation to support all aspects of their efforts more than ever. Additionally, I’m simply a life-long fan of art. I love attending concerts, dance shows, museum exhibits, and as many new and interesting events as I can. I think the arts builds not only a strong sense of community, but an experiential level of trust, love and unity that is desperately needed in this moment in society. I love the idea of doing the mundane venue cold calling, dealing with contracts, logistics, and simply putting in all of the legwork to ensure the artists have their time to create, develop, process, and ultimately focus solely on the artistic side of things throughout. Being behind the scenes and seeing a show actually get produced, with a proper audience in attendance, has become my new over-arching passion project.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.brooklynmusicschool.org/brianadamczyk
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brian__adamczyk/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/brian-adamczyk-470686b

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