Usdan's Dale Lewis to Leave After Summer 2015 To Assume New Post

Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, the nationally acclaimed summer arts day camp, announces that Dale Lewis, Usdan’s Executive Director since 1984, will step down at the end of the 2015 summer season. In the fall, he will become head of the new Arts Reach Fund of Long Island Community Foundation. The Fund will focus on critical issues in the arts and arts education. Usdan’s incoming Executive Director will be named this spring. With a background as a performer, arts educator and administrator, Dale Lewis has been responsible for Usdan Center’s educational and artistic programs, and for its community and financial footprints. During his years as Executive Director Usdan’s curriculum has grown from 30 programs of study to 67, now serving more than 1,600 metropolitan area children each summer’s day. Lewis’s leadership is based on his belief that all children deserve access to great teaching and on his view that study in the arts enriches the spirit and leads to the arts as a companion for life. Although Usdan’s mission is to introduce all children to the arts based solely on an expression of interest, the Center’s professional faculty has inspired many to go on to professional careers. Among the students during Lewis’ tenure were Natalie Portman, Mariah Carey, jazz star Jane Monheit, Taylor Dane, Jackie Hoffman, Seth Rudetsky, Olivia Thirlby and members of major music and dance ensembles.

Lewis has been an innovator in educational programming in many arts disciplines. In the Music Department he introduced an extensive program in Jazz Studies, Chamber Music, and Classical Guitar. In the visual arts, the Center pioneered programming for children in Video Arts, Digital Imaging, Animation, Cartooning, and Fashion Design, in addition to strengthening Usdan’s core programs in Painting, Ceramics, Sculpture, and Jewelry. The Theater Department has grown in size and scope with a Repertory Musical Theater program and a Drama program. Creative Writing was added as a major program and Dance has expanded from its Usdan origins in Ballet and Modern to additional programs in Jazz, Tap and Lyrical dance. Usdan has developed a unique Nature & Ecology Department, incorporating arts activities into nature exploration and adding programming in sustainability, including major and elective classes in Organic Gardening and Simple Food. Lewis launched the Center’s Chess Department, one that has an expansive program of instruction and tournament programming. He also conceived and shepherded critical investments in Usdan’s future with the successful completion of capital campaigns to add new building to the Center’s 200-acre campus. These include the Melvin and Anita Block Media Arts building (1986), Usdan’s campus center, the state of the art 1,000-seat McKinley Amphitheater for Music and Dance (1999), the Jerrold Ross Discovery Center (2006) a complex of teaching studios designed for innovation in early childhood arts education, and the Hexter Chess Center (2006) a year-round building also used for conferences and recitals.

Speaking of his years at Usdan, Dale Lewis said: “I have had a unique opportunity to shape the culture of this great institution. While I am proud of the new programs, buildings and educational initiatives born at Usdan, it is the accomplishments of our students that are most satisfying. Supporting their transformative experiences here are extraordinary leaders and donors, faculty and staff, and my team of superb administrators. Working together they will provide the vision and innovation to carry Usdan into an ever-greater future.”

Another theme of Dale Lewis’s leadership has been a robust program of performances by great artists of the world, He established Usdan’s Festival Concerts, a series that provides students with a unique exposure to the breadth of professional artistic life with daily performances by such world-famous artists as Canadian Brass, Emanuel Ax, the New York City Ballet, James Galway, The King’s Singers, Tokyo String Quartet, Earl Wild, Jimmy Heath, the Limon Dance Company, Dr. Billy Taylor, Dar Williams, Broadway stars and many others. In addition, in 1992 and 2002, Mr. Lewis produced sold-out Carnegie Hall galas celebrating Usdan’s 25th and 35th anniversaries.

Dale Lewis began his career as a cellist, with a Carnegie Recital Hall debut at the age of twelve as a winner of New York’s Violin Teachers Guild competition, followed by concerto appearances with professional and community orchestras in the 1960’s. He is a graduate of the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music where he studied cello and conducting. From 1969 to 1976 Lewis was the cellist of the Alberg Trio. He joined Usdan’s staff in 1979 as the Center’s Assistant Director, recommended by Dr. Jerrold Ross, his mentor during doctoral studies at New York University and a Usdan founder. After working under Founding Director Andrew McKinley, Lewis assumed the top leadership position when McKinley retired in 1983. Dale Lewis’ achievements have reached into other communities as well. In 1974 he founded The Center for Chamber Music in Greenwich, Connecticut, an arts education program for children and adults. He subsequently served on the music faculties of Rye Country Day School, Westlake High School and College of New Rochelle. Lewis was appointed Music Director and Conductor of the Westchester Junior Orchestra in 1976. During his eighteen-year tenure with the youth orchestra he conducted performances at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and at Alice Tully Hall. He has won awards for his service to arts education from the Kennedy Center National Education Committee (1978) and from the Art Supervisors Association (2010). // // //