Manhattan School of Music Names Instrumental Studies and Orchestral Performance Division in Honor of Carl Kanter Following Generous Gift

Manhattan School of Music
Names Instrumental Studies and Orchestral Performance Division
in Honor of Carl Kanter Following Generous Gift

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, September 14, 2026 – Renowned international music conservatory Manhattan School of Music (MSM) has received a $3.5-million gift from Carl Kanter. In recognition of this generous support, MSM’s largest academic division will be named the Kanter Family Instrumental Studies and Orchestral Performance Division. The gift represents a significant investment in the future of instrumental and orchestral education at MSM and marks an important milestone in the School’s Second Century Campaign to increase the School’s endowment.

“This deeply meaningful gift reflects a strong belief in our students, our faculty, and the transformative power of a Manhattan School of Music education,” says MSM President James Gandre. “We are tremendously grateful to Carl Kanter for helping to secure the future of this essential division.”

MSM’s Kanter Family Instrumental Studies and Orchestral Performance Division is the School’s largest academic division and includes brass, guitar, percussion, strings, woodwinds, piano, conducting, orchestra, chamber music, and the prestigious Graduate Program in Orchestral Performance. The division provides a cohesive framework for instrumental study and performance while fostering interdisciplinary artistic and academic opportunities.

“The Second Century Campaign is fundamentally about investing in MSM’s future,” says MSM Board Chair Kishore Ballal. “Carl Kanter’s visionary gift demonstrates what is possible when members of the MSM Community share a commitment to sustaining artistic excellence and expanding opportunity for generations of musicians.”

Carl Kanter’s commitment to MSM builds upon a longstanding relationship with the School. A lifelong musician, hebegan playing piano at age 11 and received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1953, where he majored in music, and his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1956. Since retirement and after a hiatus of 40 years, he returned to composition, writing primarily solo and chamber works. For several years he studied composition privately with MSM Dean of Academic Core and Head of Composition Reiko Füting. Kanter joined MSM’s International Advisory Board in 2014 and established the Carl Kanter Prize, which is awarded to recipients from among those graduating composition students who, in their final year, compose orchestral works that are performed at one of two annual student orchestral composition concerts.

Kanter spent four decades practicing law, specializing in corporate law, mergers and acquisitions, and public offerings. He began his legal career at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, later serving as senior vice president and co-general counsel of Merck-Medco Managed Care before retiring from the legal profession in 1999.

"Carl is a brilliant student whose compositions reveal both a high level of craft and a deep sense of character and spirit that are further revealed by his generous gift," says Reiko Füting. "I sincerely enjoy my time working with him, and it is an honor to see the Kanter named attached to a division that is so central to MSM's offerings."

“I believe with all my heart that the excellence informing all aspects of a Manhattan School of Music education changes lives and contributes to making the world a better place,” says Carl Kanter. “It is my family’s great honor to see our support acknowledged in the name of the School’s largest division.”

ADVANCING THE SECOND CENTURY CAMPAIGN

The Kanter Family’s gift is part of Manhattan School of Music’s ongoing Second Century Campaign, which was launched to build the School’s endowment and provide greater long-term financial strength and stability. The campaign, which has raised nearly $25 million to date toward the campaign’s $30 million goal, reflects MSM’s commitment to ensuring that talented students can access the exceptional education and performance opportunities the School provides, regardless of their financial circumstances.

Carl Kanter’s $3.5-million commitment joins a growing community of donors whose generosity is helping shape MSM’s second century. Among the campaign’s largest endowed gifts are a $3-million gift from the Cate Ryan Estate and a $2-million gift from Michael (HonDMA ’17) and Noémi Neidorff (BM ’70, MM ’72, HonDMA ’17). Additional major supporters of the campaign include the Gart Family Foundation; Flavio Varani (BM ’68, MM ’70); Joan Taub Ades (HonDMA ’14); Terry Allison, PhD and Sylvain Hétu; and Carla Bossi-Comelli (HonDMA ’20).

ABOUT MANHATTAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC

Founded as a community music school by Janet Daniels Schenck in 1918, today MSM is recognized for its more than 1,000 superbly talented undergraduate and graduate students who come from more than 50 countries and nearly all 50 states; its innovative curricula and world-renowned artist-teacher faculty that includes musicians from the New York Philharmonic, the Met Orchestra, and the top ranks of the jazz and Broadway communities; and a distinguished community of accomplished, award-winning alumni working at the highest levels of the musical, educational, cultural, and professional worlds.

The School is dedicated to the personal, artistic, and intellectual development of aspiring musicians, from its Precollege students through those pursuing doctoral studies. Offering classical, jazz, and musical theatre training, MSM grants a range of undergraduate and graduate degrees. True to MSM’s origins as a music school for children, the Precollege Division is a professionally oriented Saturday music program dedicated to the musical and personal growth of talented young musicians ages 8 to 18. The School also serves some 2,000 New York City schoolchildren through its Arts-in-Education Program, and another 2,000 students through its critically acclaimed Distance Learning Program. 

MSM LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Manhattan School of Music acknowledges that we gather on the traditional land of the Lenape and Wappinger past and present, and honor with gratitude the land itself and the people who have stewarded it throughout the generations. This calls us to commit to continuing to learn how to be better stewards of the land we inhabit as well.