José García-León is the Henry and Lucy Moses Dean of the Yale School of Music. Born in Seville, Spain, Dr. García-León graduated with honors from the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Sevilla and earned degrees from Binghamton University and the Manhattan School of Music. A renowned pianist, he has performed at prestigious venues worldwide, exploring Spanish classical and flamenco music traditions. As an educator and administrator, he developed music programs at institutions including Oakland Community College, University of New Haven, and The Juilliard School. He joined Yale in 2023 with an earnest dedication to the school’s mission of preparing students for service to the profession and to society.

Amnon Bar-Tur is a photographer, curator, and entrepreneur with a lifelong passion for visual storytelling. Founder of the BarTur Photo Award, established in 2011, Amnon has championed photographers worldwide, creating opportunities for emerging and established talents to showcase work addressing social, environmental, and cultural issues. With decades of experience spanning photography, publishing, and investment ventures, he bridges creative and business worlds, advancing impactful real estate projects and fostering international artistic exchange.

Eugene Pinover is a retired attorney, arts patron, and classically trained harpist whose work bridges music, visual art, and public engagement. Formerly head of the real estate department and a member of the management committee at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, he has long combined professional leadership with a deep commitment to the arts. Mr. Pinover serves on the board of the Yale School of Music and founded the Pinover Prize, an initiative encouraging composers to create original works addressing climate change. These newly commissioned compositions are being presented at the North Fork Arts Center alongside an international photography exhibition focused on environmental themes. Mr. Pinover studied harp at the Juilliard School under Marcel Grandjany, and his original compositions have been performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center. He continues to support collaborative projects that connect music, photography, environmental awareness, and education.

Josiah Junqueira Spencer is a Brazilian-American filmmaker who produces, directs, and edits across a wide range of formats, from documentary television series for National Geographic to narrative films that have screened at festivals around the world. His work is defined by a strong command of character, storytelling, and visual composition.

Karl Grossman has specialized in doing investigative reporting on environmental issues for more than 50 years, starting in 1962 when he was the main reporter challenging journalistically the plan of Robert Moses to build a four-lane highway the length of Fire Island and pointing instead to creation of a Fire Island National Seashore, which happened in 1964. 

For now 35 years he has hosted the national TV program Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman syndicated by Free Speech TV and broadcast on 200 cable TV systems in 40 states and the major satellite TV networks, Dish, DirecTV, Sling and Roku. His programs—more than 700 so far—have also included specials and award-winning documentaries.

On Long Island, he has been the chief investigative reporter for East Hampton-based WVVH-TV and his documentaries for it include Renewables Are More Than Ready and Organic Farming: Can It Feed Us? (shot principally in Riverhead).

Grossman is the author of seven books, most on environmental or energy issues.

He has taught the subjects he has focused upon as a journalist, until retiring last year as a full professor of journalism at the State University of New York at Old Westbury. He was on the full-time Old Westbury faculty for 47 years. Every semester, he taught an Investigative Reporting course (among the oldest in the U.S.) and also Environmental Journalism.

Grossman writes regularly on the internet with pieces on CounterPunch, NationofChange, Free Press, OpEd News and Daily Kos, and other websites.

Honors he has received for journalism include the George Polk Award (for his articles in the daily Long Island Press that exposed a massive sand mine along the Long Island Sound in Jameport being dug under the guise of it being a deepwater port). He is also the recipient of the Generoso Pope, James Aronson, Leo Goodman and John Peter Zenger Awards. 

Long Island awards include his being named “Environmentalist of the Year” by the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter and being inducted into the first class of the Long Island Journalism Hall of Fame of the Press Club of Long Island (which he founded and was its first president). He has also received the Long Island Film Festival’s Documentary Award; Environmental Equinox Award from Farmingdale-based Citizens Campaign for the Environment; Journalism Award from the Suffolk County Chapter of Friends of the Earth.

Grossman’s column appears in Long Island weekly newspapers including The Southampton Press, The East Hampton Press, The Shelter Island Reporter, The Sag Harbor Express, Community Journal, and on Long Island news websites including Huntington Now, 27East and RiverheadLOCAL.

His newspaper pieces have also appeared in publications including The New York Times, USA Today, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Science Monitor, Newsday, The Baltimore Sun, Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Progressive, Extra!, The Orlando Sentinel, The Ecologist, Earth Island Journal, E The Environmental Magazine, The Crisis, The Village Voice, Z Magazine, The Sun, Our Right To Know, Common Cause Magazine, In These Times, Environmental Action, Alternate Currents, The Montreal Mirror, The Boston Phoenix, Space News, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Columbia Journalism Review, The Globe and Mail and The Miami Herald.

He has given presentations around the United States and world including in the United Kingdom, Norway, Mexico, Switzerland and Russia where he spoke at the Russian Academy of Sciences on environmental issues. 

Jaebong Rho creates listening experiences that begin after the final sound, translating pressing social and psychological questions into rigorous forms where structural clarity and interpretive space coexist.Rho served as the Composer-in-Residence for the Korean National Symphony Orchestra (2024–25). His music has been featured at the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, the Lucerne Festival Academy Composer Seminar, and the Remus Georgescu International Music Festival, involving collaborations with the IEMA-Ensemble. He is a 2026 Composition Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and School and a participant in the Talea Recording Workshop. He received the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award, First Prize in the Ensemble Écoute Composition Competition, and an ARTZenter grant supporting a performance by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.Rho received his Master of Music from the Yale School of Music and begins his PhD in Composition at Princeton University in 2026.

Vesper Park was born in 1997, she began studying the cello at the age of eleven and quickly gained recognition for her musical sensitivity and expressive depth. She received her early training under Myung-hwa Chung and Hyung-won Chang, and later studied at the Korea National University of Arts with Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi. She continued her studies in Germany at the Hochschule für Musik Lübeck, where she worked with Troels Svane and later in Berlin with David Geringas. Since 2025, she is pursuing the Artist Diploma at the Yale School of Music under Paul Watkins.She has performed with ensembles and orchestras including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sydney Conservatory Orchestra, Australian Symphony Orchestra, Vladivostok Symphony Orchestra, Armenian Philharmonic, Busan Philharmonic, and Kangnam Symphony Orchestra. Vesper is the winner of Liezen International Competition, Vienna Music Competition, Dong-A Music Competition, Tallinn International Competition and Grünewald International Music Competition. She was also selected as a cellist of the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic, marking a significant new chapter in her artistic career. From 2017, she is performing as a representative artist of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Korea. 

Forrest Eimold. Hailed as “incredible” and “fearless” by *The Boston Musical Intelligencer*, “extremely impressive” by *Harmonie*, and as having “ably responded to the many virtuosic demands” of today’s compositional vanguard by *The Washington Post*, American composer-keyboardist Forrest Eimold is a musical documentarian. Composer and interpreter, he finds himself at home among an ever-wider range of audiovisual objects. As composer, his work illuminates sites of intersubjective difference—foregrounding shared notational imperatives in order to make performers’ individuality legible. His scores have been sounded by the likes of the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Ensemble Dal Niente, Mivos Quartet, National Sawdust Ensemble, Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal de Versailles, and Wet Ink Ensemble. He has been honored with the Maria Manetti Shrem Daniel Brewbaker Prize (Festival Napa Valley); a Blueprint Fellowship (Juilliard School and National Sawdust); the Rena Greenwald Memorial Prize, Ezra Laderman Prize, and Virgil Thomson Scholarship (Yale University); the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts (Columbia University); and two National YoungArts Awards. Having studied with composers like Martin Bresnick, Georg Friedrich Haas, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Christopher Theofanidis, he is currently a doctoral candidate at the Yale School of Music.

Miranda Werner. Praised for her “elegant” and “exuberant” performances (The Strad), violist and violinist Miranda Werner is equally at home as a soloist, chamber musician, and interpreter of new music.She was a semifinalist at the 2025 Hindemith International Competition, where she was awarded the Walter Witte Prize for her interpretation of the commissioned piece. Miranda has also attended festivals such as Ravinia, Norfolk, Taos, and Four Seasons. A recent graduate of the Yale School of Music, Miranda studied with Professors Ettore Causa and Soovin Kim, and earned master’s degrees in both violin and viola. She completed her B.M. with Mark Kaplan at Indiana University, and pursued additional studies with Nicholas Cords and Mark Holloway. Miranda’s upcoming performances include a July 1st recital with pianist Yoshino Toi on Classical Music Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess Memorial concert series, broadcast live on WFMT Chicago.In August, she is honored to be joining the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra as a full-time member of the viola section.

Jaewon Wee. Violinist Jaewon Wee has won first and major prizes at international competitions, including the Menuhin, YSAŸE, Washington, and Mirecourt International Violin Competitions. An active soloist and collaborator, she has appeared with distinguished artists such as Andrew Marriner, Soo-Jung Shin, and Cho-Liang Lin, and has worked with Midori Goto, Mihaela Martin, and Pinchas Zukerman. In 2022, Jaewon performed at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland as an academy soloist, appearing in recitals, public masterclasses, community performances, and a Spotlight Concert at the Cinéma de Verbier, where her Saint-Saëns/Ysaÿe Caprice d’après l’Étude en forme de valse was praised for its mature technique and musicality. She was invited as a soloist to the Palermo Classica Festival in 2021 and 2025, performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Piazzolla’s Four Seasons with the Palermo Symphony Orchestra. A graduate of the Juilliard School and the New England Conservatory of Music, Jaewon is currently studying at the Yale School of Music under Ani Kavafian.

Hyein Koo is a violinist currently pursuing a Master of Musical Arts degree at the Yale School of Music under Soovin Kim. She previously earned her Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Ronald Copes, and completed her Bachelor of Music at Seoul National University with Ju-young Baek and Ji-won Moon.

Koo gained early recognition after winning first prize at the Hankook Children’s Daily Music Competition at age twelve and later performed in Dubai through a project sponsored by South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. She has won top prizes at numerous competitions, including the HKGNA international competition, CBS, TBC, Eumyoun, Strad Korea, and Gimpo Philharmonic Orchestra Competitions, and was a semifinalist in the Mirecourt International Violin Competition.

As a soloist, she has performed with orchestras including the New World Philharmonic Orchestra and Gyeongsangbuk-do Philharmonic Orchestra. Her performances have taken her to venues such as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Seoul Arts Center, and Lotte Concert Hall. She was also a full-scholarship participant at the Aspen Music Festival and has held leadership positions in both orchestral and chamber music settings.