Mike Ross

Chair

Board Member through January 2013
ross2@illinois.edu

Mike Ross became the sixth director of the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1997. As director of the Krannert Center, the country's most comprehensive university-based performing arts center, he is responsible for programming, financial and operations management and fundraising activity. Deeply committed to embracing the art of the past as well as the art of our time across disciplines, aesthetic sensibilities and cultural legacies, Mike views the center simultaneously as a potent blending of classroom, laboratory and public square. At the university, Mike also chairs the Chancellor's Seedbed Initiative for Transdomain Creativity and is on the Advisory Council for the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society. He is an active board member of numerous local, state and national arts organizations, including the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, the American Arts Alliance and the Illinois Arts Alliance. His experience as a professional classical, jazz and rock musician, and his interest in the literary and visual arts and broader cultural history have been major influences on the creative and collaborative nature of his work in arts administration. Mike came to the center from the Miller Theatre at Columbia University in New York City, where he received his doctorate in music composition with distinction.

His professional activities include serving on the boards of the American Arts Alliance, Illinois Arts Alliance, Association of Performing Arts Presenters and the Composers Conference at Wellesley College. He also serves on the advisory boards and committees of Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher and Elise L. Stoeger Awards, Classical Connections (an initiative of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters) and the New York Guitar Festival. He has served as an artist and repertoire advisor for Arabesque Recordings; as a member of the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project Advisory Committee, MIT's Artist-in-Residence Program, and Van Cliburn Composers Nominating Committee; and as a panelist and evaluator for the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts International, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, Illinois Arts Council and numerous other organizations. He is a member of the International Society for the Performing Arts, Chamber Music America, Major University Presenters, Imagining America, and is an honorary member of the National Society of Arts and Letters. Mike is also currently serving on the Arts Review Committee of the Illinois Capital Development Board and is past co-chair of the Illinois Arts Alliance Statewide Conference Planning Committee. He is very active in the community, serving on a number of community and University advisory committees. He is a founding board member of 40 North/88 West, the Champaign County Arts, Culture, and Entertainment Council.

Ross holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of the Pacific and master's and doctoral degrees in music composition from the University of Hartford and Columbia University, respectively. He remains active as a composer, and attributes his experience as a professional classical, jazz and rock musician, and his interest in the literary and visual arts and broader cultural history as major influences on the creative and collaborative nature of his work in arts administration.

Mike, his wife Taya, and their son Miles have made their home in Champaign, Illinois.