Bienen School of Music Dean to be Honored by NANM

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Toni-Marie Montgomery, dean of the Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, has been named one of five honorees of the 90th anniversary celebration of the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM), Inc., one of the oldest music organizations in the country.

Montgomery will be honored July 29 as a Chicago Area Awardee at an awards banquet in the Grand Ballroom of the DoubleTree Hotel on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.

Montgomery is a member of the Chicago Music Association, Branch No. 1 of NANM, Inc. She was also a founding member of the Black Music Repertory Ensemble at Columbia College Chicago.

An accomplished pianist in both solo and chamber music repertoire, Montgomery studied at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France, graduated magna cum laude from the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts and received a DMA from the University of Michigan.

Before joining Northwestern in 2003, Montgomery served as dean of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Kansas, director of the School of Music at Arizona State University, assistant dean for academic programs of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Connecticut at Storrs and artistic director and assistant director of the School of Music at Western Michigan University.

(Nathalie Rayter, a sophomore in the School of Education and Social Policy, contributed to this story.)