Live Music Awareness is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (EIN 99-0325262) founded to help professional musicians bring their music to the public. LMA presents and supports live music, helps musicians find and realize performance opportunities, and fosters the general health of all kinds of music in Hawaii.
An important part of LMA’s mission is education, helping everyone to understand music and musicians better, and to realize that music is made by live human beings, not by machines. To that end, LMA presents music programs in schools, libraries, and other public places, and publishes materials to assist in the educational process.
Live Music Awareness is a resource for musicians, adopting musician-proposed projects and providing administrative support and technical assistance for musical projects that would otherwise not happen for want of business acumen or funding. The musicians gain income and career stability in the process, but the public is the ultimate beneficiary, gaining more opportunities to hear the artistry of Hawaii’s finest musicians.
Live Music Awareness presents many different projects and maintains several separate endowment funds to support the specific activities associated with them. See the “Projects” page for more information on these projects.
Meet the LMA Board
PRESIDENT
BRENDA CHING recently retired from her position of over thirty years as Executive Director of the Screen Actors Guild-Hawaii Branch (now SAG-AFTRA). Brenda served on the Executive Board of the Hawaii State AFL-CO and has been a tireless advocate for workers’ rights in the entertainment industry.
VICE-PRESIDENT
CHRIS CONYBEARE is an attorney with extensive experience in film and television production. Chris also served on the board of the Hawaii Peoples Fund and works to advance many educational and philanthropic efforts in labor and the arts.
SECRETARY, TREASURER, ADMINISTRATOR
MARSHA SCHWEITZER is Lecturer in Bassoon at the University of Hawaii, bassoonist with the Spring Wind Quintet, retired Associate Principal Bassoon with the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, and retired Secretary-Treasurer of the Musicians Association of Hawaii, Local 677 AFM. She has been involved in governance and/or management with Chamber Music Hawaii, the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame, Mohala Hou Foundation, and Americans for Democratic Action-Hawaii. She also became well-known as a labor journalist and is the author of the book The Arts from the Bottom Up.
DIRECTORS:
MICHAEL LARGARTICHA is retired President of the Musicians Association of Hawaii, Local 677 AFM. Prior to his union service, he was a radio and television producer in Los Angeles and Honolulu. Since his retirement, he has become a civic activist in his new Pennsylvania location.
JAMES MOFFITT is President of Chamber Music Hawaii; President of the Musicians Association of Hawaii, Local 677 AFM; clarinetist with the Spring Wind Quintet and Hawaii Symphony; Lecturer in Clarinet at the University of Hawaii; and a former chair of the Honolulu/Hawaii Symphony Musicians Orchestra Committee.
J. SCOTT JANUSCH is Principal Oboe of the Hawaii Symphony and oboist of the Spring Wind Quintet. He studied at the Manhattan School of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music. Scott has held Principal Oboe positions with the San Antonio Symphony, San Diego Symphony, and the Kansas City Symphony. Scott is also a labor activist and a former chair of the Honolulu/Hawaii Symphony Orchestra Committee.
ANNA WOMACK is a violist with the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, instructor of viola at the University of Hawaii, and a member of Chamber Music Hawaii’s Galliard String Quartet. She has served on various committees for the Hawaii Symphony Musicians and as a board member of Hawaii Music Teachers Association.
MICHAEL LIM is a violinist with the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra and holds degrees from Indiana University and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is also an active music educator, having worked with the Hawaii Youth Symphony, Mid-Pacific Institute, and Pacific Music Institute, as well as private teaching. He is a past president of the Hawaii Music Educators Association.
C. KENT COARSEY is the Director of Major Gifts with Bishop Museum. He has a Master’s in Nonprofit Management from Regis University, in Denver, Colorado. Kent has spent his entire professional career supporting the missions of nonprofit organizations primarily as a fundraiser or Executive Director. In 2006 Kent helped to found the local affiliate of Family Promise of Hawai’i, an organization tackling the issues of homelessness by using existing community resources. Kent grew up in Kailua and is a very proud graduate of James B. Castle High School.
JON MAGNUSSEN is Professor of Music at University of Hawai‘i West O‘ahu. Magnussen holds degrees from The Juilliard School, Conservatoire Nationale Supérieure de Musique de Paris, and Cornell University. Recent collaborative projects include “Nā Kau ʻElua | The Two Seasons,” an oboe concerto composed to feature the native Hawaiian kauila wood oboe, and “Ten Rooms,” for ‘cello quartet, composed for the 90th anniversary of the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris.