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Ginger Reilly
| Special to The Tribune
After Josh Aerie and his wife moved to South Bend in 2013, he met Ann Divine two years later.
Then the executive director of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Association, Divine encouraged the cellist and arts administrator to apply for the open position of executive director at South Bend’s The Music Village.
Ten years later, Aerie’s now preparing to leave The Music Village’s top spot after a decade to become Fischoff’s new executive director. He replaces Interim Executive Director and Fischoff Board Member Don Crafton, who succeeded Scott Campbell in February 2025.
“We’re going to miss him terribly,” Pete Owsianowski, president of the board of directors for The Music Village, said about Aerie in a phone interview.
The Music Village and Fischoff announced Aerie’s departure and appointment, respectively, in separate press releases Thursday, July 24.
Aerie’s last day at The Music Village will be Friday, Aug. 29, and he will start his new role at Fischoff after Labor Day weekend, on Tuesday, Sept. 2, he said in a phone interview.
During his 10 years as executive director, Aerie increased in-house program enrollment at The Music Village from about 30 or 40 students to more than 200 students, Owsianowski said.
“We just keep growing,” Owsianowski said, adding that Aerie, who has become a friend after years of working together, also is great at fundraising.
According to the press release, other milestones that the community musical arts center and school achieved under Aerie’s leadership include the following:
● Moving in 2018 from the basement of the JMS Building to its current location at 333 S. Michigan St.
● Launched Music For All, a need-based tuition assistance program that has subsidized nearly 1,000 lessons and classes, equating to almost $40,000 in aid, in 2018.
● Music for All also established free programming such as Girls Rock Michiana, BeatLab, Rock Band and a low-cost instrument rental service.
● Started the annual TMV Block Party, originally on Michigan Street and now held at Howard Park.
Share and promote chamber music
Accepting the appointment at Fischoff is an “opportunity to marry those two loves — of music education and empowerment and chamber music,” Aerie said.
Fischoff is known for its annual Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition each May and also offers music programs, according to the press release from the organization.
According to The Tribune’s archives, Joseph E. Fischoff and the South Bend Chamber Music Society founded the competition in 1973 as a way to encourage young people to pursue chamber music study and performance.Since then, it has grown from the six ensembles in total that competed that first year to the nation’s largest and longest-running chamber music competition.
Aerie was introduced to music at 3 or 4 years old when he started taking piano lessons, he said. When he was in second grade, a third grader told him that cello is “cool” and that he should learn cello, so when Aerie was in third grade and his school required a stringed instrument, he started taking cello, he said.
“I’ve been playing ever since,” Aerie said, adding that he likes the tone of the instrument.
He went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in music in cello performance from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, a bachelor of arts with honors in anthropology from Oberlin College and a master of music in cello performance from the University of Colorado Boulder, Aerie said. Aerie has enjoyed a career as a chamber musician and conductor and is currently the cellist in the Sylvan Trio, a flute-cello-piano ensemble, he said.
Aerie was selected for his upcoming role with Fischoff “from a group of four finalists, who advanced from a pool of over 15 initial applicants from across the country,” Geneviéve Carreño, program and marketing manager for Fischoff, said in an email.
“I am excited to welcome Josh as our new executive director and for the energy and wisdom he will bring to the organization,” Tom Rosenberg, artistic director for Fischoff, said in a press release provided by the association.
Aerie said that he wants to share and promote chamber music.
“I hope to be able to continue the outstanding success and achievement that the Fischoff has demonstrated over the years as the preeminent chamber music competition, really, in the world,” he said of his new role.
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