CPNY at The Brooklyn Music School 2026
Tali Makell (Conductor, Music Director & Executive Director of Nietzsche Music Project)
“Tali Makell has a crystal-clear baton technique and a passionate, yet completely controlled commitment to music.” (From “A Fine New Conductor Emerges” - NY Daily News, by Bill Zakariasen, on the occasion of Mr. Makell’s Lincoln Center debut) Tali Makell is a native of Baltimore, Maryland, who has resided in Brooklyn, NY, for almost five decades. He studied at Peabody Conservatory (Prep Division), Oberlin Conservatory (B.A. Voice, M.M. and Orchestral Conducting) and continued his Conducting Studies in New York with Maestros Laszlo Halasz and Semyon Vekshtein. Mr. Makell was the Principal Conductor for the NYCHA Symphony Orchestra from 1981 to 1995, Music Director for the Henry Street Opera Ensemble from 1982 to 1985, an affiliate of the Exxon Conducting Program, and Associate Conductor with the Brooklyn Philharmonic from 1987. From 1997-2002, Mr. Makell was the Summer Opera Theater Music Director at Brooklyn Music School. In the early 1990s, he co-founded The Nietzsche Music Project (NMP), Inc., originally dedicated to performing and recording Friedrich Nietzsche's music. Three NMP events were held at the International Nietzsche Colloquium symposia in Sils Maria, Switzerland (1994, 1997, 2000), along with various appearances at the Goethe Haus in NY (1994), Goucher College in Baltimore (1994), and Emory University in Atlanta (2003). In 2003, he produced additional recordings of Nietzsche’s music. In 2008, Mr. Makell founded the Chamber Philharmonic of New York (CPNY), an offshoot of NMP dedicated to performing music by NY composers, both native and foreign-born. The first project was a lecture/concert (2009) on Antonín Dvořák, the National Conservatory's founding director (1892-1895), who supported and mentored Black, Indigenous, and female composers and the development of new American music. CPNY’s second concert event was a celebration of Gustav Mahler's contributions to the musical life of early 20th-century New York on the centenary of his death (2011). His “Das Lied von der Erde” in the Schoenberg-Riehn version for chamber orchestra was the principal work of that concert held at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Manhattan. Mr. Makell served as Guest Conductor of the Harlem Chamber Players from 2012 to 2015. His tenure was highlighted by a 2014 performance of Mozart's Requiem at Harlem’s historic Convent Baptist Church. Following his time with the Harlem Chamber Players, he resumed extensive research and planning for the next series of 12 concerts and educational lecture demonstrations for NMP/CPNY. He recently wrote notable texts on Nietzsche’s contribution to classical music and cultural theory. Mr. Makell took a hiatus from CPNY’s performances, lectures and concerts to focus on researching the next project, “Black Broadway: The Early Years." This exploration of how Dvorak’s National Conservatory shaped early Broadway music, especially contributions by Black composers who shaped Broadway in its Golden Years and today, the concert and multimedia demonstration debuted at Roulette on October 27, 2024, and the encore performance took place at the Brooklyn Music School's historic Playhouse on March 13, 2026.
