Maestra Music’s Amplify 2026 Brings Down the House at City Winery

By Kiana Love with William Cochrane  |  Splash Magazine

On Monday, April 7th, Maestra Music’s Amplify 2026 — now in its sixth year as an annual music awards concert, gala, and fundraiser — filled City Winery at Pier 57 with an evening of artistry, advocacy, and community. It honored the women and gender-expansive musicians who power the American musical theater industry. And it made clear, without equivocation, why that work has never mattered more.

The story of Maestra begins with a simple and infuriating discovery. In 2016, composer, lyricist, and music director Georgia Stitt was hired to music direct the Off-Broadway revival of Sweet Charity, and the director asked her to assemble an all-female band. “It was very hard to find the musicians,” Stitt recalled Monday evening, “especially those who played the more traditionally masculine instruments — the drums, the bass, the electric guitar.” After asking many people who assisted in hiring, she realized they simply didn’t know who these women were. Not because they didn’t exist. Because they’d been made invisible.

So Stitt built a spreadsheet. A web designer turned it into a directory. That was the beginning of Maestra Music — now a community of over 3,000 members in its own directory, alongside the RISE Theatre Directory with over 4,000 more, serving over 7,000 artists worldwide. The numbers still tell a sobering story: in the 2024-2025 Broadway season, female and nonbinary representation in pit orchestras fell back to 28%, and 77% of music team leadership positions were held by men. As Stitt wrote in her program letter: “It’s not cool to talk about gender equity these days. But we think our mission is more important now than it ever has been.” In conversation, she put it practically: “In a world where it feels like it’s not as safe to talk about diversity, we feel like diversity is just organic. Look at who’s on that list — and if they all kind of look the same, put two more names on it.”

“We’re trying to build this as a workforce development pipeline,” said Laura Ivey, Maestra’s Board President, who joined Georgia in those earliest founding conversations. “Every musician and crew member here tonight is a Maestra or RISE directory member — they’re earning, getting paid, building their resumes. That’s what we’re working on.”

Lee Bynum (they/them), Maestra’s inaugural Executive Director — a composer, librettist, and arts leader with senior roles at Lincoln Center, the Mellon Foundation, and Minnesota Opera — spoke to the urgency plainly. “Our commitment is to strengthen the field. These artists are not being supported systemically. That’s not just their loss. It’s the industry’s loss.”

Board member Theresa Ching came to Maestra through a chance meeting with Stitt at her son’s school. “I really feel that this is truly where humanity lives — in the arts, in something that is always striving for beauty, even if it’s not a perfect endeavor,” she said. The message of equity resonates for Ching across cultures and generations both: “The best bridge is arts. To sit in the middle and bring people together, cross-culturally, cross-racially — it’s all sort of the same.”

Independent A&R executive Kathleen Murphy, a longtime friend and colleague of Stitt’s, described watching the field begin to shift. “What a wonderful, smart, organic thing — to look around at the orchestra pit and not see women, and for that to be the beginning of change,” she said. “It’s become more instinctive now. When you’re putting a band together, you used to look in your book and see all these men. Now we feel energized looking for women. Maestra made that feel natural.”

Co-hosted by Tony Award nominee Betsy Wolfe and Hannah Cruz — both adorned in Kendra Scott jewelry — and with music supervision by Grammy and Drama Desk Award winner Mary-Mitchell Campbell, the evening was a showcase of the incredible breadth of talent across Broadway that Maestra continues to champion. The all-female Maestra House Band — Lily Ling on piano, Elena Bonomo on drums, Vivi Rama on bass, Annie Taylor Sloan on guitar, and Melissa Westgate on cello — anchored the concert from start to finish. A living demonstration of what becomes visible when you decide to look.

The night opened with Aneesa Folds and Kaila Mullady of Freestyle Love Supreme performing “The Timeline,” using audience-submitted phrases to build a piece live that honors the women in our lives — a fitting opening for an evening devoted to exactly that.

Mackenzie Meadows brought depth and grace to “The Way She Sees Me,” a Veronica Mansour and abs wilson composition from Lighthouse. The Rescues followed with “If We Make It Through the Night” from The Lost Boys — a loving performance that drew staggering applause — while Abby Mueller brought chills with her rendition of “Heart of Stone” from Six. Claire Kwon closed the performance segment with “Yes” from the Broadway smash Crazy Rich Asians. Background vocalists SJ Nelson, Jen Sese, and Rebecca Covington Webber lent their voices throughout — all Maestra members, all working professionals, all part of the pipeline the organization has spent six years building.

At the cocktail reception, Berklee student Jada Campbell and alum Lexi Vollero were waiting for their mentor. Both part of the Amplify crew that night — getting paid, earning credits. “It’s so refreshing to be in a room that really champions women,” Lexi said. “You don’t have to explain yourself. You just get to be excellent.” Their mentor was Julianne B. Merrill, Music Director and Playback Engineer for the Amplify series — who created the computer programming that runs the concert each year, played piano for “Heart of Stone” from Six, and ran playback all night. “I run Maestra Pride, a support group for queer members,” she said. “I just got a job today through this network. I tell my mentees: you’re so lucky. There was nothing like this before. You have to be a Swiss Army knife. But Maestra means you don’t have to do it alone.”

Among those in the audience was Grammy Award winner Sara Bareilles — composer and lyricist of Waitress, the Broadway musical with the first all-female creative team in Broadway history, and a proud Maestra member and Host Committee champion. “It’s beautifully warm,” she said of the organization and the room. “Very supportive, really loving. There’s a lot of room for growth and opportunity to build it to reflect the world that we want to see.” She summoned words she attributed to composer Jeanine Tesori: “You have to see it to be it.”

The centerpiece of the evening, however, belonged to the presentation of the inaugural Amplify Award — a stunning custom crystal designed by prop artist Emmarose Campbell, engraved with actual musical notation from “I Was Here” from Suffs, its prism edges a deliberate nod to the queer community Maestra serves — and the acknowledgement of Shaina Taub’s singular leadership and artistry in helping shape a more inclusive and equitable theater industry.

I cried watching Suffs on Broadway, moved by the women who wouldn’t give up and came together to fight for our right to vote. When that song filled the room later that night, I felt it again. In this current moment, with so much of what women fought for being openly contested, it didn’t feel like a finale. It felt like a dispatch.

Shaina Taub wrote that. She is currently playing Emma Goldman in Lincoln Center Theater’s Broadway revival of Ragtime — another woman who refused to wait. Suffs is now on national tour across the country, and Taub shared that a PBS Great Performances film of the production will air on May 9th.

In a brief conversation before the ceremony, Taub spoke about Maestra with the warmth of someone who has seen it at work. “Anytime I meet a young female composer who asks for advice, the first thing I tell her is: go to the Maestra website. Do a Maestra workshop. Find a Maestra mentor. It’s truly life-changing — and it’s a necessity.” She paused. “Georgia was vigilant. How did any of us make it without this?” She reflected on her own path — on mentors like Elizabeth Stanley and Jeanine Tesori, who gave her feedback on her compositions and, as she put it, gave her “some Teflon when I asked for it.” Maestra, she said, is formalizing what used to only happen if you were lucky enough to know the right people.

Taub was introduced by Tony Award winner Nikki M. James, who praised her as both an extraordinary artist and a builder of community. In her acceptance remarks, Taub turned the spotlight straight back to Maestra. “In addition to helping talented artists gain access, experience, and connections, I think what sets Maestra apart as an organization is how they prioritize humanity. Maestra is helping artists succeed — yes. But perhaps more importantly, they’re giving artists a community who truly cares about each other.”

Ending the evening on a soaring high note, Tony Award winner Alex Newell brought the audience to its feet with a show-stopping performance of “Keep Marching” from Taub’s Suffs, in an arrangement by Allen René Louis for Broadway Inspirational Voices — both a song and a story that resonates with all of us in the theater who know what it means to keep going.

It is the words of Shaina Taub — spoken in acceptance, in that room, on that night — that illuminate what is truly important on evenings such as this: “Maestra is helping artists succeed. But perhaps more importantly, they’re giving artists a community who truly cares about each other.”

Keep marching. Maestra is.