Executive Director

A Cleveland native (Laurel School 2008), Marissa Glynias Moore is an arts and culture professional dedicated to bringing artistic excellence to all Cleveland audiences. Since her early days as a flutist in the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, Moore has been interested in how people engage with music on personal and communal levels. Her passion for understanding musical meaning led her to pursue a dual degree at Harvard College in music and archaeology, and she received her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology – or the study of “people making music” – from Yale University in 2018, the first in the discipline awarded at Yale.

Moore spent the year after graduate school teaching undergraduate courses of her own design in the Yale Department of Music, in addition to writing about musical topics for both public and academic audiences. While her primary background is in academia, Moore has always sought out ways to engage the public around the arts, working for organizations like the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra to the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York City and the New Haven Symphony.

Moore joined the Piano Cleveland team in May 2019, where she has enjoyed bringing her commitment to building authentic relationships with individuals – something she honed as an ethnographic researcher -and love for musical performance to her work in development. After being named the Director of Development in September 2019, Moore was thrilled to be named Executive Director in October 2020, where she works in partnership with Yaron Kohlberg to strengthen ties between this storied organization and the diversity of Cleveland communities through investing in all who love piano in all its forms.

Like the work she does at Piano Cleveland, Moore is further invested in celebrating Cleveland’s artistic excellence and meaningful community collaborations as a Board Members of Dobama Theatre and a graduate of the Cleveland Bridge Builders Class of 2023 of the Cleveland Leadership Center.