News + Blog

Your Board of Directors just voted unanimously to accept the slate of nominees presented by its Nominating Committee. Outgoing board President Susan McLaughlin is excited to announce the following individuals will serve on the CMSA BOD in the following capacities for the 2024-2026 Term:  Jeff Brumley as President, Jonathan Bredin as Secretary, Christian McKee as Member-at-Large and Phil Vinyard as Member-at-Large. The future of CMSA is bright . . . Congratulations to everyone! I also want to thank outgoing board members Joane Rylander and Michael Tognetti for their immense contributions, and especially for their leadership during our Virtual Conventions!

 Bios of incoming Board Members

President

Jeff Brumley is a near-native of Seattle, Washington, and a lifelong musician with varied interests and directions. He received a B.A. in music from Seattle Pacific University, with areas of focus in music education, vocal performance, and music theory. After college, he was trained at the Bass Collective in New York City, studying bass guitar and general professional musicianship with the finest teachers and performers in the city, including John Patitucci.

As an in-demand multi-instrumentalist in the Seattle area, Jeff is primarily known as an electric bassist, with 30 years of stage and studio experience in varied ensembles and styles, including musical theatre, churches, big bands, singer-songwriters, and everything in between. Most recently, he was a founding member of Rise Up: the Hamilton Tribute, which performed concert arrangements of Broadway hits centered around the work of Lin-Manuel Miranda. He also regularly performs and records on guitar, piano, acoustic bass, mandolin & mandola, and tenor & plectrum banjo.

Jeff spent five years as a member of Seattle Mandolin Orchestra, playing mandocello and bass, in addition to contributing several popular arrangements and guest conducting. He also served as a member of the Board for four of those years, including for two years as Board President, leading safely through the initial years of the pandemic. Jeff moved into the role of Conductor and Artistic Director in the fall of 2022.

As a proud member of CMSA, Jeff has served on the Board of Directors for the past two years, and as a member of the Publicity Committee dedicated to refocusing its social media strategy and presence. Prior to joining the board, he led the technical and audio production of the Virtual En Masse Orchestra experiences for the 2020 and 2021 Conventions in the Clouds.

Secretary

Jonathan Bredin has served on the CMSA Board and its Technology Committee since 2022, where I’ve shadowed the outgoing secretary, helping maintain the CMSA website and managing our documents and services in the cloud. In 2022 he assisted the team to migrate IT services to Google Workspace and WPEngine, providing additional services and stability to CMSA. This year, he negotiated the donation of eight John Goodin works to CMSA and one to the Creative Commons, springboarding a John Goodin archive website to ensure public access to his blog and much of his work in perpetuity.

Jonathan’s home orchestra is the Minnesota Mandolin Orchestra, where he plays alto mandola. In 2017, he took over the booking-agent and treasurer responsibilities for MnMO. He has contributed to their efforts to establish and maintain 501c3 non-profit status, wrote the webpage to collect player availability for scheduling performances, created pandemic performance videos, and explored new venues for the orchestra.

“As part of an upcoming board-member term, I will reach out to the other CMSA board subcommittees to see how the Technology Committee can further CMSA’s goals through collaboration. On the Technology Committee, I will complete my goal to integrate other storage services to serve audio media and relieve workload on the main site while saving money.”

Board Member at Large (two positions)

Christian McKee is the current Musical Director of the Oregon Mandolin Orchestra, a position he has held since 2018. Christian has made music since childhood, playing Suzuki violin as a youngster, and singing in choirs until the age of eighteen. Since then, Christian has toured and performed on the West coast in multiple ensembles on mandolin, mandola and mandocello.

Born and raised in the upper Midwest, Christian has lived in Portland, Oregon since 2002. After ten years working for the American Red Cross, he resigned to be a full-time parent when he and his wife, Lisa welcomed their child, Zadie, in 2013. Aside from his musical activities, Christian is an avid endurance cyclist and enthusiastic home cook.

“My first CMSA conference was in Milwaukee, where the experience of playing in the En Masse Orchestra and hearing the brilliant guest performers was a great inspiration for me. Since that first exposure to the organization, I’ve come to understand what a tremendous resource it is for its members and the communities where we are represented. As a potential board member at large, I hope to be a helping hand in sustaining our activities, growing our membership and ensuring an enduring future.”

Phil Vinyard always wanted to play some instrument, and in 5th grade he finally had an opportunity through the Hickman Mills School District in Kansas City, MO and was given a ‘cello. He is suspicious it was because he was a big kid and the orchestra teacher figured out he was one of the few that could actually carry the thing around. Phil played in school and community orchestras and was the principal ‘Cellist in the Central Missouri State University Orchestra as an Accounting major. Orchestral opportunities somewhat dried up after college and Phil’s ‘cello got dusty. He then became active in pipe organ and sacred choral work and is a past Chapter Dean of the American Guild of Organists. But as churches turned away from more classical literature, his choral and organ activities also dried up.

Phil’s interest in mandolin came from a Nickel Creek concert he attended in Columbia, MO around 18 years ago where he closely watched Chris Thile playing his mandolin and thought, “Those strings are in fifths, like a ‘cello. I ought to be able to figure that thing out,” and went out and bought a mandolin. He found a group of bluegrass and old-time musicians in Columbia who took him in and he hasn’t turned back. He attributes his awakening to Classical mandolin through attending Steve Kaufman Acoustic Kamp in Maryville, TN where he first met Carlo Alonzo and our own Kristin Stiteler. Since then, Phil has added Octave Mandolin and Mandocello and is the co-principal Mandocellist with the Mandolin Orchestra of Kansas City. He also serves as treasurer of the MOOKC Board. He recently also picked up claw-hammer style banjo and upright bass—something he hopes you will not hold against him.

Phil holds a BS in Accounting, a Masters of Hospital Administration and of Business Administration from the University of Missouri, Columbia, and a Master of Divinity from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston. He is currently Associate Administrator of Finance for the Department of Pediatrics at Children’s Mercy Hospital of Kansas City.

Phil has been to five conventions—three in person and two virtual. He was co-chair of the Host Orchestra committee for the recent Kansas City convention. He has an interest in finding ways to make the annual conventions even more engaging while carefully managing the costs to make it affordable for as many as possible.