Three Eastman School of Music alumni were winners in Sunday night’s Grammy Awards.
Shane Shanahan, an '05 grad, is a member of The Silk Road Ensemble, which won the Best World Music Album award for Sing Me Home. The ensemble was founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
Sean Connors, an ’04 grad, is a member of the ensemble Third Coast Percussion, which won the Best Chamber Music / Small Ensemble Performance Grammy for the album Steve Reich.
Formed in 2005, the ensemble champions new music and has collaborated across a wide range of disciplines with engineers, architects, astronomers, and others.
Geoff Saunders, an ’09 grad, is a double bassist and is a member of the O’Connor Band with Mark O’Connor, which won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album for Coming Home. The album was at the top of Billboard’s bluegrass album chart for nearly half a year.
Also in that bluegrass band is a Webster native, 24 year old Kate Lee Gurnow, now known as Kate Lee.
Lee appeared in the WXXI series OnStage that spotlighted musicians and bands from Upstate NY. This is a video from her appearance on that program in 2008:
