Photo: Bob Hsiang
Dr. Anthony Brown
Founder/Artistic Director
Board Chair
A San Francisco native of African/Choctaw and Japanese descent, composer, percussionist, educator, and ethnomusicologist Anthony Brown has played a seminal role in contemporary California creative music from his pioneering work with the Asian American jazz movement in the early 1980s to his current leadership of the GRAMMY-nominated Asian American Orchestra. Under his direction, the Orchestra has recorded seven critically acclaimed CDs, including homages to American composers Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, George Gershwin and John Coltrane. He has performed on over 30 recordings and has collaborated with Max Roach, Cecil Taylor, Angela Davis, Zakir Hussain, Pharoah Sanders, Anthony Davis and the San Francisco Symphony.
Dr. Brown holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Music (Ethnomusicology) from the University of California, Berkeley, a Master of Music from Rutgers University, and received the Distinguished Alumnus Award in Music from the University of Oregon in 2017. He has received numerous grants and awards from organizations including Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, National Endowment for the Arts, Arts International, and Asian Heritage Council.
A professor of music at the California Jazz Conservatory, Smithsonian Associate Scholar, Guggenheim and Ford Fellow, Dr. Brown has served as Curator of American Musical Culture at the Smithsonian Institution and as a Visiting Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2023, Brown served as a U.S. State Department Cultural Ambassador in Thailand – an honored tradition for jazz musicians including Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, et. al.
He has been Fifth Stream Music's Artistic Director since its establishment in 2005.
Wikipedia Page | Resume | Bio | Lecture “Music As A Movement”
Photo: Dave Golden
Greg Viloria
Company Manager
Mr. Viloria is a marketing professional, community organizer and media maker who is active in Japantown. He holds a BS in Electronic Engineering Technology as well as a MA in Organization and Leadership Studies. He has worked at the Japantown Task Force (JTF) as a Community Aide supporting the economic and cultural sustainability of San Francisco Japantown. Previously, he held marketing, product design, business management, operational and product development roles in the IT and Semiconductor industries. Community involvement is important to Greg who served as the 2019, 2020, & 2021 Co-Chair for the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival and actively participates in various festivals and events in Japantown. He became the company manager for Anthony Brown’s Asian American Orchestra in 2017 to help document the premieres of Go For Broke! A Salute to Nisei Veterans and DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE - Requiem For a King. Music has been a part of his life from an early age and he currently plays Taiko at his buddhist temple. Greg is proud to support Fifth Stream Music and the important role it plays in using the art of music for social justice.
Board Members
Ms. Martha Brown, Secretary/Treasurer
Mr. Bill Bennett, Board Member
Dr. Herman Gray, Board Member
Dr. Rosa-Linda Fregoso, Board Member
Ms. Karen Kai, Board Member
Mr. Bob Rusky, Board Member - In Memoriam
Dr. Leonard Brown, Board Member - In Memoriam
Dr. Olly Wilson, Board Member - In Memoriam
Mr. George Yoshida, Vice-Chair - In Memoriam
Photo: Ouida Joi
Dr. Tommy Lott, Vice-Chair
Dr. Lott is an emeritus professor of Philosophy at San Jose State University and has taught at the university level throughout the United States. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. His areas of expertise include modern, social and political philosophy, African American social and political thought, and African American culture, with extensive research credentials and publications under his own name and as editor.
Ms. Martha Brown, Secretary/Treasurer
Ms. Brown is currently the Director of Finance and Administration at the East Bay Community Law Center, with over twenty-five years experience in financial, personnel, and project management with non-profit organizations. She holds a MSW degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore with an emphasis in community organizing and an undergraduate liberal arts degree from Wesleyan University. She has volunteered with the Asian American Orchestra/Fifth Stream Music since its inception.
Mr. Bill Bennett, Board Member
Mr. Bennett is a Grammy-nominated producer and oft-published jazz historian, and spent five years as Executive Producer of the Smithsonian Collection of Recordings. He performs with the band, the Flying Other Brothers, playing bass guitar and double bass, and has contributed a number of songs to their repertoire. He is active in the Recording Academy, where he is a member of the Board of Governors of the San Francisco chapter, and serves on national committees on honorary awards and Internet applications
Dr. Herman Gray, Board Member
Dr. Gray is an emeritus professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received his BA degree from Florida A & M University, his MA degree from Washington State University and his PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research interests include Black Visual Cultures and the Production of Subjects; Jazz Archives, Knowledge and Expertise; Sonic Identities: The Role of Music in the Production of Cultural Identity, and Media Representation and Cultural Politics. Recent publications include TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGY OF THE TRACE co-edited with Macarena Gomez Barris (Minnesota Press) 2010; "John Coltrane and the Practice of Freedom" in John Coltrane & Black America's Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and The Music (Oxford) 2010; CULTURAL MOVES (California) 2005; and WATCHING RACE: TELEVISION AND THE SIGN OF BLACKNESS 2nd Edition (Minnesota) 2004.
Dr. Rosa-Linda Fregoso, Board Member
Dr. Fregoso is an interdisciplinary scholar and writer. She is the author of six books and edited collections, and has numerous articles published in print and online journals, and edited collections. Fregoso is an emeritus professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz and lives in Oakland, California. Fregoso’s research and teaching reflect her interest in human rights, culture, and feminism. Her publications cover issues of human rights, feminicide, and gender violence, media and visual arts, race, cultural politics and aesthetics, in the Américas. As a member of the editorial collective, Fregoso writes for the online news site, The Feminist Wire. For further information, visit her website at www.rosalindafregoso.com
Photo: Ouida Joi
Karen Kai, Board Member
Ms. Kai is an attorney and community activist who explores and shares her Japanese American heritage, history and culture. Karen was part of the legal team that successfully challenged Fred Korematsu’s conviction for refusing to comply with the military orders interning Japanese Americans during World War II. She was lead researcher and writer for the San Francisco Japantown History Walk, a self-guided tour of San Francisco’s Japantown. Viewing art and culture as a bridge for communication, Karen has helped organize projects linking communities, including “My Name is Jazz,” a residency program bringing Jazz musicians and poets to Rosa Parks Elementary School’s third through fifth grade students, and the World Tree of Hope, an annual public art project created by Rainbow World Fund, an LGBT international aid organization, that displays thousands of origami cranes inscribed with wishes of hope on San Francisco’s City Hall holiday tree. Karen’s personal artistic endeavors include pine needle basketry, origami, and taiko drumming.
Robert Rusky, Board Member - In Memoriam
Robert Rusky was a San Francisco attorney specializing in civil appeals, with a MA in Humanities, and a BA in English Literature. Bob had the honor to be part of Fred Korematsu's coram nobis legal team and to work closely with Min Yasui’s and Gordon Hirabayashi’s legal teams. He also helped lead the successful effort to reclaim San Francisco's Julia Morgan-designed Japanese YWCA building for the Japantown community. Although not himself a musician, Bob came from families of musicians, and loved music in all its forms, especially American jazz and blues. Bob believed strongly in the power of music to lift and heal the spirit, and to illuminate our hearts and minds. He avidly supported Fifth Stream Music’s commitment to teaching jazz and its cultural history in public schools.
Photo: Bob Hsiang
Dr. Leonard Brown, Board Member - In Memoriam
Leonard Brown was a professional musician, teacher, ethnomusicologist, and specialist in multicultural education. He was co-founder and producer of the John Coltrane Memorial Concert (friendsofjcmc.org) and an emeritus professor of African American Studies and Music at Northeastern University/Boston. From 1996 to 2002, Dr. Brown served as senior ethnomusicologist and principal cultural historian to the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, MO, the first national jazz museum in the nation. Brown received Distinguished Scholar awards from the University of Massachusetts/Boston and the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute at Northeastern University. A post-doctorate Ford Fellow, Dr. Brown’s publications include "John Coltrane and Black America’s Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music" (Oxford Univ. Press/2010) and "Boston’s Jazz Legend: The Al Vega Story" (Self published/2011). He was named 2016 Boston Jazz Hero by the Jazz Journalists' Association and was celebrated nationally by progressive musicians until his death on March 7, 2019.
Dr. Olly Wilson, Board Member - In Memoriam
Dr. Wilson was a prominent American composer of contemporary classical music and a musicologist. He pursued his studies at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Illinois, earning a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. He taught at Florida A&M University, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and was an emeritus professor of music at the University of California, Berkeley, retiring in 2002. In the 1970's he received Guggenheim Fellowships to study traditional music in West Africa. He published many scholarly articles on African and African American music. Wilson wrote extensively for chamber, orchestral, and electronic media. He had a long and distinguished career as a composer, scholar, educator, mentor, and advocate of contemporary music until his passing on March 12, 2018.
Photo: Kathy Sloane
Mr. George Yoshida, Vice-Chair - In Memoriam
Mr. Yoshida was a retired music educator, having taught in the Berkeley School District for over 35 years, as well as a jazz musician, community activist, and author. His 1997 publication, Reminiscing in Swingtime, chronicles the history of Japanese American participation in American popular music and has been used as the basis for public educational programs about the Japanese American internment experience during World War II. George made active contributes to the Bay Area Japanese American community, and Fifth Stream Music until his passing on May 13, 2014. He is remembered fondly and greatly missed.