Board of Directors

Board

Scott Mason, President
As a child raised in a Tucson church with a wonderful organist and pipe organ, I grew to love the music of J. S. Bach. In high school, I taught myself to play keyboard from Bach’s music, and expanded my interest in the Baroque by building a harpsichord during my freshman year at the University of Arizona. While I decided to study electrical engineering as my primary degree and profession, I committed myself to early music as an avocation for virtually every other waking moment, a lifestyle that I have continued to this day.

Through the years, I have constantly pursued Renaissance and Baroque music, learning recorder, viola da gamba, lute, voice, and continue to play harpsichord, clavichord, and pipe organ. I enjoy singing Anglican Evensong services when the opportunity arises. I am proud to be the president of three volunteer organizations, all of which were founded in Tucson by my long-time friend, Ulrich Michael. These organizations are Arizona Early Music, the Tucson Recorder Society, a chapter of the American Recorder Society, and the Viola da Gamba Society–Southern Arizona, a chapter of the Viola da Gamba Society of America.

I have two grown children, and five grandchildren, all of whom live locally.  When not playing early music, I enjoy bicycling, hiking, and photography.

Laurie Camm, Treasurer
I came to love early music from my choral experiences: what we call “early music” was a staple in high school and college choirs, church choirs, or Amor Artis (NYC). I was a paid female singer at an all-male Oxford college where the college’s music students had to sing their way through the required syllabus in the chapel choir. That was a whirlwind from medieval chant right through to modern compositions but the core was Renaissance and Baroque. 

I grew up in Brooklyn and spent most of my career in finance, mostly in New York. When my husband and I decided enough was enough, we moved to Tucson “to live somewhere sunny.” We moved on a whim, without thought or expectation, but to my surprise and delight, Tucson turned out to have early music concerts of the quality of “Carnegie Hall,” my NY-oriented gold standard. So I wanted to be a part of it and make sure that this very special artistry and repertory could stay a part of my life, as well as introduce others to the intimate way historical performance takes us to places and people of long ago and far away.

Staff

Benjamin K. Roe is the incoming Executive Director of Arizona Early Music and an award-winning arts, media, and nonprofit leader whose career has been devoted to connecting artists, audiences, and communities through music.

Since 2014, Roe has served as President & CEO of the Heifetz International Music Institute in Staunton, Virginia, one of the nation’s leading summer programs for gifted young string musicians. During his tenure, the Institute expanded its educational programs, scholarship support, community engagement, touring activities, and international media reach. He launched numerous artistic and audience-building initiatives, including the multi-genre Heifetz Hootenannies, Bach Around the Clock, the Heifetz Ensemble in Residence, and Heifetz On Air, a weekly public radio program and podcast. He also oversaw the growth of the Institute’s YouTube channel to nearly 20 million views and 65,000 subscribers.

Roe guided Heifetz through a major artistic leadership transition and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, led its rapid transformation into the first major summer music institute to move its entire program online. The resulting virtual season connected 100 students and 40 faculty members across nine time zones and reached more than 500,000 viewers. In recognition of this work, Musical America named him one of its Top 30 Professionals of the Year in 2022. He received the Circle of Excellence in the Arts Award from James Madison University in 2023.

A longtime advocate for historically informed performance, Roe served on the national Board of Directors of Early Music America and has worked with many of the field’s leading artists, ensembles, and presenters. At Heifetz, he helped create the Heifetz Baroque initiative, introducing period-performance practices and repertoire into the Institute’s educational and concert activities.

Before joining Heifetz, Roe held senior leadership positions at WGBH in Boston, WDAV Classical Public Radio, and National Public Radio. During two decades at NPR, he served in roles ranging from Moscow correspondent and producer of Performance Today to Director of Music and Music Initiatives. His broadcast and recording work has been recognized with a GRAMMY Award, a George Foster Peabody Award, an ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award, the Chairman’s Medal from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a National Medal of Arts awarded to NPR’s Cultural Programming division.

An active lecturer, interviewer, and educator, Roe has presented courses for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at the University of Virginia and the University of Richmond. He is a graduate of Middlebury College, where he studied music and history, and pursued graduate study in broadcast administration at Boston University.