Chamber Music Monterey Bay has a new leader.

Chamber Music Monterey Bay (CMMB) has a new executive director, England-born music educator and administration expert Elizabeth Brooks—just in time for the upcoming 59th concert season.

Brooks moved to Salinas in 2019 and joined CMMB in 2022, serving as an operations manager since 2023.

“It's a great community to be in,” she says about her experience with CMMB. “The musicians we bring play all over the world. I was quite surprised by the level of the quality of music and the backing by people here, who want that music.”

Brooks is inspired by the fact that, thanks to CMMB’s outreach, so many local children have access to world-class chamber music.

“They all get to come to the concerts with their families and sit in the front," she says. "They also get to meet the musicians. I know that kids are a little bit daunted when they meet them, but they're so friendly. Most of them teach music anyway and are used to dealing with kids.”

The new executive director is a musician herself. She played clarinet from the age of 11, and later on she took up viola and also played flute.

“But I was never interested in playing in an orchestra,” she says. “I chose the education path. I prefer to play in my spare time, with my friends.”

In her role, Brooks deals with contracts, runs the budget and the bank accounts, organizes the outreach to the schools and the community, and makes sure the musicians have everything they need.

“No job is too small," she says. “I mean, if an artist wants a certain snack bar, I will make sure they get it. When there’s a young group, I meet them for their rehearsal time just to make sure they've made it to Sunset Center and they've got everything they need. I really like to mother them.”

While Brooks doesn’t do the programming, she has plenty of things to say about the upcoming season that starts in late fall.

“I cannot wait to hear the brand new piece by Chris Rogerson commissioned by us," she says. "He is so young and talented. We really have a history of selecting great talents here.”

The current artistic director of CMMB is Luke Fleming, for whom this will be the first season.

“He's a professional viola player and he's actually playing at our first concert on November 1,” Brooks says.  


The 59th season consists of five evening concerts by world-class ensembles at the Sunset Center in Carmel. On Nov. 1, the Escher String Quartet, internationally acclaimed for its nuanced interpretations and praised as “truly exceptional” by The Guardian, will play. They will be joined by Fleming and Manhattan Chamber Players. The ensemble will play Mozart, Brahms and the above-mentioned Rogerson’s String Quintet.

Other concert dates are Feb. 28, March 28 and May 2, the season finale. In 2026, CMMB will celebrate its 60th anniversary.