Long Island Arts Alliance’s vice chair Dale Lewis is the 2023 recipient of the annual Gilbert Tilles Award through the Association of Fundraising Professionals. The award will be presented by Roger Tilles, a New York State regent, philanthropist son of the late Gilbert Tilles, at the Long Island chapter of the AFP on Jan. 30 at the Heritage Club in Bethpage.
This recognition is awarded each year to “an outstanding leader” and whose generosity inspires others to give and make a difference in Long Island’s arts community.
Lewis has served as a member of the Arts Alliance leadership since its inception. He is the founder of Long Island Community Foundation’s Arts Reach Fund, which he created after serving for 32 years as executive director of Usdan Summer Camp for the Arts. Lewis is now Usdan’s executive director emeritus.
At Usdan, Lewis was responsible for the camp’s educational and artistic programs and for its community and financial footprint. During Lewis’ tenure, the camp’s curriculum grew as he connected Usdan with Long Island’s donor, business and government communities, and as he conceived capital campaigns to add buildings to Usdan’s 100-acre wooded campus.
In addition to his work with the Arts Alliance and Arts Reach Fund, Lewis conceived and co-produces the Knights/Tilles Center String Orchestra Convocation, a program partnering Long Island’s All-State string players with The Knights, a collective of New York-based orchestral artists.
This year, Arts Reach Fund celebrates 10 years of its “Reach Up for Arts Education,” an initiative to provide school, college and career opportunities for student musicians from high-needs Long Island school districts.
In 2021 Arts Reach Fund produced two recording projects with The Knights. Keeping On is a web-based orchestral composition that is described as “presenting a defiant vision of the Covid-19 Pandemic,” which can be viewed on The Knight’s website. The Knights Before Christmas is an album of original arrangements and performances of holiday music.
Lewis began his career as a cellist with a Carnegie Recital Hall debut at the age of 12 as winner of the New York String Teachers Guild competition. He is a graduate of the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and was the cellist of The Alberg Trio, performing with this ensemble throughout the United States and Europe.
