Marcus Moody - Web Developer
Marcus “Shmoody” Moody is the youngest Black man to bring his own orchestra to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The musician felt traditional university orchestras lacked true diversity and inclusion, so in 2013, he created his own. Three years after he founded The University of Maryland Hip-Hop Orchestra (HHO), they won the campus-wide Battle of the Bands for the chance to open a show for T-Pain and Lil Dicky at the 19,000-seat XFINITY Center. After their stadium debut, the HHO was voted into AFROPUNK's Battle of the Bands semi-finals and broke attendance records at both the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage, playing to more than 4,000 attendees, and the National Arboretum, where nearly 1,000 fans gathered for the rebranded "DMV Hip-Hop Orchestra"