Rounding out the Class of 2025 are Chet Catallo, John Fossitt, and Travie McCoy and Gym Class Heroes.
The Rochester Music Hall of Fame announced today the final three of its six inductees of the Class of 2025. The 12th annual Whirlwind Rochester Music Hall of Fame concert and ceremony will take the stage Sunday, April 13 at 7 p.m. at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre. Tickets are available through the Eastman Theatre box office and via RochesterMusic.org.
New announcement: 2025 Inductees
- Chet Catallo: Six-time Grammy nominee, guitarist, composer, and former member of fusion-jazz band Spyro Gyra
- John Fossitt: Keyboardist and live-show arranger who has been performing and touring with Bruno Mars for 13 years, and is also a songwriter, creative director, and solo artist
- Travie McCoy and Gym Class Heroes: Pop-rap band with Top 10 Billboard hits and winner of the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist in 2007. Travie McCoy is the band’s co-founder and lead singer and a solo artist with a no. 1 hit, “Billionaire.”
A video news release is online at this link
Previously announced 2025 inductees:
- Black Sheep: Popular rock band that recorded for labels Chrysalis and Capitol Records in the 1970s, toured with Kiss and other major acts, and launched the music careers of its band members — including Lou Gramm of Foreigner.
- Record Archive: The music “archive” retail store is a tourist destination that celebrates all genres and formats of music as well as its 50th anniversary in 2025. The owners were instrumental in the creation of National Record Store Day.
- Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra: Founded a century ago by George Eastman, the orchestra entertains and educates the Rochester community with more than 200 programs each year, presented by esteemed musicians and conductors.
ABOUT THE NEWLY ANNOUNCED 2025 INDUCTEES
CHET CATALLO
Born and raised in Rochester, N.Y., Chet Catallo is a guitarist, composer, and producer who is a six-time Grammy nominee. A predominantly self-taught musician, his musical talent was evident at the age of three as he played on toy instruments, and it blossomed by the age 10, when he established his first band.
Catallo was a member of innovative contemporary jazz group Spyro Gyra from 1978 to 1984. Spyro Gyra was one of the first bands to cross over from fusion jazz to pop and topped the charts in multiple categories. The band headlined jazz and music festivals around the world, including performances at Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, and the Newport Jazz Festival, playing on the same bill with legends such as George Benson, Miles Davis, and Herbie Hancock.
Catallo was responsible for writing some of Spyro Gyra’s most popular gold and platinum hits, including “Café Amore,” “Lovin You,” and “It Doesn’t Matter.” A 1981 review of “Café Amore” in Record World magazine said, “Guitarist Chet Catallo displays his many talents on this self -penned piece.”
Catallo, left Spyro Gyra in 1984, along with drummer Eli Konikoff, and formed Chet Catallo & the Cats, which remains a force in jazz music, with an active performance and recording schedule. The album “First Take” is comprised almost entirely of Catallo’s original compositions and features several of Rochester’s most celebrated musicians, who performed regularly with Catallo, including the late Ralph Ortiz, Andy Calabrese, Steve Curry, Charlie Curran, Jim Richmond, and Vince Ercolamento.
Catallo continually composes and creates new material. He personally considers his music to be more than just jazz, and rather something much more adventurous, as he combines Latin influences with funk, R&B, and many pop elements.
“First Take,” which was recorded live and mixed on the spot, was accepted for the nomination process in 13 Grammy categories, including Best Pop Instrumental Jazz Album, Best Instrumental Composition, and Album of the Year.
For many years Catallo has conducted guitar clinics, on behalf of Gibson Guitar Corporation, throughout the United States and Japan.
Chet Catallo will perform live at the April 13 concert and ceremony.
JOHN FOSSITT
John Fossitt has been Bruno Mars’s keyboardist and live-show arranger for 13 years. He is also a solo artist and songwriter — presently contributing to Mars’s next album — and a creative director mentoring several up-and-coming artists internationally.
Fossitt has toured and performed in more than 50 countries with Mars, elevated above the stage with a setup of six different keyboards. He also has backed Mars on all award shows and TV appearances since 2012, including the Super Bowl and, mostly recently, the 2025 Grammy Awards. He also appears in most of Mars’s music videos.
Fossitt, a 2001 graduate of Gates-Chili High School, has been a professional musician for more than 20 years. He is mostly self-taught although he did major in music and music theory at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida. After school he moved to L.A. and began gigging out and backing artists like Amerie, Faith Evans, Jodeci, Travie McCoy, and Jason Derulo.
He met Bruno Mars in 2011 backstage at the Teen Choice Awards, when he backing Derulo. Mars told Fossitt he was impressed watching him play and noted he would like to work together. They exchanged phone numbers and soon after, Mars called Fossitt and said, “Hey man, I need you.”
In a local news interview related to a Jazz Fest performance, Fossitt said, “I have always had a forward vision and whatever I end up doing I take it to the highest level. But I always remember where I came from.”
When in Rochester visiting family he plays services with First Genesis Baptist Church and has twice headlined shows at the Rochester International Jazz Festival — as The Fossitt Project and with The Hooligans, which is Bruno Mars’s band.
Fossitt credits his success to hard work (aka hustle) and making himself available when offers presented themselves: “I was networking and meeting people, playing whatever got thrown my way, playing churches, covering for people, playing l00, 150 gigs. And every time I play, I give it my all.”
John Fossitt will perform live at the April 13 concert and ceremony.
TRAVIE MCCOY AND GYM CLASS HEROES
Gym Class Heroes is pop-punk and multi-platinum-selling band that was founded in 1997 in Geneva, N.Y. by rapper and front man Travie McCoy and drummer Matt McGinley — who met in gym class at Geneva High School when they were 14 years old.
McCoy and McGinley bonded over a common interest in music, including punk and indie rock and hip hop. When a teenager McCoy created a rap group with his father and his brother called “True Life Playas,” and he also would take buses from Geneva to New York City to participate in battle raps.
Since both McCoy and McGinley were drummers, McCoy stepped up to the mic as lead singer. Gym Class Heroes was officially born with the addition of guitarist Milo Bonacci from Geneva and bassist Ryan Geise from Clifton Springs. The four musicians immediately began recording and touring. After releasing their debut album independently, the group signed with Fueled by Ramen, a subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Critics have struggled with associating Gym Class Heroes with a specific genre, since the band’s music exhibits rap, rock, pop, funk, punk, hip hop, and soul elements. Of the band’s five albums, the band’s most famous songs are “Cupid’s Chokehold” and “Stereo Hearts,” with each song’s official video garnering hundreds of millions of views on YouTube (“Stereo Hearts” is close to 1 billion).
“Cupid’s Chokehold” samples heavily from the Supertramp song “Breakfast in America” and reached no. 4 on the U.S. Billboard charts. “Stereo Hearts” also hit no. 4 on the charts and features Adam Levine of Maroon 5 on lead vocals alongside McCoy. Levine has joined the band to perform the song on “Ellen” and “American Music Awards” and McCoy joined Maroon 5 to perform “Stereo Hearts” on “Saturday Night Live.”
Gym Class Heroes has been recognized for music and videos, being named Best New Artist at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2007. A long list of nominations include Best Group and Best Video with a Message for “The Fighter” (MTV Video Music Awards), Ultimate Urban and International Video of the Year for “Stereo Hearts” (MTV European Music Awards), and Choice Single and Choice Group (Teen Choice Awards).
McCoy’s first appearance on MTV was a solo one, performing and winning a nationwide MC battle on the hip-hop show “Direct Effect” in 2002. Band members consistently dabbled in solo projects over the years. McCoy released his first solo album, “Lazarus,” in 2010, which featured the hit single “Billionaire,” which McCoy co-wrote and performed with Bruno Mars. (Of local interest: An Easter egg in the YouTube video that has 628 million views is revealed when McCoy tosses the keys to his car to a hitchhiker — who is holding a cardboard sign with the handwritten destination of “New York — Geneva.”)
McCoy is also a fine artist and for two years studied at Munson-Williams Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, where he majored in illustration. He returned home to Geneva to focus on tattoo artistry and his music, while also teaching art at the local Boys & Girls Club. His first job at age 15 was working in a Geneva tattoo shop. While Gym Class Heroes was working toward success, McCoy lived off the money he made from selling his paintings.
Today McCoy is performing solo shows internationally under his name and Gym Class Heroes. His second album, “Never Slept Better,” was released in 2022.
The four original members of Gym Class Heroes —all natives of the Greater Rochester area — being inducted are Travie McCoy, Matt McGinley Milo Bonacci, and Ryan Geise.
Travie McCoy will perform live at the April 13 concert and ceremony.
Yet to be announced:
- Recipients of The Ned Corman Educators Award, which is given annually to two music educators. The award is named for Ned Corman, who led music programs at Penfield schools for 26 years and founded The Commission Project that connected musicians with schools to bolster music education
- The Douglas Lowry Award, granted via an audition process to graduating high school seniors who will be studying music in college, named for the late dean of the Eastman School of Music.
- Design and artist for this year’s poster — contest entries are being accepted at RochesterMusic.org.