Visiting Faculty
Daniel Egan
Specialization: musical theatre.
Bio: Daniel Egan has an active career in both teaching and performance. He has performed in opera, theater, concert and recording venues in all genres of music while maintaining ties to the classroom through guest lectures at Yale, Penn State, Lawrence University, U.C. Irvine and the Brearley School in New York. At Yale, he created the first seminar on the work of Stephen Sondheim and worked as music coordinator for the Yale Repertory Theater under Lloyd Richards. He is currently Academic Coordinator for Explore New York, an Elderhostel provider under the aegis of Hunter College, where he is also a frequent lecturer on opera, music and theater. As a performer, Egan has appeared as a soloist and/or ensemble singer with the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, Manhattan Theater Club , Mark Morris Dance Group, Musica Sacra, New York Virtuoso Singers and The Lambs Theater, among many others, in addition to several full seasons as a tenor in the resident ensemble at New York City Opera. He has performed at numerous festivals including NAMT New Musicals, Mostly Mozart, Tanglewood and the Bard Festival. Egan participated in Grammy nominated recordings of Sweeney Todd and Ruins of Athens with the New York Philharmonic and Patti Page's 50th Anniversary Concert at Carnegie Hall as well as NYCO's Emmy nominated Live From Lincoln Center performances of La boheme and Madama Butterfly. Most recently he has worked to resuscitate lesser known works in the Rodgers & Hammerstein canon, performing on and assisting in research and casting of a new recording of Allegro. Egan's academic training is in music theory. B.M., summa cum laude, St. Olaf College, M.A. Eastman School of Music, MPhil., Yale University.
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Andrew Gerle
Specialization: music theatre composition.
Bio: Composer, playwright and pianist Andrew Gerle is a three-time recipient of
the Richard Rodgers Award for musical theater writing, administered by the
American Academy of Arts and Letters, for THE TUTOR (book and lyrics by
Maryrose Wood). With lyricist Eddie Sugarman, he won a 2006 Jonathan Larson
Award for their show, MEET JOHN DOE, which received seven Helen Hayes
nominations for its world premiere last season at the Ford's Theatre in
Washington, DC. A revue of his songs, "UP", recently had its premiere at the
Zipper Factory Theater in NYC. Has been a Fellow at the MacDowell Artists'
Colony and a writer-in-residence at the Sundance Theater Institute. As a
musical director, he has worked on dozens of Off-Broadway, regional and
touring productions. He has served as musical director and accompanist for
such distinguished artists as Kitty Carlisle Hart, John Raitt, Jennifer
Holliday, Leslie Uggams, Liz Calloway, Mary Testa and Michael Rupert. As a
classical pianist, he has appeared as soloist with the Baltimore Symphony,
the Yale Symphony, the National Symphony, and on programs for National
Public Radio and Television. Andrew is a *magna cum laude* graduate of Yale
University.
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Sara Kohane
Specializations: vocal coaching, accompanying.
Bio: Sara Kohane holds a BM in piano performance from the University of Michigan and a MM in vocal accompaniment from Boston University, where she was twice the recipient of the Dean’s Scholar award. Her solo and accompanying studies have been with Gyorgy Sandor, Martin Katz, Allen Rogers and Gary Steigerwalt. Ms. Kohane has served as vocal coach and diction instructor at The Hartt School, Boston University, and New England Conservatory, and as head vocal coach at B.U.’s Tanglewood Institute. She has been the accompanist for Boston Concert Opera, Chorus Pro Musica, and the Zamir Chorale, and has accompanied under Leonard Slatkin, Lucas Foss and Peter Sellars. An active collaborative pianist, Ms. Kohane has performed in concerts and radio broadcasts throughout the Northeast, Midwest and Iceland. She is Principal Keyboardist for the Bridgeport Symphony, under the direction of Gustav Meier, and a founding member of the Guastavino Trio. Ms Kohane also serves on the board of the Lotte Lehman Foundation.
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Juraj Kojs
Specialization: composition and music technology.
Bio: Juraj Kojs was born (in 1976) and raised in Slovakia. He is a composer and performer. He has studied composition and computer music with Beth Wiemann, Kristine Burns, Orlando Jacinto Garcia, Fredrick Kaufman, Matthew Burtner, Judith Shatin, and Stefania Serafin. Kojs further participated in master classes with Mario Davidovsky, Judith Shatin, Eric Chasalow, Petr Kotík, Alvin Lucier, Kaija Saariaho, Christian Wolff, Ben Patterson and others. His studies in piano began in Slovakia and continued in the US. Kojs' piano teachers include Maria Vodakova, Alena Komorasova, Eva Pappova, Peter Cerman, Juraj Masinda, Baycka Voronietsky, Phillip Silver, Kemal Gekic and Jose Lopez.
Kojs' compositions were recently featured at the Ostrava Days Festival (Ostrava, Czech Republic), International Computer Music Conference (Copenhagen, Denmark), Sound and Music Computing (Lefkada, Greece), Sonoimagenes (Buenos Aires, Argentina), New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference (Paris, France), Gaudeamus International Music Week (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Spark Festival (Minneapolis, Mn ), SEAMUS National Conference (Salt Lake City, Ut) and Society of Composers Inc. National Conference (Greensboro, NC).
Mr. Kojs is a founding member of SofIA: Sonorities of Interactive Acoustics and MIAMI: Medialogy Interactive Acoustics and Multimodal Interfaces. These groups specialize in interactive audio-visual performance and research. Recently, SofIA performed at the Cornell University, Ithaca. NY, and MIAMI appeared at Sonic Arts Research Center in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
In the fall 2007, Mr. Kojs was in residence at The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, where he composed a piece for Slovak sheep bells and cyber bells, using ACROE's GENESIS software. In December 2007, Mr. Kojs began curating a monthly concert series of computer music and art 12 Nights at the Harold Golen Gallery in the Wynwood District, Miami, Fl.
In May 2008, Mr. Kojs completed his Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia's McIntire Department of Music. His dissertation discusses how cyberinstruments by physical modeling synthesis facilitate a continuum between physical and virtual realities in music. Judith Shatin was his advisor. University of Virginia awarded Juraj Kojs a Dissertation Year Fellowship in the academic year 2006/2007 and the Award for Excellence 2007 in Scholarship in the Humanities & Social Sciences.
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Lonnie Pryce
Specialization: musical theatre performance.
Bio: Born in New York City, Lonny Price grew up in Metuchen, New Jersey. He attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts. His early career was spent performing in off-Broadway productions. His first major Broadway credit was the ill-fated Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along (1981), which underwent constant changes during an unusually long preview period and closed after only sixteen performances. He had better luck with his next project - the Athol Fugard play MASTER HAROLD...and the Boys, in which he portrayed a South African student opposite Danny Glover and Zakes Mokae as the family servants - which ran for eight months.
Price made his directorial debut with the off-Broadway revival of The Education of H* Y* M* A* N K* A* P* L* A* N, followed by The Rothschilds and Juno, both of which received Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Revival. His most significant off-Broadway performing credit is the William Finn – James Lapine musical Falsettoland.
Price's work with the New York Philharmonic includes stagings of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd with Patti LuPone, George Hearn, and Audra McDonald, Leonard Bernstein's Candide with LuPone, Kristin Chenoweth, Sir Thomas Allen, and students from Juilliard, and McDonald's 2006 New Year's Eve concert of movie music for Live from Lincoln Center on PBS.
In 2000, Price co-wrote, directed, and starred in A Class Act, based on the life and career of composer – lyricist Edward Kleban, whose sole Broadway credit was A Chorus Line. The score consisted of songs Kleban had written for other shows that remained unproduced; Price was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical.
Price served as Associate Artistic Director for the American Jewish Theatre from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. He currently is resident director at Musical Theatre Works, the only non-profit theatre dedicated solely to the development of new musicals. In 2007, he directed the Broadway revival of 110 in the Shade.
Price's limited film and television credits include small roles in The Muppets Take Manhattan and Dirty Dancing and guest appearances on The Golden Girls and Law & Order. Behind the scenes, he was a staff director for the ABC soap opera One Life to Live, for which he received an Emmy Award nomination.
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Joshua Rosenblum
Specialization: music theatre composition.
Bio: Joshua Rosenblum received his B.A. in music summa cum laude from Yale College and his M.M. in Piano Performance from the Yale School of Music. He returns to Yale this fall for his second year teaching Composing for Musical Theater.
Rosenblum composed the score to the cult hit musical Fermat's Last Tango, which had a critically acclaimed Off-Broadway production at the York Theatre Company in 2000, and spawned both CD and DVD recordings. Other works for the theater include The Joy of Going Somewhere Definite (Atlantic Theater Company), Arabian Nights, and Einstein’s Dreams, based on the best-selling novel by Alan Lightman. He is also the composer and creator of Bush Is Bad, the smash Off-Broadway musical revue, which Variety called “a sensation.” In addition to the New York production, the show has enjoyed successful runs in Los Angeles and Minneapolis, as well as numerous special benefit performances around the country.
For the concert hall, Rosenblum has written pieces for trumpeter Philip Smith of the New York Philharmonic, flutist Kathleen Nester of the New Jersey Symphony, Mannes School of Music faculty trombonist Haim Avitsur, French hornist Eric Ruske, the Herrick Trio, and the ground-breaking string quartet Ethel, among many others. Recordings of his instrumental music include Impetuosities—Music of Joshua Rosenblum, and the forthcoming Sundry Notes, both available from Albany Records. Rosenblum has won awards from ASCAP and the Meet the Composer Foundation, and his music, including his prize-winning choral setting of Jabberwocky, is published by the Theodore Presser Co.
Also a conductor, Rosenblum has led the orchestras for thirteen Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. Other conducting credits include guest appearances with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the American Repertory Ballet. He has also conducted world premiere productions for the Metropolitan Opera Guild, the B.A.M. Next Wave Festival, Playwrights Horizons, and Lincoln Center Theater, as well as the soundtracks to five major motion pictures.
As a music journalist, Rosenblum has contributed articles to Newsday and Stagebill, as well as over 300 CD and concert reviews for Opera News. He lives in New York City with his wife, singer and author Joanne Lessner, and their two children, Julian and Phoebe.
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Mark Spicer
Specialization: music theory.
Bio: Mark Spicer is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the CUNY Graduate Center, and also Director of Undergraduate Studies in Music at Hunter College (on sabbatical leave in 2008-09). A native of Bedford, England, Spicer moved to the US as a teenager, receiving his B.Mus. and M.Mus. degrees from the University of North Texas (1987, 1990) and his Ph.D. in music theory from Yale University (2001). Prof. Spicer specializes in the reception history and analysis of popular music, and his writings on this subject have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Contemporary Music Review, Music Theory Online, twentieth-century music, and other scholarly journals, as well as three essay collections. Among his current projects, he is completing an analytical article on the structure and affect of choruses in recent pop and rock songs, and conducting research for a book that will explore how certain pop and rock musicians since the early 1970s have confronted their anxiety of influence towards the Beatles, provisionally titled In the Beatles' Wake. In addition to his scholarship and teaching, Prof. Spicer maintains an active parallel career as a professional keyboardist and vocalist, having worked with several groups in the US and the UK since the 1980s. In the early 1990s, he was a founding member of the critically acclaimed group Little Jack Melody and His Young Turks, and can be heard on their first two CDs, On the Blank Generation (1991) and World of Fireworks (1994). He continues to take the stage most weekends with his own "electric R&B" group, the Bernadettes.
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