Residency Programs
About Us
Staff & Board
Mike Halverson, Director of Education
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Mike Halverson has been a teacher in Haiti, a journalist in Budapest, a TV cameraman in Virginia, played guitar in punk rock bands in the USA and Europe, co-founded a theater company in Berlin, tutored adults in Brooklyn, and learned all about arts education in NYC as director of programs at Stages of Learning and executive associate at the Center for Arts Education. As a freelance consultant, he has helped to create arts learning opportunities at the Park Avenue Amory and the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation, among others, as well as serving on panels for NYSCA and the Brooklyn and Queens arts councils. Mike has a master’s degree from the College of William & Mary and completed three years of PhD work in international and comparative education at Humboldt University, Berlin.
Justin Monsen, Program & Marketing Manager
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Justin was born and raised in Japan and has lived in Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and Norway before making New York City his home. Prior to joining MNMP, Justin was an assistant media planner at Mindshare, which planned marketing strategies for clients including SAP, Sprint, and HSBC. He left Mindshare and joined MNMP in March 2009, first as a performance intern and then in July as MNMP’s performance and marketing associate. Justin holds a B.A. in Composition from the University of Vermont and has released two CD’s as composer and leader.
Franny Geller, Finance Associate
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Franny Geller holds a BA in music from Queens College and comes to MNMP from The Western Wind Vocal Ensemble, where she coordinated adult workshops in ensemble singing, kept books and managed the office. A devotee of choral and a cappella music from as far back as she can remember, she currently enjoys performing with the Bach Choir of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church and the Columbia-based medieval ensemble Guildsingers. Franny is also a co-founder, performing member and board member of C4, a collective of choral composers and conductors committed to winning a broader audience for new music. In addition to music, Franny has an incurable enthusiasm for New York City’s wildlife, which has led to her to spend the last two years volunteering for the New York City Audubon Society.
Allyson Morgan, Education Associate
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Allyson Morgan holds dual degrees in Theatre and Communications, with Honors and Distinction from The Ohio State University. She comes to MNMP from the award-winning Broadway education outreach program StudentsLive, where she served as Program/Marketing Director for four years. Allyson possesses teaching artist experience through StudentsLive, as well as through New York Theatre Experiment (NYTE), an emerging off-off-Broadway theatre company, which she co-founded in 2004. NYTE additionally has a theatre education outreach program known as Lift Every Voice, which serves at-risk teens in the New York public school system.
Santino Lo, Marketing & Development Assistant
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Santino Lo is currently a senior at SUNY Purchase College and will be graduating in May 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts in Arts Management and a Bachelor of Music in Music (Tuba) Performance. Santino is very active both in his performance and administrative career. Spring of 2010, Santino received the Presser Foundation Award for musical excellence and the Student Government President’s Award for being an outstanding community leader. Santino’s past administrative experience includes being the Assistant Manager for Purchase Symphony Orchestra for two seasons from 2008-2010, Office Intern for the Purchase College Conservatory of Music (Spring 2010), and Marketing Intern at the New York City Opera (Summer 2009). He was also active in the campus-wide effort toward Haiti relief – Project Haiti, and organized a collaborative performance featuring the SUNY Purchase Conservatories of Visual Art, Dance, Design Technology, and Music. Santino is also a resident assistant and ESL & Writing tutor at SUNY Purchase.
Earlton Singleton, Chair
Earlton Singleton is an IT professional in a career that has spanned nearly two decades with just two firms. He is a Senior Vice President/Principal of Technology at a major financial services company. In this capacity he has worked with and led teams that have designed, developed and implemented capital markets/Investment banking technology used globally. Most recently, he has led technology operational risk functions, broadly, for both capital markets technology and enterprise technology. A founding Board-Chair for InnerAct Productions, Earlton served six-terms for this non-profit theatrical arts organization committed to opening opportunities in theatre for artists and technical professionals of color. He holds a B.A. from New York University College of Arts and Sciences, with a dual-major in Computer Science and Math, and a dual-minor in French and Spanish.
Charles Nordlander, Vice Chair
Charles Nordlander is currently Vice President of Development & Programming for the History Channel, where he oversees a team of Executive Producers responsible for the creation of original series and specials for the network. Additionally, he is charged with creating and implementing innovative programming strategies that expand the brand across multiple platforms including history.com. Prior to joining History, Nordlander served as Vice President of Development for Food Network, where he developed and launched a slate of new series that reinvented Food’s primetime schedule. Earlier, Nordlander served as Director of Programming for A&E and was a founding partner in Glow in the Dark, a NY-based production company. He began his television career as Head Writer for the PBS children’s series, Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego?
While having no formal music education or training, Nordlander has had a passionate, life-long interest in music that redefines the boundaries of what music can be. His collection of more than 5,000 CDs has long since outgrown the boundaries of his NYC-sized apartment.
Daniel Gould, Treasurer
Daniel Gould has shown a lifelong commitment to music and entrepreneurship. Born and raised in Seattle, WA, Daniel learned piano, saxophone, and bass, and made his first professional stage appearance with his high school big band at the Montreaux Jazz Festival in 1994. Since then he has been in a variety of groups from funk, to Latin, to rock. He received his B.A. in Music, Science and Technology from Stanford University in 1999 and founded a startup called SphereMedia to provide market research to the music industry via personalized radio. From there, he went to MusicMatch, where he was Vice President of Web Services and built one of the first profitable online radio subscription services, which was later acquired by Yahoo! In 2002, Daniel moved back to Seattle and opened Vent Studios, where he specialized in hiphop recording and production. In 2005, he launched Wax Orchard, an independent record label distributed by Koch Entertainment. Daniel graduated from Columbia Law School in 2008. While there, he was Co-President of the Entertainment and Sports Law Society, and published an article on copyright termination in the Journal of Law and the Arts. During his first summer at law school, Daniel worked for the chair of the AIPLA Copyright Committee analyzing and summarizing recent copyright cases for a copyright desk reference which was published in 2009. Today, Daniel is an associate in the Media & Entertainment Practice of Greenberg Traurig’s New York office. Daniel represents clients in the United States broadcast, cable television, and online sectors, with an emphasis on distribution and licensing agreements.
John Clark, Secretary
Horn player, arranger, and composer, John Clark has performed all over the world with a tremendous diversity of musicians, in a variety of musical arenas: jazz, pop, Broadway, classical, and commercial studio work. A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music where he studied horn, composition, improvisation, and piano, Mr. Clark established his jazz credentials with a series of recordings with his own band, the most recent being the album I Will on the Postcards label (nominated for Record of the Year by the National Association of Independent Record Dealers in 1998.) The list of artists with whom he has recorded (many of them Grammy winners) or performed is enormous, and includes Miles Davis, Hank Jones, David Sanchez, Chick Corea, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Sean P-Diddy Combs, Carly Simon, Billy Joel, Sting, Linda Ronstadt, Leonard Bernstein, the Boston Symphony, among many others. The recipient of a composition grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Mr. Clark’s work has been performed and recorded by the Gil Evans Orchestra, McCoy Tyner Big Band, Paul Winter Consort the Imani Winds, the Aspen Wind Quintet, and the Pugh-Taylor Project, among others. Mr. Clark is also the recipient of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences award for Most Valuable Player in the Recording Field, as well as the Downbeat
Critics’ Poll. He is a Conn-Selmer artist and has conducted many workshops and master classes.
Ruth Mueller-Maerki
Before moving to the New York area in 1980, Ruth Mueller-Maerki taught elementary and high school in her native Switzerland. After raising her three children she first obtained a masters degree in music education and subsequently taught pre-school music in Westchester, and later received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in classical composition from the Manhattan School of Music. Ruth has been engaged in various volunteer activities in and around New York city. For 12 years she served as the head usher at the Cathedral St. John the Divine where she is now active as a docent. She served on the board of Hoff-Barthelson Music School and on the vestry of the Congregation of St. Saviour at the cathedral.
Janine Beach
Janine Beach is an associate at McKinsey & Company. At McKinsey, she has worked on studies across a variety of industries with a primary interest in media and entertainment and social sector spaces. Prior to McKinsey, Janine practiced securities law at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP where she was resident in both the New York and London offices. While at Cleary Gottlieb, she represented families of victims of the World Trade Center attacks as part of the 9/11 Project and was lead counsel for Supreme Achievers Youth Services, a non-profit enrichment program for underprivileged youth in Brooklyn. Janine graduated from McGill University with a B.A. (Joint Honors) and received her J.D. from Columbia Law School and her M.B.A. from Columbia Business School. During her graduate studies she held positions at Goldman Sachs, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. She is an accomplished classical pianist, and holds ARCT diplomas in both piano performance (First Class Honors with Distinction) and piano pedagogy (First Class Honors) from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
Alec Hanley Bemis
Alec Hanley Bemis’s writing has appeared in LA Weekly, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Spin, and the Los Angeles Times, among many other publications. In 2001, he co-founded Brassland, a record label that documents the work of a growing community of musicians, including The National and Nico Muhly. Currently he continues to run Brassland, consults for the UK-based music company All Tomorrow’s Parties, and acts as general manager at contemporary classical label Cantaloupe Music. In the past, he has taught in New York University’s graduate journalism program, produced projects for new media design firm Funny Garbage, and written for Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve. He graduated from Yale University with an honors degree in American intellectual and cultural history.
Franz Hackl
Born in the heart of the Alps in Tyrol, Austria, Franz Hackl learned trumpet playing and the profession of brass instrument making from his father. At age eleven, Franz became a trumpet soloist with several brass bands and started to tour internationally. He is an alumnus of the Conservatory of the City of Vienna, and received a M.S degree from The Manhattan School of Music (studied with Lew Soloff). After frequent collaborations with leading international artists in the jazz field, he focused more and more on composition and leading his own projects. Franz’s stylistic versatility grew to include works for full orchestra, diverse chamber groups, choral works and multi-media events. Among them original music for: Year of the Mountains launch event UN New York, U-Held I & II (renderings of Richard Strauss’s Heldenleben), Opening of the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York. Numerous commissions from festivals like: Tiroler Festpiele Erl, Klangspuren Festival, Festival der Regionen, Europäisches Forum Alpbach. In his co-owned postproduction studio in New York, he creates, with partner John Davis, music for film and advertising. Since 1993 he also leads his own festival and academy named Outreach in Schwarz in Tirol. B3+ further pushes the envelope for Franz. He is very happy to be part of this trio and to be inspired by the masters John Clark on French horn and Dave Taylor on bass trombone. Discovering what colors, sounds, shapes, musical expressions and level of communication is possible never felt so good.
David Taylor
David Taylor has played a pioneering role in the development of the bass trombone, commissioning many works for the instrument. Taylor first played with the American Symphony under Leopold Stokowski in 1967 and, at the same time, began playing in jazz and big bands in New York. Following the American Symphony came concerts with the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez and membership in the bands of Gil Evans, Chuck Israels, George Gruntz, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis and Bob Mintzer. His bass trombone began to be heard on dozens of recordings with major jazz and popular artists including Duke Ellington, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones and Quincy Jones. In 1979, David Taylor embarked on a period of commissioning music for the bass trombone and in the years following gave premieres of significant works including compositions by Charles Wourinen, Alan Hovhaness, Frederic Rzewski, David Liebman and George Perle. In 1982, he was awarded the Most Valuable Player Award on bass trombone given by the New York Chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS)–the first award given to a bass trombonist by the New York Chapter. He was to win that award for five consecutive years, the maximum allowed time. In 1987, he was awarded the New York NARAS’ Most Valuable Player Virtuoso Award, an honor no other bass trombonist has received before or since. His first full solo recital was given, at the age of 40, at Carnegie Hall in 1984. Two more New York recitals followed, each with significant new premieres, as well as his first solo album, David Taylor-Bass Trombone. His best selling recording, the Pugh-Taylor Project, produced in conjunction with tenor trombonist Jim Pugh, continues to garner recognition for its originality, sound, and recording technique.
Santiago Dellepiane
Santiago Dellepiane is a Senior Managing Consultant with LECG, LLC. For over ten years he has worked on a large variety of economic, business valuation, damages assessment, and strategy consulting engagements for clients in the United States, Latin America and Europe. Santiago performs valuations and assists in the development and provision of expert testimony for regulatory proceedings, international arbitration and litigation. Before joining LECG’s New York office, Santiago worked for LECG in Washington, DC and Buenos Aires, Argentina. During 2003 and 2004, Santiago worked for Nextel-Sprint as a strategy consultant, developing a performance management framework for support functions.
Santiago holds an undergraduate degree in Economics from CEMA University in Argentina, and is currently completing a Masters degree in Media Studies at The New School University. During 2009, he was part of The Lower Manhattan Project, a task force between the New School and the U.S. Department of Energy, tasked with analyzing drastic climate change scenarios and their relationship with economic crises.
Santiago’s interest in arts began with film; during college years he studied scriptwriting and then shot a documentary and a short drama film. More recently, he studied photography at ICP in New York. Several magazines in Argentina have published his photographs and articles, most of which feature the life of artists in New York City.
Staff
