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Teaching Artists are alphabetized by first name. Click on an individual TA's name to read their biography.
A native of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Abigail Browning moved to Nashville in 2002 to continue her education at Vanderbilt University. After she received her BA in Creative Writing, she went on to open her own dance studio in 2006, called Vintage Rhythm, in Bellevue. Specializing in the reproduction of dances from the early 1900's to 1950's, Abigail is an amateur historian of swing music and social dancing of the era. When she's not traveling, competing, and teaching dancing around the country, Abigail Browning also teaches community photography classes at Vanderbilt's Sarratt Art Studios. Abigail participated in Summer Institute 2007, an Arts Integration intensive for educators grounded in ArtSmart teaching practice. She joins the Teaching Artist roster for TPAC Education’s school residency program this year.
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Amanda Roche divides her time between dance, writing, Teaching Artistry and mothering two children. She is the co-founder of Blue Moves Modern Dance Company based in Murfreesboro, TN. Since its inception in 1989, she has remained a performing member and choreographer, choreographing her way through life's milestones. She has often used choreography to bring attention to human rights concerns. Her current work in progress centers around the Tibetans' struggle for religious and cultural freedom under the oppressive regime of the Chinese government. |
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Amanda's modern dance training includes an eclectic mix of Graham, Cunningham and Horton techniques, with Sonjè Mayo among her most influential instructors. At conferences and intensives she has studied under such masters as Denise Jefferson, Freddy Moore, the late Chuck Davis and others. She holds a minor in dance from MTSU, where she earned an Honors Degree with majors in journalism and English. In recent years, Amanda has become an advocate for the arts and believes in the power of authentic experiences with the arts to heighten awareness, deepen sensitivity and invigorate both children and adults alike through discovery-based learning. Amanda has been a Teaching Artist with TPAC Education’s school residency program ArtSmart since 2000, and has recently enjoyed the privilege of working with a team of talented colleagues to facilitate seminars for Teacher and Teaching Artist professional development.
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Aundra W. LaFayette is a native of Nashville, Tennessee and has been a teaching artist and choreographer for at least 35 years. Before moving back to the area, Aundra was the Dance Coordinator for ArtsReach Studio, a program through Kentucky Center for the Arts, as well as workshops for Jefferson County School System and Actors Theatre of Louisville. Other educational credits include Desisto Therapeutic Boarding School in the Berkshires as the Director and Choreographer (which included a production of HAIR performed in Talin, Soviet Union). After 25 years on the east coast teaching and choreographing, Ms. LaFayette returned to her hometown of Nashville and developed a program for the Hume Fogg Academic Magnet School. Aundra has trained with Philadelphia Dance Academy, Alvin Ailey Dance Workshops, to name a few, as well as participated in the International Choreographers festival in Antigua and Guatemala in 1999. Aundra W. LaFayette is a member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. She joined the ArtSmart Teaching Artist faculty in December 2006
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Beth Anne Musiker has called Nashville home for more than a dozen years. Over the years she has lent her voice to jingles, voice-overs, animated film scores, theatrical productions and a variety of Country projects both live and recorded. In addition to pursuing her own career as a recording artist, Beth Anne has become quite active in arts education and training in Nashville working as a live performance coach, musical director/conductor for high school musicals and, of course, as a TPAC Education ArtSmart Teaching Artist. Through her company, Redesigned Memories, she also creates high-end designer pillows, quilts and more using vintage concert t-shirts. Beth Anne is a graduate of Northwestern University with a degree in theater and a minor in art history. She has trained extensively as a classical pianist and violinist, studied voice with top vocal instructors and spent many years in New York City as a working singer/actress/dancer. She has also had occasion to work as a director/choreographer, vocal arranger and record producer, as well. She has performed many styles of music-from Rock to Broadway – and in virtually every type of venue- from small clubs to outdoor audiences of 12,000. Her Nashville debut was an appearance in the national tour of Roger Miller’s Big River. Other career highlights include performing in Germany as the wall came down and working with some of the greatest composers, lyricists and songwriters of our time, including Jule Styne (Funny Girl), Sheldon Harnick (Fiddler on the Roof), Jimmy Webb (Up, Up and Away), Wayne Carson (Always on my Mind), Buzz Cason (Everlasting Love), and David Freeman (No More ‘I Love Yous’) and Victoria Shaw (The River), to name a few. Beth Anne performed the National Anthem for the Nashville Predators in their inaugural season and was a featured participant in the TPAC Inside/Out concert series, Bravo Broadway from 2001-2004. Beth Anne can be seen and heard at clubs throughout Nashville and on these websites:
http://www.myspace.com/bethannemusiker
http://www.southernartistry.org/Beth_Anne_Musiker.
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Carrie Ann Gerow earned her B.F.A. in Dance from New World School of the Arts in Miami in 1999. She has danced with Nashville Ballet II, Momentum Dance Company, and Karen Peterson and Dancers. She currently serves on the faculty of the School of Nashville Ballet, and Belmont University's dance program. She is a dancer with the Chinese Arts Alliance of Nashville and Epiphany Dance Company where she is also a guest choreographer. She joined the ArtSmart faculty in December 2006.
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Claire Syler is excited to begin her second year as a TPAC Education ArtSmart Teaching Artist! She is the Education & Outreach Coordinator for the Nashville Shakespeare Festival, as well as an adjunct faculty member at Belmont University in the Department of Theatre. As an actress, director, and Teaching Artist her professional credits include the Nashville Shakespeare Festival, Green Room Projects, People’s Branch Theatre, Nashville Children’s Theatre, Playhouse on the Square, Missouri Repertory Theatre, and the Huron Playhouse. Claire received a B.A. in Theatre from the University of Missouri and a M.F.A. in Directing from the University of Memphis.
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A true Gemini, Dorothy Marie Robinson is a stage director, producer, actor, teacher, sculptor, designer and writer. Robinson spent the first 21 years of her life in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania trying to figure out how to pursue a life in the arts. She saved enough money for one year at the Pittsburgh Playhouse School of Theatre and was awarded a scholarship for the second year. Moving to New York City, Dorothy studied advanced acting with the renowned Uta Hagen and landed her first professional contract in the national tour of Gypsy sharing the stage with Bernadette Peters. Robinson came to directing through her acting experience, which she finds essential. She has participated in master workshops held at Columbia University and is strongly influenced by the work of Anne Bogart, whose work and rehearsal process she observed at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. |
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Dorothy Marie Robinson has worked on and off-Broadway and in the resident companies of Barter Theatre (1968-1992), Stage West, Berkshire Playhouse, and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. In 1983 she cast and directed Kevin Spacey in The Mousetrap. Relocating to Nashville, Dorothy spent eight years as Artistic Director of LifeWork Productions taking plays of social significance to some 100,000 students and has also been a Teaching Artist in the public schools since 1988. She produced and directed The Cave Dwellers, Quilters, Open Admissions, Vincent, Transformations, How She Played The Game, The Skin Of Our Teeth and Marvins Room for Nashville Public Theatre. She is a long time member of both Actors Equity Association and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. As an actor, her favorite role was in Brendan Behan’s The Hostage. She appeared in You Can’t Take It With You, ‘Night Mother, The Sound of Music and To Kill A Mockingbird with Tennessee Repertory Theatre. Dorothy was asked to restage a successful production of Steel Magnolias in 2000 for the Dixie Theatre in Apalachicola, FL and also played the role of Ouiser. She returned to direct Driving Miss Daisy in 2006. In 2002, after completing The Hollywood Film Institute training and a screenplay-writing class with Steve Womack, Robinson ventured into Independent movie-making…producing, co-writing and directing Alternate Routes. She has also adapted this screenplay into a multi-media theatre presentation. Fascinated by the assemblage sculpture of Louise Nevelson, Robinson creates dimensional landscapes and “stages” out of containers and wood scraps that are usually thrown away. The way that a human functions in architectural space has always been of interest to her. “Most people have no idea how much their surroundings effect them.” She was an active member of the new-building committee for Family & Children’s Service and First Church Unity, has designed many homes of which two have been built, the entrance for an office in Venture Park, consulted on two sites for “Curves,” and renovated several living spaces. Currently Dorothy serves as President of a condominium Homeowner’s Association. Her biography is included in Who’s Who in America (2005); Who’s Who in American Women (2006). She lives with her ten-pound companion, Lucille Belle in a space overlooking Nashville’s Cumberland River with a view of the sunset.
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After earning a BS in Criminology and Religion and a MS in Mass Communication at Florida State, F. Lynne Bachleda became the associate producer for two PBS documentaries at the Tallahassee affiliate. Returning home to Tennessee, Lynne administered the literature and media arts programs at the Tennessee Arts Commission. In 1981, she began freelancing as a graphic designer, photographer, scriptwriter and was a picture researcher for Time-Life Books. As the co-director of Sinking Creek, Nashville's independent film and video festival, in 1988 Lynne started her writing and teaching relationship with TPAC EDUCATION. Her curatorial work expanded in the 1990's when she collaborated with local, regional, and national design firms and museums to plan their social history, sports, humanities, botanical, and art exhibitions. As a non-fiction writer, Lynne's work has appeared in Homeworks, the Tennessee Arts |
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Commission's bicentennial anthology, and she researched and composed the interpretive copy engraved on the Tennessee Bicentennial Mall for the Tennessee State Museum. Her first book, Blue Mountain: A Spiritual Anthology Celebrating the Earth was named to amazon.com's Spiritual and Inspirational Top 10 Books of 2000, and her regional series Dangerous Wildlife: A Guide to Safe Encounters at Home and in the Wild was launched in the spring of 2002. In 2004 she choreographed her first dance, “Atma Jyoti,” for the University School of Nashville, and Loyola Press of Chicago published Canticles of the Earth. In 2005 Menasha Ridge Press published A Guide to the Natchez Trace Parkway. She continues to teach and is writing her next book, From the Ground Up: What the Earth Teaches About Change.
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Born in Batesville, Mississippi and having lived in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and now Tennessee, Ginger Newman is a born and bred southerner to the core! She attended eight schools in twelve years and graduated valedictorian of her Texas high school. After Belmont University as a Vocal Performance major she went on to win the regional division of the Metropolitan Opera auditions. Ginger has been a professional artist for thirty years: in that time she has toured all fifty states and been around the world in theatres, concert halls, convention centers and cruise ships such as the QEII, performing her One Woman Show! She has performed locally in many shows at Tennessee Repertory Theatre, Nashville Opera and as a guest artist with the Nashville Symphony and on board the General Jackson showboat. Most recently, she performed with Mike Eldred for the TPAC Gala Fest de Ville in Jackson Hall. Currently she coaches junior and senior Musical Theatre Majors as an adjunct professor at Belmont University (she also was the Musical Director for their production of SEUSSICAL!) She also is an Adjunct Voice Professor at Cumberland University as well as performing her own shows whenever possible. For the past three years she was the Musical Director/Conductor for the University School Middle School production of their fall musical at the beautiful Ingram Hall. (Yes, there were 102 middle school students on one stage singing their little hearts out to sold out audiences!) She is the Education Director of Green Room Projects which works with at-risk youth creating programs to empower them using theatre, music, and anything else we can come up with! As a veteran TPAC Education ArtSmart Teaching Artist, her greatest inspiration continually comes from the works of art and the students who share their creative genius during the processes. Her own son, Daniel, shares her philosophy: always listen, learn, laugh and love...not necessarily in that order!
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Holly Cannon-Hesse began her studies at Middle Tennessee State University where she majored in Speech and Theatre with an emphasis on education and minored in dance. She studied under the likes of Anne Holland, Nancy Turpin, and Rossi Turner learning a variety of disciplines, such as Modern, Ballet, and choreographic technique. Holly has continued her education at many Black Collage Dance Exchanges and many different workshops. Always a dancer at heart, Holly has been performing since High School and continues to do so today. Holly began dancing with a small company in Murfreesboro Tennessee, under the direction of Rossi Turner. In 1994 she found a home with the local Blue Moves Modern Dance Company as a dancer and choreographer. Blue Moves tackles important social and personal issues in a very quirky and creative that makes you laugh without diluting the seriousness of their message. Holly also performed with the Glen Fredrick’s Repertory Theater in Tsunami Echoes: Katrina Cries, a benefit for those devastated by the recent deadly storms that no one should soon forget. Holly has recently been working with the company Whispers. Whispers’ main goal is to shed light on the many social issues we face today. Holly also performs, upon occasion, with a vaudeville act called The Marvelous Mangos. Holly has been working with children for over ten years teaching dance, creative movement, and the importance of health and fitness. Holly began teaching in Murfreesboro for the Extended School Program (ESP) in several local elementary schools. While in Murfreesboro, she also taught for the Governor’s School Program under the direction of Nancy Turpin. She then branched out to Smithville, Tennessee where she opened up her own studio, The Right Moves; A Studio Dedicated to the Arts. She offered classes in all the fundamentals of dance, but also had self defense and guitar lessons readily available. She then moved to Knoxville, Tennessee for a year, where she found herself working for the highly reputable Rocky Hill Studio for the Arts teaching pre- ballet and African classes. Upon her return to Nashville four years ago, Holly began working with the company KidSkills. She teaches dance and gymnastics while emphasizing the importance of health and fitness; The Stuff Every Kid Should Know. Holly is very excited to be working with the Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s Teaching Artist residency program, which she joined in December 2006. She looks forward to a journey of discovery while embracing aesthetic education.
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Greetings – my name is Jamie London. I have had the great privilege of serving as a Teaching Artist for Artsmart since 1998, for Theatrecraft since 1997, and for Stageworks Performing Arts Academy & Camps since 2000. I also was site director for Project for Neighborhood Aftercare at Lockland Middle School from 1997- 2000, and I served as Youth Ministry Director at Unity Church for Positive Living from 2000 – 2002. In addition to my Teaching Artist opportunities I am currently acting as a substitute for the Wilson County School system, attending MTSU pursuing a degree in Theatre Education, and creating and facilitating spiritual workshops for Unity Churches and spiritual retreats.
I am blessed to be “momma’ to an amazing 7 ½ year old daughter named Stella, and partner and wife of 16 years to “super- tour-manager” Don. This fall marks my 30th year on my incredible journey in performing arts. I am so lucky to have had so many amazing performance opportunities in so many forms of music, theatre and dance. My goals this year as your Teaching Artist are: 1. to return to the original model of Teaching Artist and Classroom Teacher partnership; 2. to co-create with you lessons containing the true aesthetic education paradigm, that will inspire students to intellectually posses the WOA; and 3. to exemplify the Artsmart approach in the most positive and exciting way imaginable. I look forward to working with you this year.
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Jill Massie has been a TPAC Education ArtSmart Teaching Artist since 1993. She is an actor, director and teacher. Jill recently appeared in two films year and is planning a revival of the original musical, Maybe in Another Lifetime, which she wrote with Tom Montgomery. Jill is an audio describer for the newly launched TPAC program which augments theatre performance for sight challenged people. Jill coaches actors and speakers and teaches acting and voice/dialect workshops with an upcoming workshop in Canada. She hopes to continue bringing arts experiences to learners of all ages and considers aesthetic education life changing and vital.
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Jon Royal is an actor, storyteller and teacher who has been working with children for thirteen years. He is a co founder of the Voices Arts Institute for Youth in Murfreesboro, and served as a teacher and administrator for the YMCA’s Bridge of Nashville for seven years. He has also taught classes for Nashville Children’s Theatre and Tennessee Repertory Theatre’s Generation Rep program for teens. Last December he journeyed to St. Petersburg, Russia and was one of only two American’s to participate in the 2nd International Children’s Theatre Festival, where he taught students from over five different nations.
A native Nashvillian, Jon began studying with Stella Reed’s Black Taffeta and Burlap theatre company at the age of seventeen. Since then he has worked as an actor with Nashville Shakespeare Festival, Nashville Children’s Theatre, Mockingbird Theatre, Tennessee Repertory Theatre, Actor’s Bridge, and The Broadaxe Theatre Company.
This fall Jon is directing a production of Proof for the Let Every Woman Theatre Organization, helping prepare a show of American Tall Tales that he hopes will tour Russia in the Spring, will be appear in the Nashville Opera Association’s school tour of The Barber of Seville. Jon has been a TPAC Education ArtSmart Teaching Artist since 2001.
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Julia Cawthon is a storyteller, performer, and teacher. She holds an MA in English with a minor in theatre from MTSU. When she's not teaching at Vol State, Julia can be found onstage acting or telling stories. As a storyteller, she loves to share folktales, true stories, and her own "masterpieces" with anyone who'll listen! She has been a featured storyteller for both the Broadway Dinner Train and Tennessee Central Railway Museum and currently performs at churches, libraries, and festivals. As an actor, Julia has worked with school and community groups, participated in historical cemetery walks, and written and performed pieces for the Cities of Lebanon and Watertown. Today, she is a regular with Stage Struck Productions' dinner theatre and serves on the Board of Hard Corn Players, a group dedicated to preserving the tradition of the tent show. She is also developing a series of murder mysteries and themed teas for local restaurants.
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Julie Cox, a native of Nashville, has been a Teaching Artist with TPAC Education since 2001. Julie made her Off-Broadway debut in Romberg’s New Moon as part of the City Center’s Encores and was thrilled to be part of the acclaimed cast recording released in 2004. She has performed with regional companies such as Nashville Symphony, Nashville Opera, Tennessee Repertory Theater, Nashville Chamber Orchestra, Cumberland County Playhouse, Natchez Opera Festival, Ash Lawn-Highland Summer Festival, and Opera Colorado. She is featured in a new recording of Ravel’s opera L’Enfant et les Sortileges with the Nashville Symphony on the Naxos label. Julie received her Bachelor of Music from Belmont University, where she graduated cum laude with a degree in Vocal Performance. |
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She has won much acclaim regionally and nationally as a NATS competition winner, Denver Lyric Opera Guild Competition Finalist, Orpheus Competition semi-finalist, and recipient of the Helen Nepp Socolofsky Memorial and Frances Westbrook Shafter Vocal Awards. In addition to her stage credits, Ms. Cox is a songwriter, has over seventeen years of singing experience in the recording studio, and has had the opportunity to work with artists such as Marie Osmond, Sandi Patti, and Vince Gill. As a product of two parents who were both Metro teachers, Julie feels like she is giving back to her roots. She enjoys this work and looks forward to exploring it with you!
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Kathleen Lynam is the founder and principal puppeteer of Crafty Characters Puppet Troupe, established in 1989. Ten culturally diverse stories are presented to young audiences, K-3 throughout Tennessee and neighboring states. Literature and reading are stressed as the characters jump from the page to the puppet stage.
Commissioned puppets have been purchased by Vanderbilt University, Travelers Rest historic home and private individuals. Over 700 hand sculpted finger puppets were made by Kathleen and sold through CRIZMAC Art and Cultural Education Materials Catalog. In 1999, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts purchased a set of her puppets.
Workshops have been presented for university students, teachers, parents, and librarians nationwide. The workshops range from exploration of character, voice, movement, to hands-on puppet making. As a Wolf Trap Master artist, her workshop, "Let Your Voices Be Heard: Using Puppets to Bring Stories to Life" has been presented across the country to educators by the Wolf Trap Foundation in Vienna, Va. A workshop targeted for elementary school educators has been developed in association with the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C. This workshop, "Meeting Famous Americans: A History Lesson through Puppetry" will be presented again at the Kennedy Center in March of 2004.
Kathleen has been a Wolf Trap artist since 1991 and a Wolf Trap Master artist since 2001. Working with 3-5 year olds is her first love. She has developed numerous activities, songs and puppets for the preschool child that will foster a love for learning."Professor Smartypants", "Mr. Germ" and an assortment of nursery rhyme puppets are but a few of the magical characters that will keep pre-schoolers engaged, focused and on-task. These activities are directly connected to basic life, academic, or curriculum based skills. These songs, poems and stories can be found in her book, "The Keys to Your Imagination".
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Linda Sue Simmons is an actor, singer/dancer, and musician with numerous national and local credits in theatre, radio, film and music performance. She traveled around the world singing on cruise ships and has performed locally with Circle Players, Mockingbird Public Theater, Tennessee Repertory Theatre, ACT I, Chaffin’s Barn, Opryland and aboard General Jackson Showboat. One of her most satisfying creative experiences was to participate in the creation of Side By Side, a musical that stresses acceptance and diversity and is presented to Tennessee 2nd-4th graders under the auspices of Family and Children’s Services and their Life Works program.
Linda Sue’s greatest production, Alyssa Grace Emmeline Runyeon, debuted June 18,2003. This beautiful little girl has inspired a whole |
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bunch of new music (a few lullabies and a lot of silly songs) that is currently becoming a CD. She is proudly, along with Rowena, one of the oldest first time moms in Nashville :-) She would love a good night’s sleep.
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Marci Murphree has been a dance teacher/choreographer for 30 years and danced professionally with the acclaimed Tennessee Dance Theatre for over a decade. She is a veteran Teaching Artist for ArtSmart, the TPAC Education artist residency program. Marci was Artistic Director for LifeWork Productions from 1995-2005, where she produced, wrote and directed professional shows in schools and public events across Middle Tennessee, addressing important social issues like diversity, self-esteem, and adolescent stress. She has choreographed an assortment of traditional and original musicals and served on many dance faculties including Vanderbilt Dance Group, Franklin Road Academy, Metro Parks Dance. This is her first year teaching Creative Movement for USN Middle School, and her 15th year teaching for USN AfterSchool. Marci is celebrating her 30th year teaching dance with the opening of Second Story Studio for Dance, Yoga and Related Arts in West Nashville.
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Michael Cooper is well into his second decade of painting large-scale murals. Since starting Murals & More LLC, he has been involved in projects ranging from small interior residential rooms to massive exterior highway projects. Also an accomplished faux painter, he has transformed many walls into fabulous brick, intricate marble and marvelous textures. He is known throughout the country for his attention to detail and his ability to create realistic and whimsical applications of trompe l'oeil. People have simply been amazed at discovering what they thought was a series of wrought iron balconies or a clumsily placed ladder was actually a flat painted surface. Cooper founded Murals & More LLC after painting murals as a hobby for nearly his entire life. His first association with a mural was actually in the first grade, (too many years ago!) where his winning drawings were incorporated into a large wall mosaic, which still exists today. Even though his specialty is large-scale murals, Michael has also provided his clients with painted furniture, floor cloths, backdrops, scenics, etc. |
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His most recent commercial projects include two large (30’ x 50’ and 15’ x 100’) exterior murals for the town of Lynchburg, Virginia; 5 murals for the Kirk Family YMCA in Roanoke, Virginia; a large interior mural for the Salem, Virginia Family YMCA; transforming the exterior of Cumberland Transit (an outdoor sports and hiking store in Nashville), and painting the first work of public art in downtown Dickson, Tennessee, on a 40' x 80' exterior brick wall. He just finished a 15' x 300’ trompe l’oeil wall for Nashville’s Bicentennial Mall, right after painting faux finishes and trompe l’oeil stone on over a mile and a half of highway retaining walls and parapet walls in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Whew! And that’s not even mentioning his residential projects! In order to share his almost 20 years of experience as a professional muralist, Michael has also been teaching classes in the art and business of mural painting in his large Franklin studio, as well as seminars throughout the country. He is a member of the Artist's Advisory Council and the Community Relations Board for the Frist Center of the Visual Arts, a teacher with the TPAC ArtSmart Program, an avid racquetball player, and in his spare time, Mike plays a decent 12 string guitar and a mean djembé.
And if it weren't for his wife, Mickie, he wouldn't be here at all!
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Michael received a Bachelor of Arts in music performance from the University of Charleston West Virginia. He became involved with music early in his life playing instruments such as the violin and trumpet. In college he decided to focus on classical guitar. While in college he also discovered a talent and passion for choral singing. He has recorded and toured with the University of Charleston Concert Choir, which included an invitational performance at the Marriott Marquis in Time Square. He has also performed with the West Virginia Symphony as a member of the Symphony Chorus. Michael has been a featured guitarist on "Music From The Mountains," a radio show on West Virginia Public Radio. He has also been a featured artist at Kanawha United Presbyterian Church as both a guitarist and singer. Michael is also a banjo player. He plays bluegrass and composes original music for banjo and guitar drawing form many different styles and influences. Michael is a skilled audio engineer. He has worked as a freelance engineer at studios in Nashville and has worked with the Metro Parks Department helping put on concerts throughout the parks of Nashville. He joined the TPAC Education ArtSmart Teaching Artist faculty in 2003.
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Melissa Austin didn't move to Nashville to pursue music. She is one of those rare performing artists in town who calls herself a "Native Nashvillian." Melissa spent her middle school and high school years in Metro Nashville's public schools then attended Belmont University, where she received a degree in Commercial Music. Her greatest moments in life, with the exception of great family memories, have involved the performing arts. Her career in theater, dance and music have given her amazing opportunities, from performing on Broadway, to leading worship for children, to tap dancing in a bull-fighting ring in Mexico! Melissa is a new TPAC Education Teaching Artist with a background in vocal and performance coaching, as well as teaching acting for children and adults in a school of performing arts which she co-owned. She enjoys children, especially her own two sons, the oldest of whom she teaches music theory and piano. She has seen first-hand the value and importance of arts education. Her performing credits include: Les Miserables (Broadway and National Tour), Early One Morning (a one-woman show, written by Broadway composer Ron Melrose), and various plays and musicals with Tennessee Repertory Theater, Tennessee Women's Theater Project, Cumberland County Playhouse, Chaffin's Barn, and others. She has been involved with two film projects this year, and has many television credits as well. She has enjoyed singing with Amy Grant, CeCe Winans, and Faith Hill, among others, and she is currently developing a women's ministry project with some of her college girlfriends, which involves music and sketch comedy. She has been married for thirteen years to Jay, the most creative person she knows.
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Neil Spencer is the founder and director of the Educational Touring Theatre (ETT). For over twenty years Neil has been writing, producing and performing curriculum- based, educational theatre programs for schools across the United States. He is currently touring schools with Giants of Electrical Science and Sir Isaac Newton: The Apple and Beyond, which he developed with the Adventure Science Center of Nashville. His other original, one-man programs include: Yukon Gold, Smoke & Fury: The Writings of the Civil War, The Turn of the Century Showcase, A Dream Within A Dream: An Introduction to E.A. Poe, and A Rendezvous with Jacob Brower. In addition to his works with the Educational Touring Theatre, Neil has performed at the Guthrie Theatre, Horse Cave Theater, Tacoma Actors Guild, and The New Classic Theatre. Neil has a BFA degree in Acting from the University of Minnesota, where he graduated summa cum laude. For more information, please go to his website, www.edtheatre.com, or you can email Neil at edtheatre@aol.com.
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Pam Atha has been living and working in and around Nashville for over 20 years. She holds a BSE in Dance Education from the University of Arkansas, and an MAE from Cumberland University. She was a founding member of Tennessee Dance Theatre under the direction of Donna Rizzo and Andrew Krichels, and also enjoys a career as free-lance performing artist, choreographer, director and teacher. Pam is part of the adjunct faculty at Cumberland University where she heads the dance program. Regionally, she has worked for The Rep, Nashville Children's Theatre, Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, Phoenix Rising Entertainment, Cumberland County Playhouse, Circle Players, and Flat Rock Playhouse and Unto These Hills outdoor drama, both in North Carolina. She is a veteran Teaching Artist for ArtSmart, the TPAC Education artist residency program. |
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Pam Toll grew up in and around New York City, and began acting professionally at the age of seven. Pam’s drama instruction consisted of working for and with some of the finest directors and actors working at the time. Her thirty-five year performing career included spending her teens as a regular on two soap operas, co-starring and starring roles on Broadway, television – both series and TV movies, and in film. All this work required frequent moves back and forth from NY to LA. Pam maintained a consistent commitment to a professional level of dance training throughout this time to keep a balance in her life.
Thinking she was leaving the arts behind, and seeking a break, Pam moved to Nashville eighteen years ago. However, before long, she found herself stage-managing Tennessee Dance Theater. She has co-written a screenplay, currently in post-production, and is working on another. Pam has worked extensively as a teaching artist for the NIA, and was one of the original Artist Design Consultants for the Leonard Bernstein Center, serving two schools. For the past two years, she has been Art Facilitator at the YWCA’s Domestic Violence Center where she utilized her Aesthetic Education skills to design and lead activities created to provide the opportunity for both adult and child residents to tell their stories through the arts.
Her hands and imagination, never still, have led to work in fiber, wood, metal, and clay. Her ceramic mosaic work can be seen and purchased from New York to California to North Carolina. Artistic curiosity has a way of expanding.
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Rachel Sumner has been an ArtSmart Teaching Artist since 1994. Her background in performing is extensive. She is a prolific writer, singer and actor who has sung with twenty-one piece orchestras, numerous bands and musicals. She has acted in national television commercials, children’s theater and radio commercials.
Since moving to Nashville, Rachel has written and released six award-winning recordings for young people, a video of sign language and foreign language songs and a curriculum/songbook. Her latest release "Join The Parade" (especially for ages 4-10) has been hailed as one of the best children’s recordings of the year with its catchy melodies, silly jokes and delightful stories. |
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Rachel’s music videos appear regularly on The Learning Channel’s "Ready, Set, Learn" during Short Stuff. She can also be heard on children’s radio, satellite and airline programming around the world.
If you would like to hear her music, find out where she is performing or learn about her **keynotes, workshops and in-service training, stop by www.rachelsumner.com.
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Trained in theater and creative writing as well as visual art, Rising Moon is an active professional artist currently on the Tennessee Arts Commission’s Visual Artists Roster and a member of the National Storytellers Network. While continuing to produce and exhibit paintings, she travels extensively performing as a storyteller and conducting creativity workshops and events for children and adults. Rising Moon has been an arts educator for many years. Her diverse teaching experiences include working with preschoolers in a therapeutic environment, children institutionalized with disabilities, and at-risk adolescents. A Lead Teaching Artist with Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s ArtSmart program and a Teaching Artist with Wolf Trap and VSA arts Tennessee, Rising Moon has a passionate commitment to artistic opportunities for children, as well as her own growth and learning as an individual, an artist and an educator.
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Rob Stack is a native of Nashville. He studied English and Photography at Boston College, and later got his MFA in painting at the Pratt Institute in
Brooklyn, NY (gotta problem with that?!). He currently paints and works as a freelance photographer. You can see his photographs by visiting:
www.robstackphotography.com
Rob is a true believer in the TPAC Art Smart Program and can only complain that its merits should be known to all and available to all who would have it.
Rob and his wife Kimberly live in Sylvan Park with two dogs Lenny and Murray and pair of Beagles, Buddy and Bob, who will like our porch better than the neighbors.’
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Rona Carter has been on stage professionally since she was fresh out of high school. Training with a triple major at Boston Conservatory of Music, she worked every summer with such stock companies as: Green Mountain Guild, Light Opera Company, New London Barn Playhouse, and had a wonderful time as one of the kids of The Kingdom at Disney World. Rona can be found on local stages working with Nashville Children's Theater and Nashville Shakespeare Festival. In this, her 17th season with NCT, she will be recreating the role of Charlotte in Charlotte's Web. Rona also worked with Tennessee Repertory Theatre in Francis of Guernica, the original musical by Marcus Hummon produced for their 2001-2002 season. Not just a stage performer, Rona has been creating her own productions for young people and teaching basic acting skills with Nashville Children's Theater since 1995. In these productions, ranging from Jack Tales to A Midsummer Nights Dream, the child is the variable. Rona leaves room so that each individual child can contribute his or her own ideas to the process. She also helps them develop their writing skills by giving them opportunities to write their own scripts.
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Sandy was born and raised in a small town north of Toronto, Ontario. He attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, graduating summa cum laude in 2000, and moved to Nashville where he has frittered away the last
four years as a recording engineer, music director, elementary music teacher, session and touring keyboard player and record producer.
He has produced records for Denver and The Mile High Orchestra, engineered albums for The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Bobby Osborne and continues to perform with the Drifters, Coasters, Platters and Martha
Reeves.
Sandy became involved in the ArtSmart program as a participating teacher during his two years at Neely's Bend Elementary School in Madison and is pleased to still be connected to the ArtSmart gang.
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Steve West has been actively involved in live music presentation for the past twenty years as a concert producer and as a venue owner. He started Go West Presents in 1986 and opened 328 Performance Hall in 1990. He founded the Nashville Music Extravaganza, also in 1986 and Leadership Music‚s Nashville Music Awards in 1995. In 2000, he opened the Basement, another live music venue, and started Funky Cowboy Music, a publishing company for the songs he writes and performs. He is a BMI writer and a member of the Nashville Songwriters Association. He is also a successful baseball coach, leading the Nashville Heat All-Stars to the Cal Ripken / Babe Ruth Tennessee State Championship in 2003 and 2004. He joined the ArtSmart Teaching Artist Faculty in fall 2003.
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Terry Occhiogrosso is thrilled to be starting her first year as a Teaching Artist for TPAC Education. She has been an Arts-in-Education actor, director and teacher for many years in New York and the surrounding area. She has worked at the Performing Arts Foundation, the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival and performed in the world premiere of Kelly Patton’s “A Child Goes Forth”. She cast, directed and choreographed all productions (not to mention, set and costume design and construction, actors’ hair/makeup, load-in and strike, etc!) at Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. Jr./Sr. H.S. for ten years and taught teacher in-service workshops at Southampton College, N.Y. She was a co-founder and program director of Theatre Arts in Education, which produced and toured original curriculum-related shows in schools, conducted student and teacher workshops and artist residencies. Her training began in dance at the age of 4, but quickly turned to acting, studying theatre, dance and mime at The New School, N.Y.C. Terry has been a resident of Nashville for a year and a half, and has acted in several shows and readings, but is most proud to be the mother of Jenny and Colin and grandma to Emma.
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