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Arcadia Players
Celebrating
20 Seasons of
Historical Performance
Ian Watson, Artistic Director
Board Bios
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Anna Polesny Bartoli,
President – B.A.
Art History; M.S. Psychology; M.F.A.Weaving and Textile Design;
consultant, artist and teacher; Director of Anava Designs, Santa Cruz,
CA & Northampton, MA; former board president of the Santa Cruz
Chamber Players; former Executive Director of Mohawk Trails Concerts,
Inc., Shelburne Falls, MA; grant writer and consultant to other area
non-profit organizations.
Walter B. Denny, Clerk –
Professor of Art History and Adjunct Professor of Near Eastern
Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Consulting
Curator for Islamic Art, Smith College Museum of Art; currently
member of Board of Governors, Institute of Turkish Studies; Chair
of the International Conference on Oriental Carpets; Exhibitions
Planning Committee, Asia Society; Collections Committee; Harvard
University Art Museums, Advisory Board, Center for Anatolian
Ethnography and Textiles. Former Trustee of The Textile Museum;
former member, Visiting Committees of the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, Fitchburg Art Museum, The Museum for Textiles; former
president, Historians of Islamic Art, singer with Arcadia Players
and other musical groups. See also his page at the
UMass Art
History Department's website.
Alan Durfee, Treasurer –
Professor of Mathematics, Mount Holyoke
College; organist, harpsichordist and clavichordist; founding
member of the Boston Clavichord Society, serving as its first
president; singer with the Five College Early Music Collegium;
member of the American Guild of Organists and Early Music America;
substitute organist for many local churches. See also his page at Mount
Holyoke
College's website.
E.
Wayne Abercrombie -- Professor of Music and Choral
Director, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. BM & MM
Westminster Choir
College, Princeton, NJ. D. Mus. Indiana University. Other
professional affiliations: President of the American Choral Directors
Association, Eastern Division; Massachusetts Music Educators
Association and Music Educators National Conference; National
Collegiate Choral Organization; Conductors Guild - Past Member of the
National Board. See also
his page at the UMass Amherst Choral
Ensembles website.
Jeanne Ammon is a retired
physical therapist. She received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Boston
University and taught and practiced physical therapy in the Boston area
and in Albany. She settled in the Pioneer Valley fifteen years ago and
now lives in Hadley, where she runs a bed and breakfast. Jeanne has
participated in numerous early music workshops playing recorder and
viola da gamba. She is presently a member of the Board of Directors of
the Viola da Gamba Society of America. She serves on the Personnel and
Administrative Committees of the Arcadia Players Board.
J.
J. Briones -- Director of Admissions,
Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, MA. Deerfield Academy graduate; BA from
Boston College; MBA from Boston University in Public and Non-Profit
Managment; United Way Loaned Executive for Mayor's Office City of
Boston; Music in Deerfield Board 1997-1999; Boston Leadership Academy
Associate 1989-1992; Associate for Mayor's Office City of Boston
1986-1989; expertise in marketing and advertising.
Priscilla Drucker recently
retired after twenty years of
producing and hosting classical music shows at public radio station
88.5/WFCR,
where she also took part in fundraising and promotion. Earlier she
worked in
programming and production at KUT-FM in Austin,
and produced a nationally-distributed concert series at the Eastman
School of
Music. She holds an A.B. in music from Brown and an M.A. in musicology
from Eastman.
Besides tending her writing/editing business and working with Arcadia
Players,
Priscilla sings alto with Da Camera Singers.
Thomas Marc Futter, Founding
Patron – Former president of Kellogg Brush Manufacturing
Company, Easthampton, MA; board member of the Mass Cultural
Council, Springfield Symphony Orchestra, WGBY, Springfield,
Musicorda, Springfield Library and Museums Association; Art
Advisory Board, Mount Holyoke College, MIFA, Bay Path Hospital,
Easthampton Savings Bank, and the Solomon Schechter School,
Northampton.
Bob Eisenstein –
Director of the Five College Early Music Program including the
Five College Early Music Collegium and the Euridice Ensemble;
teacher of music history and director of madrigal singers at Mt.
Holyoke College; visiting lecturer at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, MA; plays viola da gamba as a founding
member and program director of the Folger Consort, Washington,
DC; also plays with the New York Renaissance Band, Cappella Nova,
the New York Consort of Viols, the Washington Bach Consort and
the National Symphony Orchestra. See
also his page at Mount Holyoke
College's website.
Monica Jakuc Leverett – Monica
Jakuc Leverett is the Elsie Erwin Sweeney Professor Emerita of Music at
Smith College,
where she has taught from 1969 until 2008. She has appeared as a solo
and chamber
music pianist on three continents, has commissioned a number of works
by living composers, and is a champion of women composers. She
graduated from the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. Ms.
Jakuc Leverett has performed on early pianos since 1986 and appears as
a
frequent guest soloist with Arcadia Players. She is a proud owner two
fortepianos made by Paul
McNulty: a
6 1/2 octave 1819 Conrad Graf fortepiano copy, and a 5 1/2 octave
fortepiano after designs of Anton Walter. See
also her page at Smith
College's website.
Deena Maniscalchi
received her B.A. in English Literature and an M.B.A. in Finance and
Marketing.
She combined her love of the arts with work as a promotion writer and
marketing
consultant for arts and entertainment clients.
A longtime writer for Springfield Symphony Orchestra and The Big E, she
also served as promotion manager and public relations director of
WWLP-TV. She is the author of Driving
Vision: The
Story of Peter Pan Bus Lines (2000), a 175-page history
commissioned by
Peter L. Picknelly to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the bus line.
Deena
earned her J.D. in 2005 from Western New England College.
She was a judicial law clerk for the Justices of the Massachusetts
Superior
Court for two years. She is presently an
associate at the law firm of Smith & Brink, P.C., in its
Springfield office. She serves on the Marketing and Finance
Committees of the Arcadia Players Board.
Angelo Mazzocco – Professor of Italian,
Department of Spanish and
Italian, Mount Holyoke College
– Emeritus. Education: Ph.D. in
Romance Language and Literatur and
Renaissance Cultural History. Areas of expertise: Dante,
Renaissance and Baroque
Literature (poetry, theater, birth of opera) and historical
linguistics, Roman
antiquities. Has taken
part in numerous committees with the Dante Society of
America and the Renaissance
Society of America,
and
was Chair of
the Spanish and Italian Departmet at Mount Holyoke
College. One of the founders of the
Circolo Itallian (Western Mass. Club on Italian culture), and Vice
President of the Dante Aleghieri Society of
Springfield.
Charles Page – Charles Page
holds a
Bachelor’s degree from Boston University
and a Master of Music degree from Yale University. He also spent
a year
in Amsterdam on a Fullbright Fellowship.
Professor Emeritus at Bay Path College in Longmeadow,
Massachusetts,
Mr. Page was director of music there for thirty-five years. He is
Minister of Music Emeritus at historic
“Old First
Church” in Springfield,
Massachusetts. In conjunction with
the Board of Music of the
Church, he inaugurated and was Artistic Director of the “Music at
First”
series. Mr. Page retired from his
position at Old First church at the end of August, 2005. He was
Chairman of music programs for Springfield’s
Bicentennial celebrations and has served on the Boards of Directors of
Project
Opera of Massachusetts and the Community Music School of Springfield,
The Musical
Advisory Board of the Springfield Symphony, and the Board of the
Association of
Yale Alumni. He is a founding member and
immediate Past President of the national United Church of Christ
Musicians
Association, Inc. A member of the
American Guild of Organists, he served as General Chairman of the
Regions I and
II Convention (New England, New York, and New
Jersey)
of the Guild. He is former Massachusetts
State Chairman and subsequently served as District Convener for the
Guild.
Peter W. Shea –
Peter W. Shea has sung professionally since 1972 throughout New
England and the Hudson Valley. He often appears as a featured
soloist with choral societies, orchestras and chamber music
ensembles, is a member of several area vocal ensembles, and gives
frequent solo recitals. In the 2003-2004 season he was interim
co-Artistic
Director of Arcadia Players, and as part of that season he sang
Schubert's Winterreise with fortepianist Monica
Jakuc in March 2004. He is also cataloger of music and foreign
languages at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, UMass Amherst, and is
developing
a web-based
performer's guide to musical settings of the German-Jewish
poet Heinrich Heine. See also Peter's personal web-page
for upcoming performances.
Barbara Stroup - received her
B.A. in English and her
M.A. in Audiology, a field she practiced for 33 years in Vermont and in
western Massachusetts. She now works as an indexer of books and
academic journals, and has been an administrator for Springfield
Cultural Council and Springfield Arts
Festival. Barbara designs and produces fiber and mixed media art and
plays piano and concertina. She serves on the Administrative,
Fundraising and Artistic Committees of the Arcadia Players Board.
Meredith
Young – B.S Johns Hopkins, honors in
biology: M.B.A., University of Chicago in Marketing; Chicago Sun-Times,
Marketing and Sales Department; Little, Brown Co; Over almost twenty
years at Channing Bete- positions in Advertising, Publishing, and
International Operations; former Vice President of Operations for
Publishing and Advertising. Now, Director of Survey Research.
Volunteers for varied organizations including youth mentoring programs;
former President, Music In Deerfield.
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