MUSIC

Vincent Gardner

Vincent Gardner, who will teach jazz trombone, is a native of Chicago and was raised in Hampton, Va., in a musical family. His father, Burgess Gardner, is a trumpeter and educator who has been active on the Chicago music scene since the 1950s. Mr. Gardner began playing the piano at 6, and tried out the violin, saxophone, and French horn before deciding on the trombone at 12. He became interested in jazz while in high school and attended Florida A&M University in Tallahassee and the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. A summer job performing with a jazz band at Disney World led to a gig with Mercer Ellington. After completing a tour with Lauryn Hill, Mr. Gardner joined Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. He has performed, toured, and/or recorded with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Bobby McFerrin, the Count Basie Orchestra, Frank Foster, the Saturday Night Live Band, Chaka Khan, A Tribe Called Quest, Clark Terry, Nancy Wilson, McCoy Tyner, Illinois Jacquet, Jon Faddis, Tommy Flanagan, Matchbox 20, Jimmy Heath, and others. Mr. Gardner teaches at Florida State University, and has also taught at Michigan State University and the New School in New York. He has just released his first recording as a leader, Elbow Room, for Steeplechase Records.

Robin Guarino

Robin Guarino, who joins the Opera Studies faculty and will serve as co-advisor to the Juilliard Opera Theater, returns to the Metropolitan Opera this coming season to direct Le nozze di Figaro and Cosí fan tutte. Recent engagements include directing The Consul for Arizona Opera; Britten's The Rape of Lucretia for San Francisco Opera's Merola program; the American premiere of Sutermeister's opera Die Schwartze Spinne for Gotham Chamber Opera; and Shumann's Manfred and Janacek's From the House of the Dead for the American Symphony Orchestra at Lincoln Center. Ms. Guarino made her debut at Glimmerglass Opera with a double bill of Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci. Specializing in working with living composers, she has directed premieres of works by Mark Adamo, Jake Heggie, David Del Tredici, Martin Hennessey, Ned Rorem, and Deborah Drattell, among others. She has also directed three independent films, one of which, Crossing the Atlantic, was shown on PBS's Independent Focus. Ms. Guarino has been recognized for her directing work by the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Jerome Fellowship, the Hamburg Filmhaus, and Art Matters, Inc. Upcoming engagements include directing Mozart's Idomeneo for Arizona Opera, and returning to Seattle in 2007 to direct Handel's Giulio Cesare.

Kim Laskowski (Photo by Chris Lee)

Kim Laskowski, who joined the New York Philharmonic in September 2003 as associate principal bassoon, also played second bassoon in the New York City Ballet Orchestra. She has been principal bassoon of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra since 1999. Born in Brooklyn, Ms. Laskowski attended the High School of Music and Art and Juilliard, where she studied with Harold Goltzer. At Juilliard, she won the Walter and Elsie Naumburg Award for Orchestral Excellence and completed her master's degree while playing in the National Orchestral Association. On a Fulbright grant, she attended the Conservatoire national supérieure de Paris, where she was a student of Maurice Allard. While at the Conservatoire, she toured Europe as a member of the Orchestre des Prix. Ms. Laskowski has appeared with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the American Symphony Orchestra, and Eos Orchestra, and has also participated in the Tanglewood and Spoleto festivals. She can be heard on numerous television, radio, and film scores and holds two platinum records for CDs recorded with the rock group 10,000 Maniacs. As a chamber player, she has performed and recorded several CDs with Music Amici in classical, jazz, and 20th-century works for mixed ensembles. Ms. Laskowski lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children.

Patricia Rogers

Principal bassoonist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra since 1976, Patricia Rogers was born in Kentucky and holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Otto Eifert. Ms. Rogers has been a soloist with the Met Orchestra on numerous occasions in the U.S. and Europe. As a chamber musician, she has appeared regularly with James Levine and the Met Chamber Ensemble in Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall, and performed on the inaugural concert of Zankel Hall in September 2003. Ms. Rogers has participated in the Marlboro Music Festival, where she collaborated with artists such as Rudolf Serkin, Felix Galimir, David Soyer, and Myron Bloom, and was coached by Marcel Moyse. She can be heard on many recordings of music from the Marlboro Festival. Since 2000, at the invitation of James Levine, she has coached the woodwinds of the Verbier Festival in Switzerland. She has also been on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and Mannes College of Music since 1993.

Ted Rosenthal

Ted Rosenthal, who will teach jazz piano for non-majors and the piano practicum for non-jazz students, entered the spotlight by winning first prize in the second Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition in 1988. His prolific recording career since then has included nine CDs as a leader. His solo album The 3 B's (2002) received four stars from Down Beat magazine. Mr. Rosenthal has toured and/or recorded with Gerry Mulligan, Art Farmer, Phil Woods, and Bob Brookmeyer, and has also performed with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and others. He is the pianist of choice for many top jazz vocalists, including Helen Merrill, Mark Murphy, and Ann Hampton Callaway. He has appeared on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on National Public Radio and performed with David Sanborn on NBC's Night Music. Mr. Rosenthal's classical/jazz crossover work has included appearances with the Boston Pops, Tucson Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony, and others. A recipient of three N.E.A. grants, he regularly performs and records his own compositions. He was contributing editor for Piano and Keyboard magazine, and teaches at the Manhattan School of Music, Queens College, and the New School University.

Also joining the faculty this year are Claire Bryant (assistant to Bonnie Hampton, cello); David Chan (assistant to Hyo Kang, violin); and Amir Eldan (assistant to Joel Krosnick, cello).


LIBERAL ARTS

Writer, critic, and visual artist Stephen Massimilla, who joins the Liberal Arts faculty to teach humanities in the core curriculum, has also co-managed an art gallery and worked as an editor for Art in America magazine. He received a B.A. from Williams College and an M.F.A. in writing from Columbia University, where he is now completing a Ph.D. in English and comparative literature. Mr. Massimilla received the Sonia Raiziss-Giop Charitable Foundation Bordighera Poetry Prize for Forty Floors From Yesterday, a finalist selection in several national book contests. His sonnet sequence Later on Aiaiai earned him the 2001 Grolier Poetry Prize from the Ellen la Forge Memorial Poetry Foundation. Other work was selected by Kenneth Koch for a Van Rennselaer Award. Mr. Massimilla has also received an Academy of American Poets Prize and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Poetry Award. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Amherst Review, Descant, G.W. Review, High Plains Literary Review, Lullwater Review, The Madison Review, The Marlboro Review, New Delta Review, Phoebe, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill, The Southern Poetry Review, Sonora Review, Tampa Review, and some 70 other journals. Mr. Massimilla teaches or has taught literature or creative writing at Columbia University, Barnard College, Boston University, the 92nd Street Y, and the School of Visual Arts. He is also a practicing painter and has exhibited work in Chicago, Boston, Sea Cliff, and New York.


PRE-COLLEGE

The Pre-College Division welcomes new faculty members Julien Benichou (who will also conduct the Pre-College Chamber Orchestra starting in the spring semester), Anthony Brackett (chamber music for woodwind), Heidi Castleman (viola, who has also been teaching in the College Division since 1995), Jennifer Combs (chamber music), Danielle Farina (chamber music), and Laura Flax (clarinet).