Speakers

Dr. Judith Coe
Chair, Music and Entertainment Industry Studes, University of Colorado at Denver

Dr. Judith Coe is Chair of Music and Entertainment Industry Studies at the University of Colorado at Denver, and Director of the Commercial Voice program. She teaches applied voice as well as courses in commercial singing and improvisation, pop songwriting, women in contemporary music and Irish music. She also teaches in the Online Music Business Certificate program and directs the singer/songwriter ensemble. Coe was named the 2003 campus winner for the President's Faculty Excellence Award for Advancing Teaching and Learning through Technology and is a national board member in performance for the College Music Society. She is particularly interested in mentoring artists as entrepreneurs and architects of their own futures, utilizing electronic resources as expressive creative tools and developing strategies for electronic promotion, and exploring the confluence and intersection of art, technology, and commerce. For more information, click

here.

Brian Cole
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music

Currently in his fourth year as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, Brian Cole is a young conductor with a wealth of experience in both the concert hall and the opera house. He has a broad repertoire in instrumental, operatic and choral works and is particularly active in promoting new music. In Puerto Rico he has served as Music Director and conductor for productions with the Lyric Opera of Puerto Rico and the Opera Workshop of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music.

In 2002 Mr. Cole was appointed Apprentice Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra where he worked closely with Music Director Paavo Järvi and numerous guest conductors from around the world. He also assisted the famed Cincinnati Pops Orchestra with famed Pops Conductor, Erich Kunzel. During that time he also served as an assistant conductor for the May Festival where he worked directly with Music Director James Colon, assisting with recording projects with the company TELARC and conducting selected rehearsals. During that period he also served as Assistant Conductor and Director of Education and Outreach programs for the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, where he conducted numerous concerts in the Education, Outreach and subscription series. In 2004 he was appointed as Music Director of the Concert Orchestra of the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he conducted a series of 7 concerts per year as well as opera productions with the CCM Opera Theater.

In 2002 he was selected from an international search to conduct the David Oistrahk Festival in Pärnu, Estonia, where he worked closely with the preeminent conductor Neeme Järvi. During that festival he conducted the Pärnu Festival Orchestra, the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra (Scotland) and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra.

Mr. Cole began his career as a bassoonist under the tutelage of William Ludwig. His principal conducting teachers are Mark Gibson and Donald Schleicher, and he has also completed studies with Paavo Järvi, Neeme Järvi, Jorma Panula, Robert Spano and Michael Butterman. He holds a Bachelors degree from Louisiana State University, a Master's degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Michael Drapkin
Executive Director, Puerto Rico Conference on Music Entrepreneurship

Michael Drapkin is the Executive Director of The Puerto Rico Conference on Music Entrepreneurship. He previously founded and ran the Brevard Conference on Music Entrepreneurship, and was chair of E-Commerce Management at Columbia University's Executive Information Technology Management program. He chaired the Committee on Career Development and Entrepreneurship for the College Music Society and is on their board of directors for the CMS Southwest Chapter. Drapkin is an expert at business strategy and management, with more than twenty years of experience at both Fortune 1000 and startup companies. He served as senior technologist at the web agencies Razorfish and Avalanche, was CTO of DMS Corporatio and a vice president at Lehman Brothers. Drapkin’s writings have appeared in the New York Times and numerous trade periodicals. A former Honolulu Symphony clarinetist, he is one of the most recognizable names for bass clarinetists, having authored the Symphonic Repertoire for the Bass Clarinet series, which has become standard literature worldwide. An active chamber musician, Drapkin is a Selmer Performing Artist. For more information, visit www.drapkin.net.

Suzy Drapkin
Principal, CareerAchievers

Suzy Drapkin blends a unique collection of counseling, administrative, business, financial, and entrepreneurial skills. Her expertise has allowed her to apply her skills in the public sector as a clinical and career counselor, educational trainer, vocational evaluator and rehabilitation coordinator, as well as in the business world as an executive recruiter and consultant. She has worked with dislocated workers, welfare-to-work programs, the economically disadvantaged, displaced homemakers, chemically dependent, victims of domestic violence, incarcerated, physically handicapped, learning disabled, emotionally disturbed and mentally handicapped individuals. She holds certification in Myers-Briggs, tobacco prevention/cessation and conflict resolution facilitation, Adkins Life Skills Trainer and adult education instruction. Ms Drapkin has an M.S. in Rehabilitation Counseling from Sargent College of Allied Health Professions at Boston University. Ms. Drapkin has a won several awards for her leadership with Junior Achievement of the Hudson Valley, Inc. program. For more information, visit

www.careerachievers.com.

Catherine Fitterman Radbill
Director of Undergraduate Music Business, New York University
Founding Director of the Entrepreneurship Center at University of Colorado at Boulder

Catherine Fitterman Radbill is the Director of the New York University/Steinhardt School's Undergraduate Music Business Program. As professor of music business at New York University she teaches music entrepreneurship, concert management, and the introductory course for music business studies.

As an active proponent of music entrepreneurship education, Radbill is a frequent consultant and guest speaker at universities and conferences in North America.

A classically trained pianist with degrees in piano pedagogy and arts administration, Radbill launched the Entrepreneurship Center for Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1998. She relocated to New York City in August 2002 to begin teaching at NYU.

Radbill's professional experience includes a mix of working and teaching in the arts from both a for-profit and not-for-profit perspective. She has served as a concert promoter and producer (University of Colorado), artist manager (Columbia Artists Management), orchestra administrator (Cincinnati Symphony),and major gifts fundraiser (Allied Jewish Federation/Denver and University of Colorado/Boulder).

Maria Del Carmen Gil
Chancellor of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music

Chancellor Gil has been involved in numerous facets of performing, teaching and administration. As a permanent member of the Conservatory’s Piano Department faculty for a number of decades, she has taught a wide variety of courses. She has also held several top level administrative positions and played a key role in the institution’s development. This includes serving as Director of the Piano Department, Dean of Studies, and since 1998 as the Conservatory’s Chancellor. In Puerto Rico she has performed in major concert series as a recitalist, soloist, chamber musician, and collaborating pianist for many well-known Puerto Rican artists and others. She has also performed at the Casals Festival, with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, and internationally in New York, Baltimore, Washington, Houston, the Virgin Islands, Mexico City, and Guadalajara, and as a soloist under the baton of renowned international conductors; as a chamber musician has performed with prestigious foreign and local musicians. Given her professional achievements and commitment to education and the local culture, the Puerto Rico Association UNESCO has recognized her as the Most Distinguished Woman of the Year.

E. Michael Harrington
Professor of Entertainment & Music Business at Belmont University

E. Michael Harrington is professor of music and music management at William Paterson University, a consultant in music copyright, intellectual property and technology matters, a member of Leadership Music, on the Board of Directors of the Nashville Composers Association, Songspace, Plagiary, as an expert in an international consortium on copyright issues and the future of Brazil’s music industry. and several other organizations.

He has been interviewed by the New York Times, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Bravo, The Biography Channel, Associated Press, PBS, the TODAY Show, NPR, Radio Canada, Radio New Zealand, PC Magazine, Billboard, USA Today, Salon, XM Radio, Rolling Stone, Money Magazine, Investor’s Business Daily, Mergers & Acquisitions, People Magazine, Life Magazine, Readers’ Digest, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and others.

He has worked as consultant and expert witness in hundreds of music copyright matters involving director Steven Spielberg, producer Mark Burnett, the Dixie Chicks, Woody Guthrie, Steve Perry, Keith Urban, Ne-Yo, T-Pain, T. I., Akon, Snoop Dogg, Collin Raye, Tupac Shakur, George Clinton, Mariah Carey, Patty Loveless and others, delivered more than 100 lectures to more than 100 law schools, organizations, universities and music conferences/festivals throughout North America including Harvard Law, Yale Law, George Washington University Law, Cardozo Law, Brooklyn Law, BC Law, Loyola Law, the Boston Bar, the Texas Bar, the European Film Commission, the Future of Music Coalition, the Experience Music Project, AFM, IBS, NEMO, Miami, Berklee, UCR, McGill, Carleton, Eastman, Emory, NYU and others, and been a consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Columbia Law School, UCLA Law School, Mel Bay, St. Jude’s Children Hospital and others.

Blair Tindall
Oboist, Author, Speaker

Grammy-nominated oboist Blair Tindall burst onto the literary scene in 2005 with her controversial memoir, Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music (Grove/Atlantic Press), which has also been published in five foreign countries and was recently optioned for television by actor Jason Schwartzman. The book was lauded in The New Republic as the "smartest take on the [arts industry] situation," and was named one of NPR's five top arts stories of the year. A consultant to arts organizations and college audiences as president of Flair for Genius, Tindall has also written for The New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, and taught journalism at Stanford University and music at the University of California-Berkeley. Her television travel show, Where's Blair? Trekking the World Music Beat, is currently in development. A graduate of Stanford University, Columbia University, and the Manhattan School of Music, Tindall presented her Carnegie Recital Hall debut in 1991 and has performed with the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Orpheus, and as solo oboist with Broadway productions of Les Miserables and Miss Saigon. She has been a fellow at The MacDowell Colony, and Wyoming's Ucross Foundation. For more information, visit
www.flairforgenius.com

Kevin Woelfel
Director of the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho

Kevin Woelfel is Director of the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho. He was previously Director of the Entrepreneurship Center for Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His diversity in the music industry includes performance, composition and manufacturing. At nineteen, Woelfel’s professional career began as assistant principal trumpet with the Spokane Symphony. He went on to perform with orchestras, brass ensembles, shows, and bands across the country. As a composer and arranger, Woelfel was in the U.S. Air Force band program and has written and arranged music for many projects, including docudramas for air on National Public Radio. An entrepreneur, he has founded two manufacturing companies, WolfPak® Incorporated and Rocky Mountain Case Works; companies who produce high-end music instrument cases. Woelfel has presented at numerous national conferences and universities and is currently developing educational materials through ArtsStart.org and the I’mART model for opportunity analysis that teach emerging musicians how to approach the music market as an entrepreneur.