Speakers

Additional speakers to be announced.

Gary D. Beckman
Director of Academic Programs, Brevard Conference on Music Entrepreneurship
Editor, Arts Entrepreneurship Educator's Network

Gary D. Beckman is the Director of Academic Programs for the Brevard Conference on Music Entrepreneurship, the founder and editor of the Arts Entrepreneurship Educator's Network, and recently completed the first nation-wide study of arts entrepreneurship efforts in higher education, funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. He is currently teaching Arts Entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is completing his doctorate in musicology. Gary's articles on the topic of arts entrepreneurship and leadership education in the arts have appeared in the College Music Society's "Symposium", "Arts Education Policy Review," "The South-Central Music Bulletin" and "The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society" (forthcoming). Gary has also delivered papers on the philosophical structuring of arts entrepreneurship programs and disciplinary development. He received a M.A. in Musicology from the University of New Hampshire and a B.A. in Music from the University of Southern Maine. You can visit the Arts Entrepreneurship Educator's Network website at http://www.ae2n.net

Angela Myles Beeching
Director, New England Conservatory Career Services Center

Angela Myles Beeching directs the New England Conservatory Career Services Center, a comprehensive career resource office for musicians, internationally recognized as a model of its kind. At the Conservatory, Ms. Beeching has advised hundreds of students and alumni on the entire range of career issues facing musicians. At the Conservatory, she teaches the Professional Artist Seminars, and she has also taught arts leadership for the Graduate Arts Administration program at Boston University. Ms. Beeching has been a guest speaker for the National Association of Schools of Music, Chamber Music America, and the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, the Eastman School of Music, and the Oberlin, Colburn, and Peabody Conservatories. A Fulbright scholar and Harriet Hale Woolley grant recipient, Ms. Beeching holds a doctorate in cello from SUNY Stony Brook. Her articles on music and careers have appeared in Inside Arts, the Music and Entertainment Industry Educators Assoc. Journal, and Chamber Music magazine. Her book, Beyond Talent: Creating a Successful Career in Music, is published by Oxford University Press. For more information, click here.

John Candler
President of the Brevard Music Center

John S. Candler joined the Brevard Music Center board of trustees in 1981, and was appointed the first president of the Music Center in 1993. He has since led the Brevard Music Center through tremendous artistic and financial growth. Mr. Candler was raised in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, and after graduating from the Virginia Military Institute in 1962, he served for two years active duty as an officer with the United States Army. Mr. Candler spent over twenty years with Olin Corporation and held positions of vice president of manufacturing, corporate vice president of human resources and executive vice president of the former Ecusta Paper Group. He left Olin in 1986 as part of an entrepreneurial ownership group that purchased several businesses with worldwide presence. Candler last served as president and CEO of Sky Climber, Inc, a leading supplier of specialized high-rise access equipment. Mr. Candler's past volunteer affiliations include sixteen years as a director of the Transylvania Community Hospital, five of them as board chairman, president of Transylvania Partnerships, Inc., and board member of Transylvania County Arts Council and Brevard College. Candler resides in Brevard with his wife, Linda. For more information, click here.

Dr. Judith Coe
Director of Commercial Voice, University of Colorado at Denver

Dr. Judith Coe is currently director of the commercial voice program in the Music & Industry Studies Department at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center. 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.

Michael Drapkin
Executive Director, Brevard Conference on Music Entrepreneurship

Michael Drapkin is the founder and executive Director of The Brevard Conference on Music Entrepreneurship and was chair of E-Commerce Management at Columbia University's Executive Information Technology Management program. Drapkin is also 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 Corporation 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.

Patrick Faucher
President and Founder, nimbit inc

Patrick Faucher is President and Founder of nimbit inc, an online artist management platform for the music industry. Patrick has spent the past 20 years as a technologist and as a music professional, arranging and performing across the globe. Prior to founding nimbit, Patrick worked with several premier bands, creating online storefront and fan solutions for acts such as Aerosmith and Phish. He also developed early e-commerce technology, launching BuyItOnline.com as one of the first multi-merchant web portals; and has produced interactive solutions for companies such as Computerworld (IDG), Navisite and Polo Ralph Lauren. An Honors Graduate of Berklee College of Music, Patrick is a published author of several articles relating to multi-media, the business of music in the Internet era and music entrepreneurship. He is a frequent panelist at music industry events and regularly conducts various workshops at educational and industry venues. For more information, visit www.nimbit.com.

Catherine Fitterman
Director, New York University/Steinhardt School's Undergraduate Music Business Program
Founding Director of the Entrepreneurship Center at University of Colorado at Boulder

Catherine Fitterman 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, international music business, and the introductory course for music business studies. Fitterman is active in entrepreneurship education in the field of music. She was a member of the faculty team who successfully secured a $1Million matching grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, to be used for the dissemination of interest and capability in entrepreneurial activity at NYU beyond the confines of the Stern School of Business. A classically trained pianist with degrees in piano pedagogy and arts administration, Fitterman 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. Fitterman's professional experience includes a mix of working and teaching in the arts from both a for-profit and not-for-profit perspective. In addition to her work as a professor, 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). For more information, click here.

Dr. Tayloe Harding
Dean of the School of Music, University of South Carolina
Former President, College Music Society

Dr. Tayloe Harding became dean of the School of Music at University of South Carolina in the summer of 2005. He also serves as composer-in-residence for the Valdosta (GA) Symphony Orchestra. Most recently, he served as the head of the Department of Music and chief advancement officer for the Arts at Valdosta State University, as well as executive director of the Valdosta Symphony. Previous faculty and administrative positions include North Dakota State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Georgia State University. As a composer, Harding has commissions from Thamyris, Atlanta Winds, African-American Philharmonic Orchestra, Fernbank Museum of Natural History and Chicago Saxophone Quartet. He has previously served as President of the College Music Society. For more information, click here.

Maggie L. Harrer
Independent Producer/Director - Theater, Opera and Film

Maggie L. Harrer, a producer, director and choreographer, is currently working in independent films. A 2003 Graduate Fellow of Leadership New Jersey, she was the founding president and former artistic director of the Oradell Arts and Business Coalition, which produces annual arts events and festivals in Bergen County, New Jersey. Harrer was nominated for a MacArthur Fellowship while running her own dance/theater company. She also directed Another World for NBC Television. In California, she produced The Johnny Grant Show at Universal Studios and developed and produced a series of educational film strips and television specials. She works as a consultant for arts organizations, facilitating retreats and seminars on topics ranging from board development to mission identification. For many years, Harrer served as an on-site evaluator for the National Endowment for the Arts, Opera America and several state arts organizations. She has produced CDs, published books, and as the founding president for the Water Works Conservancy, Inc. led an eleven-year preservation battle to save the Historic Hackensack Water Co. site on Van Buskirk Island.

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

E. Michael Harrington is Professor of Intellectual Property and Music Business at Belmont University, and chair of the College Music Society's Music Industry Outreach Committee, and a Leadership Music alumnus. He has been interviewed by the New York Times, CNN, Bravo, Associated Press, PBS, the TODAY Show, NPR, Canadian Public Radio, 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 Times, Miami Herald and others. He has worked as consultant and expert witness in hundreds of music copyright matters involving director Steve Spielberg, producer Mark Burnett, the Dixie Chicks, Woody Guthrie, Steve Perry, Keith Urban, Ne-Yo, Collin Raye, Tupac Shakur, George Clinton, Mariah Carey, Patty Loveless and others, and delivered more than 100 lectures to more than 70 law schools, organizations and universities throughout North America including Harvard Law, Yale Law, the Boston Bar Association, the European Film Commission, the Experience Music Project, NEMO, Future of Music Coalition, Miami, Berklee, NYU, UCLA, McGill, Carleton, Eastman, Emory and others. For more information, visit www.emichaelharrington.com .

Bill Ivey
Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts under President Clinton

Bill Ivey is the Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, an innovative arts policy research center with offices in Nashville, Tennessee and Washington, DC. He also directs the Center's Washington-based program for senior government career staff, the Arts Industries Policy Forum. Since 2002, Ivey has been Vanderbilt's Harvie Branscomb Distinguished Visiting Scholar (an endowed faculty position). He serves as Senior Consultant to Leadership Music, a music industry professional development program, and is currently President of the American Folklore Society. Ivey chairs the board of the National Recording Preservation Foundation, a federally-chartered foundation affiliated with the Library of Congress, and is a member of the Intangible Heritage Preservation Committee of the Council on Library and Information Resources. Ivey is a trustee of the Center for American Progress, a Washington, DC, "think tank." His book about the public interest and America's cultural system will be published by the University of California Press in the fall of 2007. From May, 1998 through September, 2001, Ivey served in the Clinton-Gore Administration as the seventh Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. He was previously director of the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, Tennessee. He was twice elected board chairman of the Los Angeles-based National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) and is a four-time Grammy Award nominee (Best Album Notes category), and the author of numerous articles on the arts, U.S. cultural policy, and folk and popular music. For more information, visit http://www.vanderbilt.edu/curbcenter/ .

Arlene Shrut
Founder & Artistic Director of New Triad for Collaborative Arts

Arlene Shrut is Founder and Artistic Director of New Triad for Collaborative Arts. A member of the Vocal Arts faculty at The Juilliard School, she teaches singer-pianist recital partners at Manhattan School of Music. She is an admired keyboard performer and has collaborated with such artists as Ren�e Fleming and Thomas Hampson. Dr. Shrut has recorded for many record labels, has been featured in many radio broadcasts and serves as official pianist for many of New York�s top vocal events, in some of America's finest concert halls. She has toured extensively in Europe, Canada and across the United States. Devoted to dramatically synthesized programming with fully-collaborative partnering leading to the ultimate expression to song recitals, Arlene has been involved in co-producing innovative programs. Among them are �Lieder Across the Sundial,� �Women�s Words: An American Songbook,� �Days-of-a-Man,� �A Musical Banquet: Songs from Hors d�oeuvres to Espresso,� and �Cubism/Synchronism in Song.� In addition to New Triad, Arlene founded the National Association of Accompanists and Coaches, co-founded the Seal Bay Music Festival, and personally authored an entire series of multimedia scripts under the name of Classical Concepts. She has served on the faculties of Syracuse University, Mannes College of Music and The Aspen Music Festival. In addition to vocal coaching at Juilliard, she currently teaches singer/pianist recital partners at Manhattan School of Music. For more information, visit http://www.newtriad.org.

Melissa Snoza
Founder & Executive Director of Fifth House Ensemble

Melissa Snoza is a flutist, founding member and Executive Director of the Chicago-based Fifth House Ensemble. A young, not-for-profit organization, Fifth House seeks to widen the scope of the chamber music art form by creating performances that are accessible to audiences not normally reached by classical music, and by creating new connections between chamber music and other musical, visual and performance art. As part of its college residency programs, Fifth House also provides workshops on career development and entrepreneurship for young musicians. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music's Arts Leadership Program, Melissa began her training in arts administration with an internship in Artistic Operations at the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. As a performer, Melissa holds positions with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and Peninsula Music Festival in addition to her active chamber music performance schedule. Melissa currently serves on the faculty at Carthage College. For more information, visit http://www.fifth-house.com.

Kevin Woelfel
Director of the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho
Former Director of the Entrepreneurship Center for Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder

Kevin Woelfel has recently been appointed as the Director of the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho. Previously, he was the Director of the Entrepreneurship Center for Music (ECM) at University of Colorado at Boulder. His diversity in the music industry includes performance, composition, and manufacturing. At age nineteen, Mr. Woelfel's professional career began with tenure as the Third/Assistant Principal Trumpet in the Spokane Symphony. Kevin went on to perform over the years with many orchestras including the Chicago Lyric Opera, Grant Park Orchestra, Rhode Island Philharmonic, and the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra. Active in the jazz and pop genres, he has played with the Larry Elgart Orchestra, Third World, and numerous touring productions. As a composer and arranger, Mr. Woelfel was in the U.S. Air Force band program stationed in Vacaville, California and Yokota, Japan. He has also written and arranged music for many projects including docudramas for air on National Public Radio. A serial entrepreneur, Kevin has founded several companies including WolfPak� Incorporated, and Rocky Mountain Case Works, both of which produce high-end music instrument cases for international distribution. He was also Director of Operations for the David G. Monette Corporation, manufacturer of exclusive custom trumpets. Most recently, Mr. Woelfel has founded ArtsStart.org to distribute an opportunity analysis tool designed for business challenged artists called I'mART.