Gene Bozzi – Music Program Chairperson

Gene Bozzi initiated the jazz program at CCY in 1991.  He teaches at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, and serves as the music department chairman. Gene is also a visiting teacher of percussion at Wesleyan University and Trinity College. He is a graduate of the Hartt School of Music and is the principal timpanist in the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.  As a jazz musician, Gene has played with Gerry Mulligan, Dave Liebman, John Scofield, and Claudio Roditi.  He is the creator, artistic director, and drummer of the Hartford Symphony’s new highly successful Jazz & Strings series. This year’s events included performances of music by Charlie Parker, Stan Getz and Ella Fitzgerald.

Noah Baerman – Jazz Instructor - Core Teacher

Pianist Noah Baerman earned Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Jazz Studies from Rutgers University, studying under Kenny Barron. Noah’s widely acclaimed 2003 release "Patch Kit" raised funds and awareness for Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder with which he was born.  The album features bassist Ron Carter and drummer Ben Riley and gained substantial press and radio airplay nationally, leading to an appearance on Marian McPartland’s NPR program “Piano Jazz.”  His other albums include the trio albums “U-Turn,” “What It Is,” and “Bliss,” as well as “Soul Force," which features such guest artists as trombonist Robin Eubanks, percussionist Warren Smith and saxophonists Steve Wilson, Jimmy Greene, Wayne Escoffery and Claire Daly. His most recent release is the eponymous debut by the collective quintet Playdate. Noah is active as an educator, teaching privately and at several institutions including Wesleyan University, where he directs the Jazz Ensemble.  He has authored nine books and an instructional DVD for the Alfred Publishing Company, most recently The Versatile Keyboardist.  He is a prolific composer as well and has earned the New Works grant from Chamber Music America, as well as First Prize for jazz in the Billboard Song Contest and the Unisong Contest.

Jeanne Giroir - Dance Program Chairperson

Originally from Texas, Jeanne Giroir studied at the School of American Ballet in NY on a Ford Foundation scholarship.  She danced with the Harkness Ballet, also in NYC, for two years before moving to Hartford.  A principal dancer for the Hartford Ballet for 15 years, she danced such roles as the Sugar Plum Fairy/Clara in “The Nutcracker”, Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet”, and the Maiden in “Carmina Burana”, along with works by George Balanchine, Anthony Tudor, Michael Uthoff, Peter Martins, and Doris Humphrey.  After retiring from the stage, she was ballet mistress for the Hartford Ballet.  During her years there, she taught company class, rehearsed the company, and taught master classes in colleges and universities across the country.  She presently teaches at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, and at several dance studios in the Hartford area.

Carolyn Kirsch - Musical Theater Program Chairperson

Carolyn has performed in fifteen Broadway musicals, including How to Succeed in Business, Sweet Charity,and Chicago.  She was in the original company of A Chorus Line, for which she won a Theatre World Award.  During her New York Career, she worked extensively with the choreographers and directors Michael Bennett and Bob Fosse.  She received ballet training from Madame Maria Swoboda of Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo School and studied acting with Uta Hagen of HB Studio.  She served on the faculty of Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, Hartford Children’s Theater, and currently serves on the staff of the Hartford Conservatory. She continues her performing career as well as directing local area productions. As a dedicated performer, Carolyn continues to study in NYC with Austin Pendletown of HB Studios. In 2008, Carolyn was awarded The New Hampshire Theater Award for Best Actress for her work as Amanda Wingfield in “The Glass Menagerie” at The Lake Winnipesaukee Playhouse”.

Diana Moller-Marino - Theater Program Chairperson

Diana is Associate Professor at the Hartt School of Music, Dance and Theatre at the University of Hartford. Specializing in movement-based actor training techniques, Diana has taught master classes and residencies nationally and internationally for students, teachers and professional actors and dancers. Diana has been a Guest Teaching Artist at many institutions including: Wesleyan University. The University of Utah, Trinity College, Santa Barbara City College, Red Lotus Movement Center (Salt Lake City) and at the cultural centers on the islands of Santiago and San Vicente in Cape Verde, Africa.  Diana was a core faculty member at The Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts from 1993–2001. Diana holds a Bachelors Degree with honors in Theatre from Wesleyan University and a Masters Degree in Directing from Emerson College.

Sparks Mellon - Technical Theater Program Chairperson

Sparks Mellon has been a set designer and scenic artist in the Hartford/ New Haven area since 1979. As a scenic artist, Sparks worked for the Hartford Stage Company for eight years, as well as being a freelance artist for the Long Wharf Theater, the Goodspeed Opera House, and the Portland Stage Company, Sparks has designed scenery for, among others, Amherst College, The Connecticut Commission of the Arts, CT Public TV, Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven, the Lincoln Theater, Loomis-Chaffee School, The New England Actors Theater, Trinity College and The University of Hartford.  She is the set designer at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, CT., where she lives on campus with her husband and two daughters. Other projects include backdrop design for the last G. Fox Christmas windows in downtown Hartford, interior painting for the first Banana Republic store in NYC, and whitewashing the inside of a barn for the movie “Funny Farm”. Sparks received the Artist Instructor of the Year Award at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts in 2008, where she is currently on the faculty of the Theatre Design and Production Department.

Rafael Oses - Creative Writing Program Chairperson

Rafael Osés holds degrees from Hartford Art School and Columbia University. His work appeared in Black Warrior Review in 1998, won its 1998-99 Literary Award for poetry, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He received an artist grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts in 1999, was a MacDowell Colony fellow in 2002, a finalist for the Philbrick Award in 2004, the inaugural recipient of the Alonzo Davis Fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2007, and received an Amy Rao Honorary Fellowship from the Djerassi Resident Artist Program in 2008. He was a Caldera Artist Residency fellow in February 2010, and also presented a talk on his artwork and a reading of his poetry at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. His book-length narrative poem, The Night Pharaoh, with woodcut illustrations by artist Daniel Duford and designed by Cumbersome Multiples, was published in August 2010 by Publication Studio; his poems have also appeared in Fugue, The Cincinnati Review, Endicott Review and The Portland Review.

His radio play “Violet Enlightens” was broadcast on Pacifica Radio affiliates KGNU, Boulder, KPFA, Berkeley, and KNMU in Albuquerque, as well as on Bush Radio in Cape Town, South Africa, Resonance 104.4fm in London, England, and WDR in Germany, and is archived in the Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY-Buffalo. “Necessary Monsters”, a performance piece/song cycle written with composer Carla Kihlstedt, was performed at Alverno College in 2007, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2008 and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in 2011.

His poem “Balada”, set for soprano and guitar by composer Thomas Schuttenhelm, was premiered at the Centro Cultural Conde Duque in Madrid, Spain in 2007, and their “Tres Canciónes Españolas” premiered at Central Connecticut State University in 2009. He has been a core faculty member in Creative Writing at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts since 1997, department chair of Creative Writing at the Center for Creative Youth at Wesleyan University since 2000, and received a Surdna Arts Teacher Fellowship in 2007. He has also taught courses at the University of Hartford and Saint Joseph College.

Pit Pinegar - Artist Instructor

Pit Pinegar is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, playwright, and photographer. She has three books of poetry: Nine Years Between Two Poems, The Possibilities of Empty Space, and, The Physics of Transmigration (nominated for a 2006 Pulitzer Prize). She is a teaching artist at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and the Center for Creative Youth at Wesleyan University, and she has directed the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival’s Urban Outreach Program.  Pinegar has been a teaching director at the International Women’s Writing Guild conference at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY and visiting writer in the University of New Orleans MFA program in Madrid, Spain. She has been writer- (or creator-) in-residence in a wide range of schools and universities.  She received a fellowship in fiction from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Governor’s Distinguished Advocate of the Arts Award. She was a 2006 SURDNA Foundation Teaching Fellow. Also in 2006, Pit spent six weeks in residence at Footpaths to Creativity on the Island of Flores in the Azores. She was a Fellow at the Helene V. Wurlitzer Foundation, in Taos, NM, during the spring and early summer of 2009.  Two of her book-length short fiction manuscripts were finalists in the Iron Horse Literary Review’s Single Author Competition in the spring of 2010.

Natasha Miles – Visual Arts Program Chairperson

Natasha D. Miles studied Technical Print Methods, the history of painting and drafting at the University of Hartford’s Art School.  For over 10 years, she was a Visual Aesthetics Curriculum Coordinator and Instructor of Bookmaking and Printing during summer sessions at the Armory Art Center of the Palm Beaches.  She developed a preparatory Arts Program for middle school youth as a means for engaging students in performing and visual arts beyond their home school curriculum at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. Recently, she was awarded a 6-month Artist Residency at The Workshops of Billings Forge.  Her proposal focuses on a larger-than-life pop-out book, which incorporates children’s illustrations and literature compiled from their life experiences.  She has participated in Open Studio Hartford for the past 6 years and has exhibited her art nationally and locally in venues such as Hardy’s Time Gallery, Visual Aide Venue South, The Armory Art Center and Artworks Gallery.  In addition, she is a Visual Arts and Creative Writing instructor at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and she also teaches children and adults at The Studio of Billings Forge in the Frog Hollow community Hartford, Connecticut.     

Kate Ten Eyck – Visual Arts Instructor - Core Teacher

Kate received her BFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design, and her MFA in printmaking from the Hartford Art School. Her work has been shown locally in venues such as the Silpe Gallery, the Zilkha Gallery, the Mattatuck Museum, and nationally. In 2005 and 2006, she was involved in several performance art pieces with the Lower Lights Collective in New York City. These collaborative projects involved kinetic sculpture, sound installation, and modern dance.  In the summer of 2007, she interned with the internationally acclaimed Bread and Puppet Theater and performed with them at New York City’s Lincoln Center. Currently she holds the position of Art Studio Technician at Wesleyan University, where she has also been a Visiting Assistant Professor of Drawing and Printmaking.

Craig Norton - Filmmaking Program Chairperson

Craig Norton holds a degree in Broadcast Communications from Southern CT State University and has been in the filmmaking/communications industry for over 20 years. As a freelancer, he has worked on broadcast, commercial, corporate, promotional and training films in all aspects of the production process. Craig worked at ESPN for eleven years as an Associate Director and Network Coordinator.  In 2004, he left ESPN to teach and practice commercial photography, music, video production and filmmaking. Craig was awarded a “Bright Idea’s” grant to create the curriculum for a Teen Filmmaking class at the Greater Hartford YMCA, and he is on the roster as a Teaching Artist for Young Audiences of CT. He has been a Teaching Artist at the New Britain Museum of American Art for four years.  Whether he is teaching film, photography or music, Craig brings a contagious enthusiasm and inspires students to express themselves individually and together as a group.