Gene Bozzi – Music Program Chairperson

Gene Bozzi initiated the jazz program at CCY in 1991. He teaches jazz at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, and serves as the Chair of the Music Department. 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 the Claudio Roditti quartet, and appeared in a concert of “The Birth of The Cool” with Gerry Mulligan. He also performs in several local big bands and combos and collaborates with Brazilian pianist/singer Catalina Vigurs in Samba Brasil. This band appears at many festivals performing Brazilian/Jazz music. Gene is also a visiting teacher of percussion at Wesleyan University and Trinity College.

Christine Breslin - Photographer Instructor

Christine Breslin exhibits nationally and teaches in Connecticut. Christine took the First Place prize in the 2003-2003 International Photography Educators Association competition, and her award-winning work is now traveling on an International tour for the next two years. She is an adjunct faculty member at Manchester Community College and the University of Hartford, and has also taught at the University of Connecticut. Currently, she is a participating artist in Partners, an educational arts program, sponsored by The Bushnell in Hartford and also for Neighborhood Studios in Hartford, sponsored by the Greater Hartford Arts Council. For over fifteen years she has been a documentary photographer involved in social and political projects. Along with her documentary work, Christine is a freelance photographer with a studio in Hartford, CT where she photographs people, food, and products for publications such as TIME, Random House, Vintage Press, The Hartford Courant, and Connecticut Magazine. She maintains a busy exhibition schedule, with solo and group shows regionally and nationally. Christine has received numerous national and regional awards for her work. Her web site is www.breslinphoto.com.

Carolyn Kirsch - Musical Theater Program Chair Person

Carolyn Kirsch 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 Studies. She served on the faculty of the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and Hartford Children’s Theatre, and currently serves on the staff of the Hartford Conservatory. She continues her performance career as well as directin local area productions. As a dedicated performer, Carolyn studies weekly in NYC with Austin Pendleton of HB Studios.

Diana Moller-Marino - Theater Program Chairperson

Diana Moller-Marino is Assistant Professor/Chair of Movement for Actors at the Hartt School of Theatre at the University of Hartford. Specializing in movement-based actor training techniques, Diana has taught workshops nationally and internationally for students, teachers and professional actors and dancers. Diana was a core teacher at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts from 1993 - 2001. As a director, Diana has directed in educational and professional venues throughout the Northeast. Recent directorial credits include: The Singin' Cowboy (an original musical); Lysistrata: The Sex Strike; and Chicago at the Hartt School; as well as a professional production of Betrayal, at the Monomoy Theatre in Chatham, MA. Diana is producing an original play in collaboration with two colleagues from CCY: Jill Giles (writer) and Jose Monteiro (actor and inspiration for the story). In addition, Diana is writing a movement-based, actor-training text entitled The Space Between. Diana holds a Bachelors Degree with honors in Theatre from Wesleyan University and a Masters Degree in Directing from Emerson College.

Craig Norton - Filmmaking Program Chairperson

Craig Norton holds a degree in Broadcast Communications from Southern CT State University and has been in the business for over 20 years. As a freelancer, he has worked on broadcast, commercial, corporate, promotional and training videos in all aspects of the production process. Craig worked at ESPN for eleven years as an Associate Director and Network Coordinator and did training for new employees in his department. In 2004, he left ESPN to teach and practice commercial photography, music, video production and filmmaking. Since then Craig has been awarded a “Bright Idea’s” grant to write the curriculum for a Teen Filmmaking class at the Greater Hartford YMCA and he is a roster 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.

Rafael Oses - Creative Writing Program Chairperson

Rafael Oses 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 also 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, and the inaugural recipient of the Alonzo Davis Fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2007. His poems have also been published in Fugue, The Cincinnati Review and Endicott 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. His poem “Balada”, scored for soprano and guitar by composer Thomas Schuttenhelm, was premiered at the Centro Cultural Conde Duque in Madrid, Spain in 2007. He has been a core faculty member in creative writing at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts since 1997, received a Surdna Arts Teacher Fellowship in 2007, and has also taught courses at the University of Hartford and Saint Joseph College.

Pit Pinegar - Artist Instructor

Pit Pinegar is a poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright. 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 (Teaching Artist of the Year, 2005-2006), the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, and Litchfield Performing Arts, Inc. For eight years, she directed the Cheney Hall Broadside Series, a program that brought writers to read at Cheney Hall in Manchester. She also directs the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival’s Urban Outreach Program and has been a teaching director at the International Women’s Writing Guild Conference at Skidmore College. She was writer-in-residence at Bucknell University during the summer of 2000 and the spring of 2003. She was a visiting writer in the University of New Orleans MFA program in Madrid, Spain during the summer of 2003. She has received a Fellowship in fiction from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Governor’s Distinguished Advocate of the Arts Award.

Sparks Mellon - Technical Theater Chairperson

Sparks Mellon has been a set designer and scenic artist in the Hartford/ New Haven area since 1979. Sparks has designed scenery for, among others, Amherst College, The Connecticut Commission of the Arts, CPTV, ECA in New Haven, the Lincoln Theater, Loomis-Chaffee, The New England Actors Theater, The Portland Stage Company, Trinity College and The University of Hartford. She is the resident set designer at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, CT., where she lives on campus with her husband and two daughters. As a scenic artist, Sparks worked for the Hartford Stage Company for eight years, as well as being a freelance painter for the Long Wharf Theater and the Goodspeed Opera House.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”.

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 the past 10 years, she has been a Visual Aesthetics instructor of bookmaking and printing during the summer sessions at the Armory Art Center of the Palm Beaches. She developed a preparatory Saturday Arts Program for middle school students as a means for engaging students in performing and visual arts beyond their home school curriculum at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. She received an Artist Fellowship in visual art making and design in 2005 from the Dreyfoos School of Arts for visual literacy among children. Her work has been shown locally in venues such as Hardy’s Time Gallery, Visual Aide Venue South and the Artworks Gallery in Hartford. Currently, she is a Visual Arts and Creative Writing instructor at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts.

Linda Burns – Dance Program Chairperson