Faculty

Mark Miller, Chair
MFA, California Institute of the Arts

Mark Miller, Chair of Naropa's Music Department, has toured and recorded with Art Lande, Paul McCandless, Peter Kater, R. Carlos Nakai, David Friesen, Tom Grant and Bill Douglas. With jazz pianist Art Lande he has recorded three albums of improvised duets, The Story of Ba-Ku, Prayers, Germs and Obsessions and World Without Cars, as well as two award-winning children's albums featuring Meg Ryan and Holly Hunter. With pianist Peter Kater, he has recorded seven albums including Migration, Honorable Sky and Rooftops, as well as sound tracks for television and Off-Broadway. For more information, visit Mark's website: musicbymarkmiller.com

Courses: Improvisation, Musicianship, Listening to Jazz, Jazz Ensemble, Performance Practicum, Special Topics, Contemplative Learning Seminar

Listen to three improvised pieces featuring Mark Miller, soprano saxophone, and Art Lande, piano:

1. Unknown Whippet
2. Mavis
3. Nella

Ellen Napodano, Administrative Director
enapodano@naropa.edu 303-245-4622

Adjunct Faculty

Bill Douglas
MM, Yale University

Bill is a bassoonist-pianist-composer who has toured and recorded for thirty years with clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. As a bassoonist, he has played with the Toronto and New Haven Symphonies and has recorded three RCA albums with Peter Serkin and Tashi. As a jazz pianist, he has toured and recorded with vibraphonist Gary Burton and bassist Eddie Gomez. In 1994, SOCAN, the Canadian equivalent of ASCAP and BMI, presented him with their classical composer of the year award. His compositions have been performed by major orchestras and chamber groups around the world. He has been teaching at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado for twenty-four years. He has recorded ten albums of his music on the Hearts of Space label, the latest of which is entitled 'Homeland: A Prayer for Peace.' For more information, visit www.billdouglas.cc.

Courses: Musicianship III and IV

Paul Fowler
MM, University of Michigan
BM, Ithaca College

As a classically trained vocalist and composer, improvising pianist, producer and electronic musician, Paul Fowler works across multiple genres in anything from popular music to 21st century art music. A sampling of his projects include the composition of a short film score with Grammy winner Robert Mirabal, an electronic work for San Francisco-based Hope Mohr Dance, a choral work for The Crossing conducted by Donald Nally (Chorus Master of the Lyric Opera) and multiple collaborations with Paul Haas and Sympho using the laptop as an improvising instrument in conjunction with orchestra. Paul has performed leads in opera and musical theater, toured Europe with two choirs, and sung in clubs throughout Milwaukee, upstate New York, and New Mexico. As a pianist, he has performed with jazz artists Bruce Dunlap, Donald Walden, Rob Schepps and Andre Wright and has played across the country as well as in Japan, Ecuador, and most recently at New Orleans JazzFest. His concert works have been performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the National Concert Hall of Taiwan and the Borealis Festival of Norway, among others, and have been awarded the First Music Award, the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Louis Smadbeck Composition Award and the Swan Composer Award (Honorable Mention).

Paul recently moved to Colorado from Northern New Mexico, where he maintained a small voice studio and conducted the Taos Community Chorus and vocal jazz ensemble, Taos Junction. He performed extensively throughout the region with his jazz trio, The B Section and a free improv lounge band - Jetpack Rental.  Now in Colorado with his family, Fowler produces albums for local artists, teaches voice, composition, improvisation, and computer-based production and continues to compose concert music. For more information: www.paulfowler.net

Courses: Naropa Chorus, Music Appreciation, Musicianship IV

Mickey Houlihan
BS, Florida State University 

Grammy Award-winning engineer Mickey Houlihan opened Wind Over The Earth in 1979, and the studio remains a nexus of creative souls as well as serving as an umbrella for Digital Poets, and a professional training company offering certification courses for Digidesign and Apple. He also serves as co-director of Looking Glass Arts and is President of Sterling Circle Records. Mickey has recorded with musicians in many of our national parks as well as in the Wulu Mountains of Taiwan, Lake Baikal in Siberia and the Great Pyramids of Egypt. For more information, please visit: http://www.windovertheearth.com/

“I used to lie on the floor of my house in college and listen. I would listen to all the different sounds in the room and then, stretching out a bit, I would listen through the walls into my neighbor’s room and then further away until I was listening at the limits of my perception. I would hang there as long as possible, in that world, at the edge of perceiving and projecting. Later, I started trying to record those experiences to share the wonder with others. The exploration of recording technology became its own journey, and my interest in boundaries led me into the wilds. Always, there is listening, and an awareness of the constant changing. The recording studio and its evolving set of tools is truly a modern day temple, and the possibility for magic is without bounds.”  - Mickey Houlihan

Courses: Recording Studio

Scott Parker Mast

Scott Parker Mast began his study of percussion as a teenager. He was drawn to African drumming in 1991 and has been studying under various African master drummers ever since. He has studied African percussion in the U.S., as well as in Zimbabwe, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Mast has been teaching students of all ages for more than a decade and plays locally with a variety of bands including Onda, the Rudeboys, and Santana tribute act Soul Sacrifice.

Mawuenyega Mensah

Mawuenyega Mensah, Ghana, started drumming at the age of five. He joined the West Africa Folkloric group at age ten and was taught by Mustapha Tettey Addy. For ten years he was master drummer for the Akrowa Cultural Performance Ensemble in Accra. In 1999 Mawuenyega joined the prestigious London-based pan-African dance ensemble, Adzido. He has taught extensively and collaborated with leading artists while touring Europe.

Tira Neal
BM, Eastern New Mexico University
MS Candidate, University of Colorado, Denver
CTS Certified
Pro Tools Certified

Tira Neal’s primary instruments include clarinet, saxophone, trombone and computer (both Mac and PC), with a secondary focus in both acoustic and electronic piano. Tira has extensive experience in live sound reinforcement and studio recording as well as strong knowledge with troubleshooting and recording equipment maintenance (both analog and digital). She works with both Windows and Macintosh based platforms and is proficient with Digidesign Pro Tools, Magix Samplitude, Propellerhead Reason, Steinberg Nuendo, Pias Peak, Adobe Photoshop, Apple Final Cut Studio, Apple Logic Studio Pro, Soundhack, C-Sound and SMAART Live. Tira is currently pursuing a Master’s in recording arts from the University of Colorado and serves as a Pro Tools Specialist at Wind Over the Earth Studios in Boulder.

Courses: Recording Studio, Radio Naropa

Dexter Payne

Dexter Payne, twice a finalist in the Downbeat Readers Poll, has appeared nationally on the NBC Today Show and Prairie Home Companion. Dexter has toured, recorded and arranged for Afro-pop bands with Bola Abimbola, David Mporampora, Mohamed Alidu, Moussa Konaté, Selasi Atiasi, Boubacar Diebate and others. He traveled for 2 1/2 years throughout Latin America, performed in 11 countries, recorded in Brazil with Paulinho Tapajos and Beth Carvalho. He has performed with Rene Marie, Mac Rebbenack, Sharon Isbin, Thiago de Mello, Elio Reve, Cachaito, Noites Illustradas, Judy Roderick, Dave VanRonk, the Big Sky Mudflaps, BarBQ Bob, Johnny Long and more. His recordings include work with Thiago de Mello, feature vocalist Ithamara Koorax, and four great pianists including Helio Alvez (Obrigado Brazil) and Romero Lubamba. Dexter finds his center in music with heart, regardless of its origin. For more information, visit www.dexterpayne.com

Courses taught: Afro-Pop Ensemble

Nina Rolle
BA, Naropa University

Nina Rolle is a hybrid artist; singer, composer, voiceover actor and clown; and a pioneer in the hybrid genre of Sonic Theater. Her original show, Zen Cabaret: a contemplative burlesque was named Best of Denver 2007 by the Denver Westword and Pick of the Fringe at the Boulder International Fringe Festival in 2005 and 2006. Nina spent six years as singer and accordionist with the Bay Area band Charming Hostess; recordings include eat (1998), Trilectic (Tzadik 2000) and Punch (ReR 2002). She has collaborated with UMO Ensemble, Amy Denio, Shinichi Koga, Giant Ant Farm and Sound Circle; and has performed her original scores for LA's Zoo District, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art’s production of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus and Tiger-Lion Works' outdoor pageant-play, The Buddha Prince in L.A., N.Y. and Minneapolis.

Courses: Music Appreciation, Radio Naropa

Carmen Sandim

Carmen Sandim began playing piano as a young child. A native of Brazil, she performed with the State Youth Symphony and won national competitions in Brazilian jazz and classical piano by age seventeen. In 2000 she graduated from Berklee College of Music and moved to Washington D.C., where she was employed as a composer for radio and television, won several awards for her compositional excellence and started her own music production company. Currently living in Boulder, Carmen is a performer and music educator; she teaches piano and composition lessons at her home studio, as well classes at C.U., Naropa University and Metropolitan State College of Denver. Carmen holds a Bachelor's in film scoring, a Master's in jazz performance and pedagogy.

Sara Veglahn
PhD, University of Denver
MFA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
BA, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse

Sara Veglahn is the author of Another Random Heart (Letter Machine Editions, 2009), Closed Histories (Noemi Press, 2008), and Falling Forward (Braincase, 2003). Her writing has appeared in numerous journals, including: Conjunctions, Fence, Tarpaulin Sky, Trickhouse, and Bombay Gin. She served as the associate editor for the Denver Quarterly (2007-2009), and has taught writing and literature at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and in the Music Department and the Department of Writing and Poetics at Naropa University.

David Wheeler

David Wheeler (Kansuke II) lived in Japan for twenty years studying and performing the shakuhachi with some of Japan's finest traditional masters and ensembles, beginning study in Tokyo in 1977 with renowned shakuhachi master Junsuke Kawase III. He received his MA in musicology from the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music in 1985, and has benefited from studying and playing with the majority of the great shakuhachi masters of the latter half of the 20th century, including late living national treasure Goro Yamaguchi, living national treasure Reibo Aoki II, Katsuya Yokoyama and Kodo Araki V as well as Kawase.