Faculty & Staff

Janet Feder
BA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

A native of Boulder, Colorado, Janet Feder has a Bachelor of Arts degree in musicology from the University of Massachusetts (1983). She also maintains a busy private teaching studio in Denver, where she lives with her husband David Quint, a freelance filmmaker and cinematographer, and their three children.

Most widely known for pioneering composition for prepared guitar, Janet has been featured on many recordings; among them are solo projects Speak Puppet (ReR Recommended Records/UK 2001) and Ironic Universe—a CD & DVD featuring Fred Frith (AdHoc Records/USA 2006) as well as compilations for Zerx Records (Albuquerque, NM; 1999–07) and 156 Strings for Cuneiform Records (2002) featuring the work of the most innovative acoustic guitar players worldwide today.

Janet has taught extensively in the United States and toured both solo and with her duo Cowhause (with Colin Bricker, live electronics) from both coasts of the US to London, Marseille and Tel Aviv. Performances in prestigious modern music festivals in Europe include MIMI (Marseille, France 2004), The London Musician’s Collective (London, 2004) and Music Unlimited (Wels, Austria 2006).

She has performed and collaborated with Fred Frith, Elliott Sharp, Nels Cline, Henry Kaiser, Mike Keneally, Amy Denio, Chris Cutler, Mike Johnson/Thinking Plague, Thomas Dimuzzio—all legends of modern music. 

Janet is also an advisory board member of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association for whom she is an advocate and guest lecturer.  In her free time she is an avid cyclist.

Courses: Music Appreciation, Improvisation, Composition, Guitar Ensemble, Senior Project, Special Topics: Performance Intersection, Sound/Theatre/Text

For more information, visit www.janetfeder.com.

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.

Courses: Improvisation, Musicianship, Listening to Jazz, Jazz Ensemble, Performance Practicum

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

1. Unknown Whippet
2. Mavis
3. Nella

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

Mickey Houlihan
BS, Florida State University 

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 lay 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

Chaitanya Mahmud Kabir
MA, Ethnomusicology, University of Hawaii

Chaitanya Mahmud Kabir has brought together a powerful synthesis of Indian devotional and raga singing with modern natural music theory. He designed the divine music graduate program of the Hindu University of America and taught several of its courses. He speaks fluent Hindi and Urdu and has translated books of spiritual discourse and poetry. He sings and plays Turkish Sufi Music weekly at Zikr. He is a devotee of mother goddess Saraswati and has taught raga and devotional singing, flutes and Hindi and Urdu in Boulder for many years.

Courses: Introduction to World Music: The Music of India

Greg LaLiberte
MM, University of New Mexico
BM, University of Minnesota

A woodwind specialist, Greg LaLiberte has performed with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, The Temptations, The Four Tops, the Boulder Philharmonic, Rita Moreno, Barry Manilow, the Opera Orchestra of Albuquerque, Paul McCandless, Art Lande, Kai Eckhardt, Ty Burhoe, and his pianist mother, Patricia LaLiberte, in the LaLiberte Duo. Founder and director of the Boulder-based Brazilian percussion ensemble, Bateria Alegria, and co-founder of Ginga and Ginga Grande, local Brazilian ensembles, Greg is active regionally and nationally as a flutist, saxophonist, percussionist, and singer of Brazilian music. He resides in Boulder where he owns and operates Boulder Woodwind Repair and teaches privately at Greg LaLiberte Studios.

Francisco Marques
BA in Music, Colby College

Francisco is actively engaged in the creation of Brasilian music in the Rocky Mountain area and has played with a multitude of Brasilian music ensembles based out of Boulder, CO. Born in Sâo Paulo, Brasil, he was raised in the Washington D.C. area and graduated from Colby College in 2000, where he received a BA in Music with a focus on classical guitar. He has been playing in the Boulder area since June of 2000 with many bands, in a variety of styles. He teaches privately on various instruments with a focus on Brasilian music and rhythms.  Along with guitar, Francisco actively plays the electric bass guitar, cavaquinho, pandeiro, cuica, repinique, repique de mao, tamborim, caixa, surdo, and tantan with several Brasilian ensembles, including Sambadende, Ginga, Ginga Grande, Bateria Alegria, Beco do Choro, Sambasong, and Kid Akimbo.

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: 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

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, 2009), Closed Histories (Noemi Press, 2008), That We Come to a Consensus—a collaboration with the poet Noah Eli Gordon (Ugly Duckling, 2005), and Falling Forward (Braincase, 2003). Her fiction and poetry have appeared numerous journals, including: Conjunctions, Fence, Tarpaulin Sky, Trickhouse, and Bombay Gin. She served as the poetry editor for Art New England and as the associate editor for the Denver Quarterly, and has taught writing and literature courses at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Denver, the Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and in the department of Writing and Poetics at Naropa University.

Staff

Emily K. Harrison, Administrative Director
BA, Emerson College
MFA, Savannah College of Art & Design
PhD Candidate, University of Colorado, Boulder

Emily K. Harrison was born and raised in the pine woods and oil fields of East Texas, where as a youngster she enjoyed swimming lessons in the summer and reading Nancy Drew books year-round. Harrison found her way west to Boulder via Chicago, where she worked as an actor and performance writer. Harrison is a founding member and artistic director of Boulder’s square product theatre, a company dedicated to collaboration with artists encompassing a slew of disciplines. She has worked in a variety of aspects of theatre and performance at locations across the country including the Texas Shakespeare Festival, New York’s Jean Cocteau Rep, The Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp in Steamboat Springs, Boulder’s Theatre13 and Denver’s Curious Theatre Company. Harrison currently teaches acting at the University of Colorado, Boulder and occassionally serves as adjunct or guest faculty at Naropa. She very much enjoys working with the Music Department students, faculty and staff at Naropa and strives to be one of the many individuals dedicated to the growth and support of students throughout their Naropa career.

Courses: Special Topics: Performance Intersection, Sound/Theatre/Text