Faculty & Staff

Janet Feder, Chair
BA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

A native of Boulder, Colorado, Janet Feder is the chair of the Music Department at Naropa University. She 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: Improvisation, Composition, Guitar Ensemble, Senior Project

For more information, visit www.janetfeder.com.

Mark Miller, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education
MFA, California Institute of the Arts

Mark Miller 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. Miller will be on sabbatical for the 2008-2009 Academic Term, and will return to teach in the Fall of 2009.

Courses: Improvisation, Musicianship, Jazz History, 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.'

Listen to Bill Douglas' Feast.
For more information, visit www.billdouglas.cc.

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.

Nina Rolle
BA, The Naropa Institute

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.

Toby Sinkinson
BFA, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Toby Sinkinson is a sound artist currently living in Boulder, Colorado. He nourishes his lifelong love of listening and do-it-yourself ethic through musical instrument invention, homemade microphones, foley and field recording, as well as computer and keyboard music gone wrong. He has a particular fondness for building sound making devices and deeply enjoys coaxing sounds from unusual objects and unlikely instruments, holding a special affinity for quiet and elusive sounds. He is a member of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology and recently collaborated with Katharine Kaufman to create a soundscape for her original dance piece, Too Small To Tell, which was selected as a Pick of the Fringe at the 2006 Boulder International Fringe Festival.

Robert Sussuma
BM, State University of New York, Fredonia
MM,The Longy School of Music

Robert Sussuma, counter-tenor, holds a Bachelor's degree in vocal performance from SUNY, Fredonia, in New York, a Master's degree in Early Music Vocal Performance from the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is a Certified Course Instructorof the Estill Voice Training System and Executive Director of the Estill Voice Institute in Boulder, CO. Although he specializes in the performance of Early Vocal Music (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque), his performance experience and interests include musical theater, jazz, Barbershop, rock, pop, choral, world, classical/opera and folk music. Currently, Robert is a soloist with and vocal coach for Boulder's nationally acclaimed choral ensemble The Ars Nova Singers. Additionally he performs regularly in Europe with Ensemble al Verso, and is in training to become a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner.

Robert's teaching philosophy is one that is rooted in self-awareness. He believes in the innate wisdom and potential of each individual and seeks to create a safe and expansive learning environment in which each student becomes like a scientist in the laboratory of his/her own experience--at once the experimenter, the observer as well as the experiment itself!

The Estill Voice Training System is a state-of-the-art approach to singing that allows one to know what one is actually doing while singing and speaking in different ways. This provides a foundational knowledge of how the human voice works which, in combination with awareness and new vocabulary of sensation helps create a more and more accurate image for singing. Since we "act in accordance with our self-image" (M. Feldenkrais), learning by exploring our experience is such a way that fills-in or 'vocal self-image' naturally brings more and more confidence, ease and potency to our singing.

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 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.