Michelle Amato is a dynamic vocalist whose abilities to convey the deep passion of a lyric, as well as soar effortlessly through the stratosphere, are making her one of the most in demand names in music today.

She performs regularly at the Van Dyke Café on South Beach, Timpano's Restaurant and The Grand Bohemian Hotel in Orlando, as well as numerous music festivals. She has been a featured soloist with the Memphis Symphony, the South Florida Pops, the Baton Rouge Symphony, the Florida West Coast Symphony, the Orlando Philharmonic, and the All-American College Orchestra at Epcot Center. Michelle also stays extremely active in the recording studio singing and contracting for Royal Caribbean, Costa and Carnival Cruise Lines, Warner Brothers and Shawnee Press Publishers, Walt Disney World, and numerous jingle production companies throughout the country. She has performed and recorded with an incredibly diverse array of artists including Liza Minelli, Jon Secada, Al Green, Sandi Patty, Jon Hendricks, Donna Summer, Michael McDonald, Celia Cruz, Rita Marley, and has most recently been recording and touring with world renowned composer Yanni.

Her solo work can be heard on his latest CD Ethnicity and she is a featured soloist on his newest video, Yanni Live. She recorded the title cut on Dirty Martini's debut CD Save Your Love for Me and her own debut CD I'm All Smiles is completed and available for purchase at www.michelleamato.com.

Michelle, who holds a Master's degree from the prestigious University of Miami School of Music, is also in great demand as an educator and clinician. She has coached vocalists for Cirque du Soleil and taught private students and directed jazz vocal ensembles at The University of Miami, Miami Dade Community College, The University of Memphis, Rollins College, and is currently teaching at The University of North Florida. She has conducted vocal master classes and clinics for the International Association of Jazz Educators, The North American Cultural Center in San Jose, Costa Rica, and various groups at Walt Disney World, including the popular Voices of Liberty, a group she also had the pleasure of performing in for several years. Her adjudicating duties include the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, the Florida Vocal Association, and various jazz societies.

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Professor Cassano has been a flutist with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra since 1979. She is an active recitalist and chamber musician and founder of the St. Johns Chamber Players, co-founder of the St. Mark’s Bach Ensemble, and co-founder of the chamber music group “Synergy”.

Professor Cassano has appeared several times as soloist at the National Flute Association Convention and in 1987 and 2000 was a winner of the NFA’s newly published Music Performer’s Competition. She was awarded an artist-fellow to the 1989 Bach Aria Festival.

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Dr. Holt’s career as a teacher educator encompasses elementary through university levels. Before coming to UNF he taught music in elementary, middle and high schools in West Virginia, Delaware, and Pennsylvania and music teacher education in the schools of music at the University of Illinois and Ohio State University, where he received the Joseph A. Leeder Memorial Award for Outstanding Graduate Study in Music.

Dr. Holt is an active tenor soloist, and choral singer, having studied with Ken Lesight, Lois Collins, Fritz Kruger, and Joseph Huszti. Dr. Holt has published books, book chapters, and articles in professional journals, including the Music Educators Journal, The Council for Research in Music Education Bulletin, and The Florida Music Director on topics such as strategies for music teaching and learning, assessment tests for music teachers, and portfolios for documenting teaching excellence. He has been awarded funded grants exceeding 2 million dollars.

Dr. Holt serves as a consultant to colleges and schools for the development of long-range plans and the uses of electronic portfolios for the assessment of teaching and learning. In 2005 he received an international Award for Innovative Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Technology.

Dr. Holt was Professor and Chair of the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at UNF, 1991-1998. From 1980-1987, he was the Assistant Dean of the College of Education and Human Services.

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Claudia Minch has been a member of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra since 1979. Professor Minch, who plays the oboe, English horn, and the Oboe D'Amore in the Symphony, was educated at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She earned her Bachelors and Masters degree graduating with Honors.

While she was in Boston, Ms. Minch performed with the Portland (Maine) Symphony and toured extensively with the New England Ragtime Ensemble under the direction of Gunther Schuller. Her woodwind quintet, Quintet de Legno, won the Young Artists Guild Competition in New York, in 1977, and was given a Carnegie Recital Hall debut.

Since moving to Jacksonville, Professor Minch has performed with the Savannah Symphony and has participated in the Spoleto and Cullowhee Summer Music Festivals. She has appeared as soloist with the Jacksonville Symphony, Brunswick Civic Orchestra, and at local Chamber Music concerts.

Professor Minch is very active teaching aspiring oboists and supplying local music stores with handcrafted oboe reeds. In addition to rearing two children with her husband, Michael, Professor Minch is also a miniature enthusiast and enjoys working on a beautiful three-story Victorian dollhouse.

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Professor Smart's musical career has been both active and diverse. She has worked with such luminaries as Robert Shaw, Seiji Ozawa, and Dave Brubeck, and has sung in unique venues in Europe, Asia, and the United States.

Professor Smart’s singing has delighted audiences not only in public and university concert halls, but also in rural American schools, special cultural outreach venues in Japan, and even Eskimos villages in northern Alaska. Awarded a special citation by the Ford Foundation's Contemporary Music Project, she has long championed the work of contemporary composers and, with her husband, composer-pianist Gary Smart, is recognized for their performances of American art song.

A former student of Margaret Harshaw, Josef Metternich, and Phyllis Curtin, Professor Smart has taught at the University of Wyoming, Kobe College, and Osaka University. Since joining the faculty of UNF in 1999, she has performed as soloist with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, for the Friday Musicale, the St. Cecelia Society, and many other local musical organizations.

At UNF, she teaches Applied Voice, French, Italian, and German Diction, as well as Vocal Literature.

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A native of Florida, Professor Reid is currently the principal hornist of the Jacksonville Symphony. Prior, he was a member of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach. Professor Reid’s former teachers include Greg Hustis and William Capps.

He has played with symphony orchestras in Dallas, Waco, Tallahassee, Albany, Aspen, Boston, Breckenridge, and the Dominican Republic. Professor Reid maintains an active role in chamber music, performing several times a year with the First Coast Woodwind Quintet. He spends his summers teaching and performing at the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina.

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Kimberly Beasley holds a Bachelor's in Music Theatre from the University of Colorado, a Master of Music from Valparaiso University, Indiana, and a Certificate of Vocal Performance from Northwestern University. She has performed as a soloist with the Northwest Festival Orchestra, Southwest Michigan Symphony, Elmhurst Symphony, the Northwest Indiana Symphony, DuPage Opera Theatre, New Philharmonic, Light Opera Works, Vox3, and in the chorus of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Grant Park Symphony.

Roles include Cinderella in Into the Woods, Angelica in Suor Angelica, Rosina in Barber of Seville, Dorine in Tartuffe, Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore, Micäela in Carmen, and Butterfly in Madama Butterfly. She has also been the musical director for productions of A…My Name is Alice, West Side Story, The Ballad of Baby Doe, Children of Eden, Hello Dolly, and The Last Five Years for companies including the Memorial Opera House in Valparaiso and OneTheatre in Chicago.

Kimberly has taught university courses in applied theory, opera scenes, vocal pedagogy, and opera history at Valparaiso University, Northwestern University, and the Graham School of the University of Chicago. She has been a resident artist teacher with Midwest Young Artists, the Voice and Opera Academy, and Glenbrook North High School. She has performed as resident singing artist with the Italian Opera Company in Chicago and Vox3, a vocal collective based in Chicago. She now lives in Jacksonville, FL, and teaches voice at the University of North Florida and Jacksonville University.

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Professor Rensch-Erbes was brought to Juilliard on a Summer Orchestra Scholarship and later studied musicology with Drs. Willi Apel and Paul Nettl. She has played harp programs throughout the Chicago area and was, for six years, first harpist with the Chicago Civic Orchestra.

Professor Rensch-Erbes taught harp for three years at the University of Illinois, and was Professor of Humanities at Indiana State University from 1965-1988. She is the author of four internationally-known reference books on the harp.

Professor Rensch-Erbes has been elected to membership in Pi Kappa Lambda (music honorary) and Phi Kappa Phi (humanities honorary), and is an honorary member of Sigma Alpha Iota (music sorority) and of several chapters of the American Harp Society and the United Kingdom Harp Society.

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Rebekah Heller, a native of upstate New York, is a dynamic chamber, orchestral and solo musician. Recently appointed as Principal Bassoonist of the Jacksonville Symphony, Rebekah moved to Florida from New York City. As a member of the brilliant NYC new-music group, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Rebekah is an enthusiastic advocate of the music of our time.

Before her brief stint in the big apple, Rebekah was a member of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida from 2005-2008. During her tenure there, Rebekah worked with some of today's most innovative and electrifying musical minds, including Michael Tilson Thomas, Robert Spano, Marin Alsop, Oliver Knussen, Yo-Yo Ma, and Christian Tetzlaff.

Rebekah obtained her Master of Music degree from the University of Texas at Austin and attended the Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music for her undergraduate studies, where she earned degrees in both Music Performance and English Literature.

Rebekah currently serves as an adjunct professor at the University of North Florida, and she is also Principal Bassoonist with the Utah Festival Opera during the summer months. She looks forward to upcoming with the International Contemporary Ensemble in Finland and NYC.

Rebekah has played Principal Bassoon with the Atlanta Opera, the Chicago-based Millennium Orchestra, the Chicago Civic Orchestra, and the Chicago Arts Orchestra.

Rebekah's teachers and musical mentors include John Clouser, Kristin Wolfe Jensen, George Sakakeeny, and Janet Polk.

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Peter Mathews was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1944 and studied violin and piano under the Toronto Conservatory system. His early piano training was with Edward Parker, of the renowned Parker family of Canadian pianists. In 1963-64 he studied in England with Morris Taylor, one of the last students of Dame Myra Hess, and received a Licentiate Diploma in Piano Performance at the Royal Academy of Music, London. His undergraduate degree in Music and History is from Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan. Graduate studies include both a Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts in Conducting from the University of Missouri at Kansas City where he worked with Eph Ehly.

Dr. Mathews conducts choirs, teaches piano, music history, theory, composition, orchestration, and form and analysis. For the past 30 years he has received choral anthem and instrumental commissions from churches and individual musicians from many parts of the United States. While composing music for worship, Dr. Mathews’ commissions have also included art songs and chamber music with voice and instruments in varying combinations.

From 1977-1982 he was the Composer-in-Residence at Grace and Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral under John Schaefer in Kansas City. As a male alto, he has sung in the Early Music Consort of Kansas City and in various cathedral churches. Dr. Mathews gained a significant reputation as a conductor and composer in central Florida where he directed the Florida Hospital Chorus, a community choir in Orlando, from 1984-1997; and Orlando XIII, an a cappella group, from 1993-2002. Since 1999 he has served as Choirmaster for St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in DeLand, Florida, and currently teaches music history and form & analysis at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville.

As a conductor and workshop clinician, he conducted (a commissioned work, Song of the Three Young Men for SATB, brass and organ) at the 1993 Southeast Regional Convention of the American Guild of Organists. The 1994 Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida Choir Festival also featured the composer in this dual capacity. Dr. Mathews was awarded the anthem commission in 1999 for the 49th Annual Sewanee Church Music Conference, long recognized for excellence by the Episcopal Church Standing Commission on Church Music. In January 2000 he conducted two commissioned choral premières at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Augusta, Georgia as part of their 250th anniversary celebration. A fanfare for brass and organ and an anthem were commissioned for the 150th anniversary of the First Congregational Church in St. Joseph, Michigan in 2004.

The music of Peter Mathews is regularly performed at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida under the direction of Ben Lane and Claire Hodge. In 2005 he completed a two-part treble Missa brevis setting for their childrens’ choirs and organ for their European tour during the Christmas season, now available from Alliance Music Publications. The same venue saw the première of his Magnificat and Nunc dimittis in 2007 for the 20th anniversary of the Orlando Deanery Girls Choir conducted by Hazel Somerville, founder of the choir.

Commissioned works of Peter Mathews continue to gain exposure through live performance and compact disc projects for the choirs of Edith Ho (Church of the Advent, Boston), Anton Armstrong (St. Olaf College), and David Brensinger (Atlanta Singers). The 1994 Florida All-State High School Chorus, Boston's Youth Pro Musica, DePauw University, Stetson University, Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal and the Vancouver Chamber Choir have included works by Peter Mathews on their CDs and in their choirs' concerts and tours. His liturgical music was featured in June 2000 at the Regional Convention of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians held in Orlando. In 2006, the Centaur label issued a CD with his Four Seasons for cello and organ, performed by Donald Moline, Chicago Symphony cellist, and Holy Name Cathedral organist Ricardo Ramirez. His Intermezzo has also been recorded by the Murray-Lohuis Duo in their CD series in Volume 5, All American Works for Violin and Organ by Raven Recordings.

Dr. Mathews has written 185 compositions, of which over 80 are published by Alliance, Choristers Guild, H.W. Gray, Kjos, Lawson-Gould, Lorenz, MorningStar, St. James Press, and Southern. All the unpublished works have been engraved by the composer and are available upon request.

His interest in French culture has taken him on a number of bike trips to study the cathedrals and great churches of France.

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