School of Arts and Science Teachers Dance Single Ladies

Equally Rochester Institute of Technology prepares to open a School of Performing Arts, the new instructors that will come up with the school volition join an already talented puddle of kinesthesia and staff members who accept been helping students eager to pursue their passions of music, dance, and acting, for years.

They take all-encompassing, varied, and impressive backgrounds. Some come from Rochester, others from around the world and ended up in Rochester through life's happenstance.

What follows are just a few dedicated faculty members who are already didactics performing arts on campus.

Sungmin Shin, applied music teacher, director of guitar ensemble.

Born in Seoul, Republic of korea, and raised in LaSalle, Ontario, Canada, Shin has been playing guitar for virtually 25 years. Music has taken him to Vancouver, Germany, and many places in betwixt.

"I've had the privilege of meeting and hanging out with many of my musical heroes: Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, Tommy Emmanuel, Pepe Romero, Victor Wooten, Albert Lee, and many more," he said.

Shin earned his Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Southern California and his master'due south in music and doctorate in musical arts at Eastman School of Music. He started teaching guitar at RIT in 2017.

"The experience of witnessing students mature, make progress, and achieve their musical goals is incomparable," he said. "It does not get more than positive than this equally far as life experiences go. I'm truly a lucky guy."

When not playing music, Shin is known for cooking some hateful Korean BBQ and keeps a serious vegetable garden in the summer.

Alexa Scott-Flaherty, visiting lecturer, teaches theater.

Scott-Flaherty has been involved in theater since she was a little daughter.

"I fell in dearest with everything nigh becoming other people, wearing costumes, and working in an ensemble in all sorts of theatrical spaces," she said.

A native of Rochester, she attended the Schoolhouse of the Arts for center and high schoolhouse.

"I was surrounded by incredible collaborators and classmates including Taye Diggs, Dashiell Eaves, Jared Gradinger, Megan Loomis, and many others who have gone on to create careers in the theater, on Broadway, in film and television, as well as internationally as theater and dance artists."

After attending Vassar College, she worked for the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., where she received classical theater training as an acting fellow. She then moved to New York City where she was invited to join LAByrinth Theater Company by directors Philip Seymour Hoffman (a Rochester native) and John Ortiz.

"That was my creative home, and I worked in many theaters in New York City as well as regionally, and also worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company on some of their new works through LAByrinth," Scott-Flaherty said. "I really began a career that focused a lot of bringing new plays through the development process and into production, mostly every bit an actor but sometimes likewise as a producer."

She also worked on a 2008 moving-picture show, Then She Found Me, directed by Helen Hunt, and starring Colin Firth, Bette Midler, and Matthew Broderick.

"Helen hired me to assist her in a unique way, which ended up existence a masterclass for me," she said. "She had me play her lead part in the movie in all of the rehearsals and initial takes of the moving picture, and and so step out at the last moment so she could footstep in as the actress to be filmed. It was an incredible experience, and I nonetheless have the handwritten notation from Colin telling me how he couldn't wait to see me on the big screen where he believed I deserved to exist. That is certainly a treasured annotation."

Scott-Flaherty moved dorsum to Rochester eleven years ago when her first kid was born to exist closer to family, and she took a pedagogy position at the University of Rochester.

"I found that I absolutely loved beingness in the classroom and working with such artistic and inspiring young people just at the get-go of their careers," she said. "It was an unexpected turn in my own story, as I imagined that only performing could brand me happy and fulfilled. I have establish that teaching is something I am extremely passionate about and I honey nothing more beingness 'in it' with my students, rolling up our sleeves, and going on the take a chance that is every creative endeavour. It is important to me now to both teach and go on to perform and direct."

She joined RIT this yr "and I've absolutely loved the vibrant community and innovative thought that permeates this campus," she said.

When not working on a product, Scott-Flaherty is an avid reader—her father founded and was executive director of Writers & Books for 35 years. She met and had dinner with writers such equally Allen Ginsberg, Amy Tan, Sandra Cisneros, Joy Harjo and Terry McMillan.

David Hult, visiting assistant professor, teaches Intro to Music, applied violin, viola; leads a cord quartet; and is director of RIT'due south Performing Arts Scholars Program.

Hult grew upward on a large farm in Swedesburg, Iowa, and began playing music when he was half-dozen years old, first on the violin, and then on piano, cornet, guitar, and viola.

He came to Rochester's renowned Eastman School of Music to earn his undergraduate caste in violin performance, and he received his doctorate degree in viola operation from the Julliard School in New York Urban center.

He returned to Rochester to become married and taught music at Nazareth College, SUNY Geneseo, and the Chautauqua School of Music near Jamestown, N.Y.

"Although I had numerous job offers elsewhere, I never left Rochester," he said. "It's a slap-up identify to live and enhance a family unit."

He joined the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra full fourth dimension in 1986 where he plays viola, and for the past 43 summers has performed as a fellow member of the commencement violin section in the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra. He has also performed extensively in the American Symphony in Carnegie Hall, and is the concertmaster of the Rochester Oratorio Society.

He joined RIT in 2017, initially filling in for a kinesthesia fellow member on exit, and his job was expanded to include the Performing Arts Scholarship Programme.

"I enjoy helping students learn and experience new things, watch their excitement every bit they learn new technical skills, develop their musicianship, and aid open them the globe of the performing arts," he said.

Hult has performed across the U.Southward. and Europe in many genres: classical symphonic, ballet, popular, opera, Broadway, oratorio, recording studio piece of work with picture show soundtracks, local and national advertizement jingles, alive radio broadcasts, chamber music, and solo.

His experience has too included working "with almost every large name artist you lot can proper noun in the classical field, and a huge number in the pop, jazz, and Broadway fields. Oh, the memories, and oh, the stories."

When he'due south not making music, he enjoys playing golf, sailing on his 22-foot sailboat, and making wine.

Marc Holland, dance instructor, at RIT's National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

The youngest of fifteen children, Holland started dancing when he was xi in Jackson Center, Pa., upon his adopted father's dying wish.

"I was always dancing in the playroom area and he and my female parent noticed," he said. "I grew up around art. My adopted mother was a dejection singer and pianoforte player and my father sang and played six dissimilar instruments."

He enrolled in The Dotty McGill Schoolhouse of Trip the light fantastic in Grove Metropolis, Pa.

"Professionally, I was lucky to be on Broadway in Cats every bit the graphic symbol Tumblebrutus and played the same role in Vienna, Austria, and during Cats' National Tour IV," he said. He also toured in the bandage of Radio City Christmas Spectacular, Song and Dance, Guys and Dolls, La Cage Aux Folles and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

One of his compliments came from entertainer Chita Rivera, who saw him after a performance in Cats in Montreal.

"When I returned to the hotel that she was as well staying at, she gave me a straight compliment," he said. "She picked which cat I was and said that I movement beautifully."

Holland also was in a Timberland commercial, did a promo for the testify and appeared equally a cat on Belatedly Night With David Letterman and a dancing sailor on the Conan O'Brian Show.

Although he loved performing, he needed a steadier income, so he started to teach dance.

"I enjoy seeing my movement interpreted by different bodies and emotions," he said.

Jan. 14 marked his third yr at RIT.

"My husband and I used to alive in an area in Pennsylvania that was not e'er inclusive to people of color or LGBTQ, and the higher that I worked at previously was downsizing programs and I was an offshoot, so my chore was not being renewed," Holland said. "My husband'southward family is from Rochester, so nosotros thought it was a perfect time to first fresh."

In his spare time, Holland enjoys gardening.

"I love watching things grow from a small seed to something beautiful," he said. "I guess that's why I love to teach trip the light fantastic toe, besides."

Yunn-Shan Ma, assistant professor, director of the music plan at the Higher of Liberal Arts, teaches music theory, and is managing director of the RIT Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ma began playing piano when she was 3, and violin when she was 6, in her native Taiwan.

She found her passion for conducting when she was 10, when she was invited past American conductor Henry Simon Mazer to conduct the overture to Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" with him during an educational concert in Taipei.

"This 'magic wand,' which has since accompanied me my whole life, inspired me to become a woman conductor in a male-dominated profession," she said.

She traveled throughout Europe, studied in Vienna, taught and led ensembles for ten years in Taipei earlier moving to the U.s.a. ten years ago to attend the Eastman School of Music, where she received her doctorate in musical arts.

"I thought to challenge myself with perchance applying for doctoral programs in the U.S., and luckily, I was accepted to Eastman, one of the peak music conservatories in united states of america, with a total scholarship and additional financial aids, which they just grant 1 person of each conducting studio each year. Without the full scholarship, I would non be able to pursue studying abroad."

Ma came to RIT in 2018.

"I taught piano lessons in the by, merely I bask leading ensemble rehearsals and bookish courses every bit well," she said. "As a matter of fact, the role of a conductor is unremarkably similar to an 'educator' and the 'primary communicator' for the ensemble. Growing upwardly with both my parents being educators, I have ever wanted to become a instructor since a young age and I have always learned a lot from my students besides. I am grateful for my electric current career which allows me to keep both the dreams of being an educator while active as a performer."

She also is music director of the St. Kateri Parish in Irondequoit, and music and creative director of the Taiwanese Choral Society of Rochester.

A few years ago when she was assisting the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, she met her idol, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, regarded as ane of the first pioneers of multidisciplinary music productions and an important inspiration for her.

"He jokingly called me his long-lost sis after learning we accept the same last proper noun—we are totally not related though," she said.

Even though she has traveled the globe pursuing music, Ma said the virtually unique affair she has done is piece of work at RIT with students and colleagues across campus.

"With the RIT Philharmonic Orchestra, I have collaborated with faculty and students from the Department of Calculator Science, School of Picture show and Animation, and museum studies on interdisciplinary performances, including a recent augmented reality Fantasia performance at the last Frameless Symposium. Such innovative collaboration makes RIT Performing Arts unique in the music didactics community."

This twelvemonth, she is also leading a airplane pilot plan that pairs saxophone doctoral students from Eastman to work directly with RIT students.

In her spare time, Ma enjoys cooking and trying varieties of hot sauces.

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Source: https://www.rit.edu/news/rits-performing-arts-teachers-come-impressive-backgrounds

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