Robin Gordon (Actor) in a former life was
an Assistant Professor of Performance at the
University of South Florida where she directed
VINEGAR TOM, CABARET, ITALIAN AMERICAN
RECONCILIATION, and BAT BOY: THE MUSICAL. Before
teaching at USF, she was a visiting professor
and director at Syracuse University, Ithaca
College, Santa Monica College, Los Angeles City
College, Interlochen Center for the Arts and The
Krannert Center in Illinois. She has performed
in California, New York, Vermont and London, and
her television credits included various
night-time dramas and daytime soaps. In her
current life she is a full-time mom to Mina and
Marisa (real life night-time dramas and daytime
soaps!).
David Manson
(Composer) is a composer and performer who
recently received an Individual Artist
Fellowship from the Florida Arts Council, a Meet
the Composer grant and a commission from the
City of St. Petersburg’s First Night
Celebration. His degrees include a doctorate in
music from the University of Cincinnati
College-Conservatory of Music. David is active
in community arts organizations as a board
member of the Pinellas County Arts Council,
executive director of the Tampa Bay Composers’
Forum and co-director of the emit series of
experimental music at the Salvador Dali Museum.
Dee Moses
(Composer) is the Principle Double-bassist of
the Florida Orchestra. He also serves as an
adjunct instructor of Double-bass at the
University of South Florida. Dee was educated
at the North Carolina School of the Arts and the
Cleveland Institute of Music receiving Bachelor
and Masters Degrees in Cleveland. In 1996 he
became the first American bassist to perform
with La Musica International Chamber Music
Festival and returned in 1998. Other recent
appearances include the Eastern Music Festival,
N.C., Phoenix Chamber Players and Spectrum
Contemporary Ensemble.
Rivers of Time
(Musical Ensemble) is under the musical
direction of international recording artist
Michael Moses, combines the talents of five
interdisciplinary artists into an exciting and
unique form of music and theater, which explores
the interactions of sound, rhythm, movement and
language inspired by the world’s diversity of
art and cultural tradition. Rivers integrates
the magic and power of digital technology with
the soul and spirit of indigenous
instrumentation. They have shared their art
world wide for events such as Composition and
Performance of Harmonia Mundi, Commissioned for
the Nobel Peace Prize Announcement for H.H the
Dalai Lama of Tibet, benefit concerts for
Amnesty International, Habitat for Humanity, and
special programs for orphanages in Argentine,
Bolivia and with Children at Risk in Partnership
with Ben Vereen.
Tomiyo Sasaki
(Videographer) is a Canadian artist of Japanese
descent who is a pioneer of the video art
medium. She attended art school in Canada, and
obtained a Bachelor of Fine Art degree in
painting from the San Francisco Art Institute,
and her graduate degree in sculpture at the
California College of Arts and Crafts. In 1969,
she moved to New York. She began working with
the video medium in 1971 when the medium was in
its infancy, and has continued to the present.
She has traveled and exhibited internationally.
During the '80's and ‘90’s Ms. Sasaki traveled
to places as diverse as the Falkland Islands,
the Galapagos Islands, Kenya, Egypt, Japan,
Tibet, and China, to gather footage for her
installation projects. She has received
numerous awards, including The Canada Council,
Tokyo Video Festival Grand prizewinner, Asian
Cultural Council Grant, NEA, The John Simon
Guggenheim Foundation, etc. She maintains a
studio in New York, and is currently creating
virtual video installations utilizing video
footage incorporated within synthetic 3D space.
Paul Reller (Dancer, Composer) Associate
Professor of Composition, Paul has been part of
the USF faculty since 1990. He is the
coordinator of the composition department and
director of SYCOM, USF’s suite of electronic
music studios. He received a BM from the
University of Minnesota, Masters and Ph.D. work
at the Eastman School of Music. Awards for his
compositions include the Bearns Prize, a BMI
award, and two ASCAP awards. Recordings of his
compositions can be found on compilations of the
Bonk Festival of New Music (which he helped
found), as well as CD’s by Margaret Lancaster,
Hilton Jones, and the USF Percussion Ensemble.
In 2002 he released The Big Vibration, a two-CD
set of his compositions for acoustic and
electronic instrumentation. Paul has also worked
as a producer/arranger for such acts as G.G.
Allin (Carnival of Excess), Tiny Tim (Prisoner
of Love), Crash Mitchell (Cantankerous), and his
own band, Clang, for which he was the
singer/songwriter as well, with three CD’s to
their credit. Paul has worked extensively in the
area of theater and dance. He was the
composer-in-residence for the Jobsite Theater
for their 1999-2000 season, composing, music
directing and/or sound designing for every show
that year, culminating with Jobsite’s production
of his musical, The Ruins, or Meditations on the
Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature, at
the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in 2000. He
has also collaborated extensively with USF’s
Department of Theater and Dance as a composer,
music director and/or performer.
Celeste N. Silsby (Lighting Designer) is
co-founder of Flip Flop Productions and has been
specializing in dance lighting design and
publicity design for five years. She has done
technical and artistic design in Germany for the
prestigious ArtLab Studios and dance groups such
as the Tap Dogs, and her stateside credits
include multimedia support and photography for
such big names as the Doobie Brothers, Wynonna,
and Michael Bolton. A USF graduate and Tampa
native, Celeste and her fiancé, Andreas, have
recently made the move back down to Tampa and
are currently in the process of finding a
historical building to preserve and renovate as
a permanent home for Flip Flop Productions.
Devin Rice (Composer/Videographer)
started playing music at the age of 8, banging
on an old player piano. Since the “player” parts
no longer worked, he was forced to press the
keys himself. Later he picked up the acoustic
guitar, bass, banjo and harmonica. He also
picked up the saxophone but fortunately put it
right back down again. Devin is a primarily
self-taught musician, but later took music
theory classes in college so he could “put names
to all those crazy chords and stuff!”. His
musical roots are mostly classical, but also
include blues, folk, bluegrass and lots of other
stuff played on NPR, which, for most of his
life, he thought was the only radio station
there was. Devin has been composing and
recording since about 1979, creating music for
film, television, dance, theatre, and various CD
projects. He currently lives in Seattle, WA
where he is conducting extensive research in
cold damp weather and hot coffee.
Jim Lennon (Actor) is an award-winning
writer and medical editor. From 1986-2000, he
was the executive director of the National
Health Association and the editor of Health
Science magazine and is currently an adjunct
professor at The University of Tampa, teaching
Creativity and the Learning Environment. He was
active in music and theater in New York from
1966 to 1980, performing with the Classic Guitar
Ensemble and The Group for Early Music, and
serving as music director for the Southampton
Repertory Theater and the Spindrift Players.
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