Meet the 2024 LEAD Cooperative
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ARTS ADMINISTRATION: In Memory of Sidney J. McQueen
Jeanmarie Exel is a fourth year Music Major and WGSS Minor at the University of Connecticut. She has been studying music since the age of four, and has training on flute, piccolo, piano, and voice. She is currently a member of UConn’s Symphonic Wind Ensemble and serves as flute/oboe section leader. She has also represented UConn across the country, performing as part of the UConn Pep Band in cities including New York, Las Vegas, Boston, and Phoenix. Ms. Exel is employed with the Connecticut Repertory Theater as an Assistant Sound Engineer and as a Woodwind and Drum Major Technician with her alma mater, Broad Run High School, where she assists the Band Director in teaching the marching arts. She also has interests in audio production and technology, and hopes to pursue her masters degree in the subject. In 2021, Ms. Exel was awarded the John Philip Sousa Award for Musical Excellence.
Ana Miranda is a “melodic” soprano whose voice “echoes through a packed theater.” (Windy City Times) She has a particular draw to music that highlights text and text painting, including a passion for recitative and new music. Currently based in Chicago IL, she enjoys collaborating with composers and other musicians in the city. She is committed to singing works that give a voice to those who have been silenced. Most recently she premiered a piece at Rainbow Railroad’s Annual Benefit Concert for guitar and two voices titled Two Months, Two Years, which tells an incredible story of two LGBTQ immigrants who fell in love during their escape to find safety from their country. On the opera stage, she has brought many characters to life including Ottavia in L’incoronazione di Poppea (Haymarket Opera Summer Program), Young Juana in With Blood With Ink (San Francisco State Opera), and Sam in a world premiere of The Groomless Bride.
Currently, she is working on a collaboration with her husband, composer Carlos Jaquez Gonzalez, on a song cycle highlighting Mexican women liberation.
First generation California-born Mexican-American composer, vocalist, guitarist, and pianist Carlos Jaquez Gonzalez left his job as a chef to begin his musical training as a composer and vocalist at San Francisco State University, where he received his Bachelor's degree. As a composition student of Richard Festinger and voice student of Nikolas Nackley, he founded the RGB Arts Festival, programming, securing funding, and coordinating multiple university departments in programs featuring music, dance, film, art song, and poetry. He also helped establish a new curriculum for SFSU's music department during his time there. Now based in Chicago, where in Spring 2021, he received/earned his Master’s degree at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, studying composition with Daron Hagen and voice privately with Alexandra LoBianco.
He has composed multiple works for chorus, soloists, percussion, chamber ensembles, electro-acoustic soundscape and orchestra. Most recently gaining recognition by the Chicago Tribune for premiering his “Immigrant Mass,” in collaboration with the Chicago Composers Orchestra, Roosevelt University – Chicago College of Performing Arts, and documentary photographer Greg Constantine. He is also most known as the primary writer, singer and guitarist of the band "The Silhouette Era."
COLLABORATIVE PIANO
Anne is pianist based in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is a sought-after vocal and instrumental collaborator. She currently works for the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music Prepatory School as their Suzuki Collaborative Pianist and private instructor. In the fall, Anne will work as a staff accompanist at Northern Kentucky University.
Anne Ziegler received an M.M. in collaborative piano from The University of Cincinnati College – Conservatory of Music, where she was a graduate assistant in vocal accompanying. She received a dual B.A. in piano performance and English literature from Hillsdale College.
She was a two-time winner of the Hillsdale College Concerto/Aria Competition in 2020 and 2021. She placed in the Keyboard Arts Festival in 2015 and the Schmitt Piano Competition in 2015 and 2017.
Anne also plays the viola and, hailing from Colorado, she is an avid reader and hiker.
COMPOSITION
First generation California-born Mexican-American composer, vocalist, guitarist, and pianist Carlos Jaquez Gonzalez left his job as a chef to begin his musical training as a composer and vocalist at San Francisco State University, where he received his Bachelor's degree. As a composition student of Richard Festinger and voice student of Nikolas Nackley, he founded the RGB Arts Festival, programming, securing funding, and coordinating multiple university departments in programs featuring music, dance, film, art song, and poetry. He also helped establish a new curriculum for SFSU's music department during his time there. Now based in Chicago, where in Spring 2021, he received/earned his Master’s degree at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, studying composition with Daron Hagen and voice privately with Alexandra LoBianco.
He has composed multiple works for chorus, soloists, percussion, chamber ensembles, electro-acoustic soundscape and orchestra. Most recently gaining recognition by the Chicago Tribune for premiering his “Immigrant Mass,” in collaboration with the Chicago Composers Orchestra, Roosevelt University – Chicago College of Performing Arts, and documentary photographer Greg Constantine. He is also most known as the primary writer, singer and guitarist of the band "The Silhouette Era."
CONDUCTING
Quinn Mason (b. 1996) is a composer and conductor based in Dallas, Texas. He recently served as the Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s Artist in Residence. His orchestral music has been commissioned and performed by over 160 orchestras in the US and Europe, including by the San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, New World Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Utah Symphony, in Europe by the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI and Sheffield Philharmonic and many more. He has received awards from the American Composers Forum, Voices of Change, ASCAP, Texas A&M University, the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, and was also named as a finalist for 2020’s Texan of the Year. As a conductor, he studied with Marin Alsop, Robert Spano, Gerard Schwarz, and Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and has guest conducted many orchestras around the country. He made his debut at age 27 with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center and has also conducted the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Houston Ballet Orchestra, Hartford Symphony and many others.
INSTRUMENTAL STUDIES
VOICE
Ana Miranda is a “melodic” soprano whose voice “echoes through a packed theater.” (Windy City Times) She has a particular draw to music that highlights text and text painting, including a passion for recitative and new music. Currently based in Chicago IL, she enjoys collaborating with composers and other musicians in the city. She is committed to singing works that give a voice to those who have been silenced. Most recently she premiered a piece at Rainbow Railroad’s Annual Benefit Concert for guitar and two voices titled Two Months, Two Years, which tells an incredible story of two LGBTQ immigrants who fell in love during their escape to find safety from their country. On the opera stage, she has brought many characters to life including Ottavia in L’incoronazione di Poppea (Haymarket Opera Summer Program), Young Juana in With Blood With Ink (San Francisco State Opera), and Sam in a world premiere of The Groomless Bride.
Currently, she is working on a collaboration with her husband, composer Carlos Jaquez Gonzalez, on a song cycle highlighting Mexican women liberation.
