CONTRIBUTORS

Alan Hicks

In nearly twenty-five years in the arts, Alan E. Hicks has worked as a professional opera singer, award-winning stage director, and teacher of musical theatre and opera. He is a former faculty member of the Actors Studio Drama School and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts as well as schools of music across the country. His students have found success from Broadway to network television and from opera to major motion pictures. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

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Ben Gulley

Ben Gulley has won numerous awards in competitions throughout the nation (Metropolitan Opera, Richard Tucker, Palm Beach Opera). A graduate of UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance, Ben's career is burgeoning with lead and feature roles in opera, solo engagements, nationwide touring and prestigious appearances abroad and in Kansas City.

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Carmelo Valone

Carmelo Valone is an LA based screenwriter, author and occasional blogger (he’s more so a tweeter follow him at @carmelovalone). He also enjoys not being a part of any one particular scene, saving animals and or saving trees-not necessarily in that order.

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Chantal Westerman

After 13 years as a celebrated Hollywood Correspondent on ABC's “Good Morning America,” Chantal is a seasoned journalist and uniquely qualified to share intimate travel portraits of noted actors and celebrity chefs to exclusive hotel concierges.

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Chef Bernard Guillas

Bernard Guillas, the international award winning culinary powerhouse and Executive Chef of the iconic Marine Room at La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club, made culinary history for Southern California with two tremendous recognitions for 2011. The first of these extraordinary achievements is the induction of Guillas into the elite Maitres Cuisiniers de France (Master Chefs of France) alongside ranks that include the crème de la crème of French cuisine. He is one of just three celebrated French chefs from the U.S. to accept this annual honor, and one of just 12 from around the globe. Secondly— Guillas has been selected as the featured U.S. chef to join four of the world’s top toques in the first annual World Gourmet Affair Turks and Caicos Islands. On March 14, 2011 Chef Guillas joined the likes of legendary French Chefs such as Paul Bocuse and Fernand Mischler in accepting the prestigious honor of Maitres Cuisiniers de France—arguably one of the most envied culinary titles in the world. http://www.chefbernard.com/

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Chef Ron Oliver

Chef Ron Oliver travels to far reaches of the world in search of culinary inspiration. But back in his home kitchen, he seeks out the finest local, natural, and fresh ingredients to star in his tasty creations. A tireless globetrotter from an early age, Ron’s unique talent is to blend the exotic ingredients found on his travels into signature dishes that surprise and delight the palate. His first cookbook, the celebrated Flying Pans, nominated for Cookbook Of The Year, illustrates Chef Ron's fine balance between ethnic discovery and culinary sophistication. As Chef de Cuisine at the prestigious Marine Room in La Jolla, California, Ron has led his talented team to eight titles as Best Restaurant in San Diego. His passion for food and cooking expands to support local schools and to help young people learn about food literacy by planting sustainable gardens. Ron is also an accomplished artist creating unique food-inspired art objects for his fans. Ron lives in San Diego with his wife, Isabel, and their two daughters.

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David Weuste

David Weuste comes to Everyday Opera as someone who has worked in the classical music industry with non-profits and for-profits, as a performer (horn) and business person. Having experience with the broad industry of classical music allowed him to launch his own company to help bring classical music to twenty-first century audiences. In 2009, David Weuste started the company “Rosebrook Classical” to help classical record labels gain the marketing advantages of social media. Since its inception, Rosebrook Classical has grown to also include individual artists and now offers many consulting options on top of the core product of social media management. David is passionate about classical music recordings and performing organizations. When the Rosebrook Classical Blog first launched in 2009, its main focus was to provide an optimistic voice for the future of the classical music industry. Rather than writing simply on the demise of classical music, the Rosebrook Classical Blog strove to highlight artists, events, and organizations that were demonstrating successes in classical music. The Rosebrook Classical Blog has also been home to many of the raving posts about David’s other passion - New Music. David hopes to bring these same issues to the new Everyday Opera Online Magazine.

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Delos Music

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Ecco D'Oro

Sweetbriar’s Ecco D’Oro, (A.K.A. “Ecco”), has taken social media by storm. He and his trusty “ghost writer”, Amy Hines are an inseparable comedic team who warrant at least one good belly laugh a day through the documentation of this naughty dog’s daily antics. Amy translates what she believes to be an accurate account of Ecco’s thoughts onto Facebook daily posts while tackling some serious animal issues. Ecco’s “pack” has whelped into a powerful philanthropic vessel that has literally helped thousands in need through donations and networking. With the evolution of Ecco’s show career as well as his philanthropic efforts, the duo (along with their trusty photographer, Charnell Havens) have traveled to many wonderful places. Buckle your seatbelts and enjoy the ride while you watch these two share their journey as it unfolds. This is one sporting dog that puts his outstanding tracking skills to work as he flushes out the best hot spots on the east coast!

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Ed Veith

Dr. Gene Edward Veith is Provost and Professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College. He is the author of 18 books on topics involving Christianity and culture, classical education, literature, and the arts. They include Postmodern Times, The State of the Arts, The Spirituality of the Cross, God at Work, Modern Fascism, Classical Education, and Loving God With All Your Mind. Dr. Veith previously served as the Culture Editor of World Magazine. He was on the faculty for 19 years as Professor of English at Concordia University Wisconsin, where he also served for six years as the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. He has also taught at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College and has been a visiting professor at the Estonian Institute of Humanities, Gordon-Conwell, Regent College (Vancouver), and Wheaton College. In addition he also serves as the director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. He has been a Fellow at the Capital Research Center and the Heritage Foundation. Dr. Veith received his B.A. in Letters (Literature, Philosophy, History, and Classics) from the University of Oklahoma and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Kansas. He and his wife, Jackquelyn, have three grown children and six grandchildren.

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Ellen Christine

Ellen Christine Colon-Lugo brings more than a good imagination and a selective eye to her specialty. Hats became part of Ellen Christine's life ever since her grandmother let her select a pink straw hat for Easter. She began gathering practical design experience in her hometown, Philadelphia, where she apprenticed herself to an Italian tailor with main line clients, and in Boston, where she helped put together a costume shop for Strutters, the trendsetting antique clothiers. Her prize find was a wealthy socialite's hoard of hats. It was an opportunity of a lifetime. "Those hats were my school," says Ellen Christine, who perfected her craft by taking apart and reconstructing those 350 crushed beauties. Moving to New York over a decade ago, she relied on her hat-making talents while pursuing her masters and doctorate in costume history at New York University. She continued to sharpen her skills by freelancing as a stylist and costumer. One of her projects for theatrical costume-maker Barbara Matera was Beauty and the Beast. Her sense of style and history also make her a favorite with brides-to-be hoping to restore their mothers' wedding dresses or coordinate a fanciful headpiece. When you visit Ellen Christine at 255 West 18th Street in NYC, don't expect to see a frail wisp of a woman wrapped in lace. Ellen Christine often holds forth in a Forties jacket, velvet leggings and motorcycle boots. Her ability to time travel in style made Ellen Christine a valuable resource for movie productions such as Barbara Streisand's The Mirror has Two Faces, and for magazines such as Vanity Fair and Italian Vogue. Ellen Christine and her shop have become exciting discoveries for women who view fashion not just by the current season's trends but also by the accumulation of charm and creativity.

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Erica Sipes

I am primarily a pianist but also a cellist who has a passion for bringing joy, personality, and fun into making, listening to, and performing classical music.

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Garrett Fisher

"Mr. Fisher has combined elements of opera, dance, Indian raga, Japanese Noh theater and more into fusions that have both a ritualistic intensity and an improvisatory freedom...what resulted was a strong, unified and strikingly individual utterance of unambiguous beauty." -The New York Times Web: www.fisherensemble.org Twitter: @fisherensemble

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Glen Roven

Glen Roven is a four time Emmy Winner. His compositions, The Runaway Bunny, a Concerto for Violin, Reader and Orchestra, and Goodnight Moon, A Lullaby for Soprano and Orchestra are two of the most performed classical pieces of music in the country. His art songs are routinely programmed by leading Opera singers around the world. At nineteen was the musical director of Sugar Babies on Broadway and has written songs for, conducted and produced for Julie Andrews, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Kermit the Frog, Patti LaBelle, Patti LuPone, Liza Minnelli, Diana Ross, plus many others. He conducted Frank Sinatra’s last concert on television and Sammy Davis’s final television appearance plus four Presidential Inaugurations. He is Artistic Director of GPRrecords and his two musicals, Dr. Seuss’ The 5000 Fingers of Doctor T and Pandora’s Box, are in “development” for Broadway.

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Hannah Loum

Hannah Belford Loum was born and raised in a family of nine, in Gambia West Africa. Prior to moving to the U.S., Hannah lived ten years in Sierra Leone, where she worked as a missionary alongside her husband and a teacher/principal, and also served as the commissioner for boys and girls scouts in the southern region of Bo. After moving from Sierra Leone, she lived in England for seven years and studied education at the University of Birmingham and Oxford. For the past twenty years she has been living in the U.S., where she studied ministry at Hartford seminary in Connecticut and served both as a secretary and then President to the Women’s Aglow fellowship International at Fort Wayne evening branch. Hannah loves volunteering, meeting people and community building activities, as well as reading non-fiction books, singing praise and worship songs, and watching classic movies such as Sound of Music. She and her husband have four wonderful boys.

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Janet Hopkins

Renowned dramatic mezzo-soprano Janet Hopkins, a 16 year veteran of the New York Metropolitan Opera, continues to thrill audiences on her concert tour of symphonic stages across America. She has dazzled audiences at such esteemed venues as Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Her broad repertoire enables her to appeal to opera lovers, classical music enthusiasts, and fans of the great American song book.  Miss Hopkins is recognized as one of the most vocally gifted artists of the modern era.

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Jazmin Oliver

Jazmin Oliver was born in San Diego, Californa. She attends Rancho Del Rey Middle School in Chula Vista and sings soprano in her school’s acclaimed Harmonia Choir under the direction of Ms. J Sudderth. Jazmin enjoys music and playing piano and guitar. She listens to everything from country to classical, and greatly admires Taylor Swift, who inspires young girls to be confident and believe in themselves. Jazmin also loves to read. She is often immersed into a book and reads her favorite books multiple times from cover to cover. When she is not reading she finds pleasure and relaxation in writing. She creates poems, short stories and fan fiction, a form of story telling based on altering the story lines of existing books and movies. Jazmin is also a talented speller and will represent her school at the San Diego County spelling bee. Her ambition is to become a musician.

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John Jolliffe

John is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist practicing in Newport Beach, California. He is an author, lecturer and an award-winning radio host. He is also Senior Advisor and serial innovator in Global Health & Development for the BetterUFoundation.org.

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Joyce DiDonato

Wherever she sings, Joyce DiDonato earns rhapsodic reviews. With a voice “nothing less than 24-carat gold” as proclaimed by the Times of London, she is among the world’s most enchanting performers and the winner of many honors including most recently the 2010 Gramophone Artist of the Year.  Among the long list of Honors bestowed upon DiDonato  includes the Beverly Sills Award from the Metropolitan Opera, Echo Klassics “2010 Female Singer of the Year”, the Royal Philharmonic Society’s 2005 “Singer of the Year”, the Richard Tucker Award, given to a single American singer annually, second place in Plácido Domingo’s Operalia, and prizes from the George London Foundation, the ARIA Award Foundation, and the Sullivan Foundation. http://www.joycedidonato.com

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Julia Teal Kermott

Julia Teal Kermott is a Soprano splitting her time between Dubai, UAE and San Diego California, USA. She is an intern for Everyday Opera. Ms. Kermott can be reached at: juliakermott@gmail.com.

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Kaley Oliver

Kaley Oliver, 15, was born in Orlando Florida. When she was two, her family moved to San Diego where she grew up and currently attends Olympian High School in Chula Vista. Kaley is a huge fan of the performing arts. Her passion is the piano and she takes pleasure in playing everything from Mozart to Harry Potter theme songs to Indie rock. This year she picked up the alto saxophone and joined her high school's marching band, which was recently featured in a Disneyland parade, led by director Eric Mabrey. Kaley is inspired by live theatre. She enjoys going to the ballet, symphony and opera. Her taste can best be described as eclectic, though, as she also loves many other genres of performers, from jazz to Irish folk bands to hard rock. Kaley loves to capture her ideas in writing. Since an early age, she has used poetry and stories to document her experiences and thoughts. Kaley would like to encourage all people her age to embrace the arts, whether it be as a spectator or performer or both.

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Lori Lewis

Everyday Opera is the brainchild of Lori Lewis. A prime time radio veteran of over 13 years and accomplished singer, Lewis used her love of opera to develop the Everyday Opera concept. She called upon New York Metropolitan Opera star Janet Hopkins to contribute with her vast experience and engaging personality. Together, they morphed Everyday Opera into a vehicle with broad artistic and mainstream appeal. EverydayOpera.Com offers articles, videos, and a Live Streaming Audio Network. Podcasts on demand are available for download. Interviews and feature pieces cover an appealing range of topics from opera to wine & food to travel as well as fashion & beauty!

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Nathan Granner

Operatic tenor, Nathan Granner is recognized throughout the world as a generative, solo, producing and collaborative artist. He is also one of the Sony/BMG Masterworks artists, The American Tenors and is co-founder and Chairman of KCMetropolis.org, Kansas City's online journal of the Performing Arts. Granner is a uniquely gifted artist. On one hand, with leading roles such as Ferrando in Cosi Fan Tutte, Tamino in Magic Flute and Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Granner is every bit the Operatic Tenor. His voice is of that rare breed of tenors - heroic, vulnerable, refined and unpretentious. Yet beyond this, Granner’s intense exploration of his voice has taken him from pop to authentic Tango, Flamenco, even classic Turkish which has even led him further to study throat singing with a Tibetan Monk. For some, this may seem a bit exotic, but for the artist, it is basic that one must travel a thousand miles to take one step. Covering contemporary opera, art and independent classical for Everyday Opera under the moniker #Newop, there will be some tidbits here and there as his busy schedule allows.

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New Classical Order

The New Classical Order Podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Jennifer L. Hund and David Weuste: Dr. Jennifer L. Hund is currently a music professor at Purdue’s College of Liberal Arts. Her interests include music and humor, opera and politics, the nineteenth-century symphony, and the pedagogy of music history. Hund is currently writing a book based on her dissertation research, “The Proposta e Risposta Madrigal, Dialogue, Cultural Discourse, and the Issue of Imitatio”, as well as completing another edition of A Study and Listening Guide for A History of Western Music (W. W. Norton). David Weuste has worked in the classical music industry with non-profits and for-profits, as a performer (horn) and business person. Having experience with the broad industry of classical music allowed him to launch his own company to help bring classical music to twenty-first century audiences. In 2009, David Weuste started the company “Rosebrook Classical” to help classical record labels gain the marketing advantages of social media.

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Nicole Cabell

Nicole Cabell, the 2005 Winner of the BBC Singer of the World Competition in Cardiff and Decca recording artist, is fast becoming one of the most sought-after lyric sopranos of today. Her solo debut album, “Soprano” was named “Editor’s Choice” by Gramophone and has received an incredible amount of critical acclaim and several prestigious awards: the 2007 Georg Solti Orphée d’Or from the French Académie du Disque Lyrique and an Echo Klassik Award in Germany. Ms. Cabell’s current season showcases her command of Mozart’s music, as she sings the Countess in Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro in Montreal, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni in Tokyo. She will also be heard in some of her favorite roles in the French repertoire: Juliette in Roméo et Juliette with the Palm Beach Opera and Leïla in Les Pêcheurs de Perles at the Santa Fe Opera. In concert, she will be heard in London, Chicago, Cincinnati, Toronto, Atlanta, San Diego and St Petersburg. Future engagements include a debut with the San Francisco Opera in a leading role. http://nicole-cabell.com

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Richard Fredricks

Richard Fredricks, former Principal Baritone with the Metropolitan Opera, is recognized as one of today's finest singing actors. Richard has been a guest soloist with most of the major symphony orchestras in America and is highly esteemed as a recitalist. He sang the first telecast of the prestigious Live from Lincoln Center series and was a frequent guest on the Merv Griffin Show, The Dinah Shore Show, The Tonight Show, with Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett Show, Mike Douglas Show, and starred as himself, in a special Odd Couple segment, with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall. Richard has taught voice for over thirty years in New York City, teaching his own vocal technique, as it applies to the classical and the pop repertoire. He currently teaches in his Los Angeles studio. http://www.richardfredricks.com/

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Richard Wiegold

Richard has a rapidly developing international career as a bass, with roles at Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Salzburg Easter Festival, the Canadian Opera, the ABAO in Bilbao, the Prague State Opera, the Verbier Festival, and concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic and other leading orchestras.  Richard photographs the world as he travels around it.... Richard's website is http://www.richardwiegold.com/ and you may also follow him on Twitter as @richardwiegold

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Rosemarie Umetsu

Rosemarie Umetsu completed studies in piano performance at Trinity College of Music (UK) and the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto,) she later graduated from the International Academy of Fashion Design and Merchandising. In 1995 she joined Holt Renfrew as women’s contemporary Fashion Buyer, and then to Club Monaco, prior to opening her own fashion design consulting firm in 2000. She launched her own eponymous label in spring 2004. Rosemarie’s personal belief that ‘individuality is the heart of style’ forms the foundation for the collection. Influenced by her couturier grandmother, her innate sense of style was officially translated into her own line, which has garnered a strong niche following of artists – musicians, writers, dancers, singers, actors and private clients all personally dressed and styled by Rosemarie.

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Suzi Rosenberg

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Terry McIntosh

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Victoria Rowe

Victoria Rowe, Celebrity and Fashion Makeup Artist has been Making Faces Beautiful for over 15 years.  Her work in Fashion editorial and Runway has taken her from LA to Miami to New York, with clients such as Lanvin, Christian Audigier, Level 99 Couture, Jenny Han, Voom, and many more.  She has been published in countless magazines including IN STYLE, ALLURE, CELEBRITY HAIRSTYLES, FLAUNT, PAPER, and MAXIM worldwide.  Victoria's celebrity clientelle includes LADY GAGA, Ashley Greene (Twilight), Jennifer Coolidge, Keri Hilson, and AMERICAN IDOL.  Her background in Musical Theater as an actor has given her the passion to portray other actors and singers in a beautiful light, true to their characters.  Victoria is looking forward to her show on EVERYDAY OPERA and answering all of your skincare and makeup questions! www.victoriarowe.com

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