2019 - 2020 Cambridge Arts Grant Panelist Bios
Dance
Christine Weinberg
Marsha Parrilla
Jim Banta
Robert BridgemanAdrienne Hawkins
Christine Lamas Weinberg
Christine is a consultant in philanthropic initiatives and development. he has over a decade of experience working with foundations, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions in the area. Her area of expertise is in grantmaking, project management, and donor engagement strategies. She is currently working in the donor relations department at Harvard University focusing on stewardship projects. Previously, Christine worked with the New England Foundation for the Arts, Philanthropic Advisors, LLC., and the Barr Foundation, where she managed a portfolio of projects in arts education, cultural diversity, public art, and international affairs. She has participated in numerous proposal review panels in the region and has moderated meetings with grantees. Before moving to Cambridge in 2002, Christine worked in marketing and special events for Arthur Andersen and Mobil Oil Corporation in Lima, Peru. Besides serving as a liaison between the clients and the company, her responsibilities included creating and implementing marketing strategies, organizing events, and promoting corporate responsibility. Christine holds a bachelor's degree in Communications and Journalism from the University of Lima, Peru and a master's in Arts Administration from Boston University.
Marsha Parrilla
Award-winning Afro Indigenous choreographer Marsha Parrilla is the founding Artistic Director of Danza Orgánica. After obtaining a Bachelor's Degree in Foreign Languages from the University of Puerto Rico, Marsha moved to New York, where she completed a Master's Degree in Dance Education at New York University. Now a resident of Boston, Parrilla is a recipient of several awards from the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Boston Foundation, among others. Marsha is also a Luminary artist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where she has been commissioned to create artistic work. In 2017, Parrilla received the Brother Thomas Fellowship Award from the Boston Foundation. She also received a Creative Development Residency at Jacob's Pillow, and performed at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Inside/Out Festival. Parrilla is the founder and producer of the Boston-based acclaimed annual festival: We Create! Celebrating Women in the Arts. In 2018, Marsha was selected for the city of Boston AIR program (artist in residence), with a focus on environmental justice. Currently, she is collaborating with local Native American communities in Massachusetts, with a focus on best practices towards decolonization and environmental justice. She is also collaborating with Puerto Rico-based artists on a residency-based cultural exchange towards the development of Proyecto Melaza: a project that explores the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States of North America. Most recently (2019), Parrilla was awarded an Outstanding Community Arts Collaboration Award in Dance from the Arts/Learning Organization.
Jim Banta
James Douglas Banta is a member of Back Pocket Dancers as well as Peanut Butter and Jelly Dance Company. In recent years he has also danced with/for Margot Parsons, Rozann Kraus, Peter DiMuro, Chu Ling, Michael Winward and Mariale Celimen.
Robert Bridgeman
I am a Native Cantabridgian with roots in Cambridge dating back to the late 1800s.
Studied jazz and modern dance at the Institute of Contemporary Dance, also Studied ballet under the renowned ballet dancer Danny Sloan. African and hip-hop dance I studied at the Dance Complex in Cambridge Mass. I was the Featured Dancer on a hit TV show in the early 1990’s then toured the east coast performing in dance and theatre shows.
Adrienne Hawkins
Adrienne Hawkins has a MFA in Dance Connecticut College, and was the Artistic Director of Impulse Dance Co. for 35 years, and Bass-Line Motion 10 years. Hawkins has been an award winning international, Dancer, Choreographer and Master teacher for over 40 years.
Music
Marti Epstein
Veronica Robles
Timothy McCormack
Annie PhilipsAllegra Fletcher
Marti Epstein
Marti Epstein is Professor of Composition at Berklee College of Music/Boston Conservatory of Music. Epstein is a composer whose music has been performed by the San Francisco Symphony, the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Frankfurt, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, Ensemble Modern, and members of the Boston Symphony. She has completed commissions for the Foxborough Musical Association, the Fromm Foundation, the Munich Biennale, the Iowa Brass Quintet, and the Callithumpian Consort, among many others. In 2005, she was the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant. She has been a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1986 and 1988 and was in residence at the MacDowell Colony in 1998 and 1999. Epstein is on the steering committee for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project Scoreboard and was composer in residence for the Radius Ensemble in 2009 and 2010. Her work has been recorded by cellist Rhonda Rider, and English horn soloist Robert Sheena and the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble under the direction of Eric Hewitt. Her string quartet, Hidden Flowers, was commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Center for the 2012 Festival of Contemporary Music. In November 2015, she released Hypnagogia, a CD of her chamber music. She teaches composition at Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
Veronica Robles
Award winning singer, musician Veronica Robles is a Mariachi by trade but has become a cultural icon for Latinos in Boston. She has effectively utilized the power of the arts and culture to bring the community together by raising awareness on the importance of diversity. She is the founder of “Boston’s First Female Mariachi”, Co-founder and Director of the Veronica Robles Cultural Center that supports community action and economic growth in East Boston and offers Latin American arts and culture programming and provides jobs for youth. Veronica was honored by Mayor Walsh with a mural with her image on her Mariachi outfit on Pari Street in East Boston; Mayor also appointed her to the leadership board for the Boston Creates Cultural Plan. Recently she received the Ohtli Award. One of the highest and very limited distinctions given by the Government of Mexico and she was included as a Neighborhood Salon Luminary for the 2019-20 season with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Timothy McCormack
Timothy McCormack writes haptic, viscous music which makes audible the tactile, physical relationship between a performer and their instrument. Sometimes ecstatic, sometimes hermetic, his music embeds pitch within dense walls of noise to create strangely affecting sonic ecologies which alter one’s perception of time. He is the recipient of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Composers’ Prize (2018) and frequently collaborates with the ELISION Ensemble (Australia), Klangforum Wien (Austria), the JACK Quartet (USA), and Musikfabrik (Germany), amongst many others. Having received his PhD at Harvard University (PhD, 2019), he currently teaches composition at Boston Conservatory. For more information, visit www.timothy-mccormack.com
Annie Philips
Anna-Christina (Annie) Phillips is a musician and arts advocate in Boston, MA. She is Associate Dean of Entrepreneurial Musicianship at the New England Conservatory. Previously, Annie was Co-Director of San Francisco's Switchboard Music, on faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Programs and Operations Lead at Zoo Labs, an innovative arts incubator program located in a recording studio in West Oakland; she has also worked for the San Francisco Symphony, the Magik*Magik Orchestra, and on behalf of numerous independent ensembles promoting new and interesting musical presentations.
Allegra Fletcher
Allegra (she/her/hers) is the Director of Arts Connect International. Allegra is passionate about social change through arts-based programming, utilizing her experience as an educator to develop youth empowerment curriculum and other programming. Prior to coming to ACI she served as the Director of an out of school time program in Cambridge, MA. Before that, she created a music and movement-based curriculum to teach English as a foreign language in Milan, Italy. Allegra received her EdM in Arts in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and completed her undergraduate studies at Bryn Mawr College in Italian and Education, where she graduated with honors. Allegra maintains an active artist practice as a singer-songwriter, musician and creative writer, and continues to enjoy learning languages and exploring various realms of education.
Theater, Literature, & Multidisciplinary
Aliyah Gary
David DanielShana Gozansky
Aliyah Gary
David Daniel
David Daniel is the author of Seven-Star Bird, from Graywolf Press, winner of the Levis Reading Prize, and his new collection, Ornaments, in the Pitt Poetry Series. Critic Harold Bloom has called him “an authentic heir to Hart Crane” and poet Tom Sleigh writes that “No one in any generation is writing poems that are like this: smart, visceral, immensely pleasurable to read.” Former poetry editor of Ploughshares, Daniel founded and produces WAMFEST: The Words and Music Festival, which has brought together Bruce Springsteen with Robert Pinsky, Rosanne Cash with C. D. Wright, Talib Kweli with Quincy Troupe, along with many others for collaborative performances. He teaches creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and he lives in Belmont, MA.
Shana GozanskyShana Gozansky is a freelance director and teaching artist. She has directed at Merrimack Repertory Theater, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Gloucester Stage, Boston Playwrights’ Theater, Central Square Theater, Trinity Repertory Company, The Hangar Theatre, The Calderwood Arts Pavilion, Clark University, College of the Holy Cross, The Bowery Poetry Club, Dickinson College, Manhattan Theatre Source, and The Red Room. She has held teaching positions at Brown University, Clark University, and The College of the Holy Cross and has directed at all three as well as Emerson College. She has assisted on productions at Berkeley Rep, The Geffen, Manhattan Ensemble Theatre, Henry Miller’s Theater, and Trinity Repertory Company. Shana holds a MFA in Directing from the Brown University/Trinity Repertory Company MFA Programs and a BA in Theater from Bard College, was an Artistic Associate at The Hangar Theatre, an Artist-in-Residence at chashama and The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab and is a Drama League Directing Fellow.
Visual Arts, Film, & Video
Diane Norris
David DeCelis
Judy Ann Goldman
Ivy Moylan
Tonia Magras
Diane Norris
Diane Charyk Norris is a visual artist at Miller Street Studios focusing on painting and printmaking and has been a Cambridge resident for over 30 years. She is a strong advocate for collaboration and expanding the role of the arts across the city in schools, after school programs, neighborhoods, and public events. She currently serves on the Advisory Boards of the Cambridge Arts Council (current Chair), Chandler Gallery at Maud Morgan Arts, and Fayerweather Street School. While her children attended Cambridge Public Schools, Ms. Norris was Co-Chair of the Haggerty School Arts Council, served on the Board of Friends of Haggerty, and was the Parent Liaison for the launch of the Cambridge Creativity Commons. She also has over 20 years of professional experience as an architect in design, planning, renovation, and interiors of cultural buildings. She is a Principal of Norris & Norris Associates and was an Associate at Ann Beha Architects, and a Project Architect at Cambridge Seven Associates.
David DeCelis
David T. De Celis is a registered architect and founding principal of De Celis Van Lauwe Design (DCVL Design), an interdisciplinary studio he co-founded with his longtime colleague Amy Van Lauwe. DCVL explores innovative space and form-making while celebrating relationships between art, architecture, other design disciplines and performance. De Celis has completed award-winning LEED projects and aims to incorporate biophilic design, passive strategies and healthy environments in all aspects of his work. Before establishing DCVL, he freelanced in Miami, FL and Cambridge, MA with his previous firms DTC and DCM Design. His works range from architecture and landscape projects to furniture, set design, research-based studies, writings and design-competitions. He is currently based in Cambridge, MA, where he lives with his wife and three children. He recently served on the city’s Mayor’s Arts Task Force and has been a member of the Public Art Commission (PAC) since spring 2013, serving as PAC chairman from 2016–19.
Judy Ann Goldman
Judy Ann Goldman has been a professional in the arts for over 50 years. She has worked in editorial and research positions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute and the Harvard Law School. Ms. Goldman has curated over 100 exhibitions of contemporary art as the Director of the Thomas Segal Gallery (1980-1992), as an independent curator, and as principal of Judy Ann Goldman Fine Art (1995-2008). She has been a participant/exhibitor at numerous international art fairs in Europe, Japan and the United States. Ms. Goldman has served on panels and juries on fine arts issues for the Boston Center for the Arts, the Photographic Resource Center, the Massachusetts College of Art, the College Art Association, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Cambridge Arts Council, the Society for Photographic Education, the Concord Art Association and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. Ms. Goldman has been a frequent contributor to Art New England magazine. From 1992-1996 she served on the Board of Overseers of the Rose Art Museum. She was on the Board of Overseers of the Danforth Museum from 2008-2011 and currently serves on the City of Cambridge Public Art Commission.
Ivy Moylan
Since 2001, Ivy Moylan has been the Executive Director of the Brattle Film Foundation, the nonprofit that programs and operates The Brattle Theatre. She supervises all areas of fundraising, accounting, and business administration for The Brattle, working closely with The Brattle's board, volunteers and staff.
Tonia Magras
Tonia is a principal owner of Hull Bay Productions where she serves as executive producer, director and editor. Tonia is a multi-award winning, producer, director and editor, who takes pride in being a multi-faceted, and multi-dimensional creator with projects that range from sports, arts, politics and popular culture. Tonia Magras has almost 30 years of production experience, which began at PBS’ flagship television station WGBH-TV in Boston. She has been winning awards since the age of 4, when she won a contest featuring the work of the R&B band Earth, Wind, and Fire. She's a unique thinker, able to bring creative perspectives to even the most obvious subjects. Whether it's full-length presentations, web content and/or design, Tonia thrives when she's bringing form to the intangible, finding answers to solve communication problems. In 1995, she won her first Emmy Award for the groundbreaking documentary Silent Screams: The Plight of Love, Abuse and Being Black, which was also recognized by the National Black Program Consortium for Outstanding Documentary. From there, Tonia has been recognized with 7 Emmy Award nominations and 3 Emmy wins for various documentary and production work. Some other highlights of Tonia’s work includes In Our Own Words, a feature on how young people handle the very stresses of growing up differently; The New People, a documentary on how Haitian immigrants began the migration into the working-class city of Somerville, Massachusetts; Whitey Bulger: The Final Chapter, a co-production with Emily Rooney chronicling how the infamous Southie gangster was eventually captured after decades on the run and brought to justice; and A Father’s Story, the grief and new found purpose a father found after the fatal overdose of his son. In 1997, Tonia made the transition from the creative to the technical when she became an editor and director for WGBH’s Local Programming Department. Her career at WGBH then transitioned into the management side when she was promoted to Supervising Producer of the News Division in 2010. After 25 years at WGBH, she started her own production company with her husband and partner to work on their first film, “100 Years, 100 Voices of Faith”, which chronicled the rise of Cambridge's Abundant Life Church as they celebrated 100 years of service. Through 100 interviews of members past and present, along with behind-the-scenes footage, the film wove together the stories of how the church impacted lives and faith from the formally known Apostolic Pentecostal Church to the newly named Abundant Life Church - and what the church's next 100 years plans to offer. The film premiered in the fall of 2017 and in 2018 was selected to premiere at the prestigious Roxbury International Film Festival. Currently, Tonia serves as co-host and executive producer of the PowerPLAY show – a weekly podcast premiering in January, 2020. She is also in development of a documentary on the story of WILD-AM 1090 titled, “Boston’s Soundtrack”.