Our Speakers

Bowen and Crutcher
José Bowen (L) is the President of Goucher College and Ronald A. Crutcher (R) was the former President of the University of Richmond and holds the title of President Emeritus of Wheaton College in Massachusetts.
José Bowen

Dr. José Antonio Bowen has been leading innovation and change for over 40 years at Stanford, Georgetown, and the University of Southampton (UK), as a dean at Miami University and SMU and as President of Goucher College. Bowen has worked as a musician with Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, and many others and his symphony was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music (1985). Bowen holds four degrees from Stanford and has written over 100 scholarly articles and books, including the Cambridge Companion to Conducting (2003), Teaching Naked (2012 and the winner of the Ness Award for Best Book on Higher Education), Teaching Naked Techniques with G. Edward Watson (2017) and Teaching Change: How to Develop Independent Thinkers using Relationships, Resilience and Reflection (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021). Bowen has appeared in The New York Times,Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and has three TED talks. Stanford honored him as a Distinguished Alumni Scholar (2010) and he has presented keynotes and workshops at more than 300 campuses and conferences 46 states and 17 countries around the world.  In 2018, he was awarded the Ernest L. Boyer Award (For significant contributions to American higher education). He is a senior fellow for the American Association of Colleges and Universities.

Ronald A. Crutcher

Dr. Ronald A. Crutcher, a national leader in higher education and a distinguished classical musician, was the President of the University of Richmond from 2015-2021. Dr. Crutcher is also President Emeritus of Wheaton College in Massachusetts, where he served for ten years. Prior to Wheaton, he was Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Miami University of Ohio. In August 2021, he was named a Senior Fellow in the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program. 

Dr. Crutcher writes and speaks widely on the value of liberal education, the democratic purposes of higher education, diversity and inclusion, and free expression on college campuses. He is Immediate Past Chair of the Board of the American Council on Education (ACE), a Senator of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and a member of the Board of IES Abroad. For the University of Richmond, he serves as Board Chair of the Jepson Scholars Foundation and a board member of the Spider Management Company. He previously served on the boards of the Posse Foundation, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), the Fulbright Association; he was Chair of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts. His thematic memoir, I Had No Idea You Were Black: Navigating Race on the Road to Leadership, was published in February 2021. 

Throughout his 45-year career in higher education, Crutcher has consulted with higher education institutions, non-profit organizations, and corporations in the USA and abroad on issues related to organizational culture, especially bridging racial and cultural divides, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion. Since stepping down as President of the University of Richmond, Dr. Crutcher has added executive coaching to his consulting practice under the auspices of RACGlobalLeitung, LLC. 

He is a former member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and several other symphonies. For almost forty years, he performed in the U.S. and Europe as a member of The Klemperer Trio. He has served on the boards of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Richmond Symphony, and the Berklee College of Music. Earlier in his career he was President of Chamber Music America, director of the highly-ranked Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin, and dean of the Conservatory at the Cleveland Institute of Music. 

Dr. Crutcher began studying cello at the age of 15 with Professor Elizabeth Potteiger, a faculty member at Miami University. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in March 1985 and was the first cellist to receive the doctor of musical arts degree from Yale University, where he also earned his master’s degree. During his graduate study, he received a Fulbright Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Doctoral Fellowship, and a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Iota of Ohio at Miami University, he has received honorary degrees from Wheaton College (MA), Colgate University, Muhlenberg College, Randolph-Macon College, University of Richmond, and the University of Cordoba in Spain.

Meet the Faculty

Lee Bynum

Lee BynumLee Bynum is the Chief Education Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, providing strategic leadership, creative vision, and administrative direction for the organization’s educative initiatives, and serving as an advocate for the value and importance of arts education. Previously, Bynum inaugurated the role of Vice President for Impact at Minnesota Opera, guiding the company’s educational, engagement, and equity work. Bynum’s work directly addresses pipeline issues among underrepresented musicians, composers, and technical artists, as well as prioritizes de-gendering vocal pedagogy and broadening the canon to normalize the programming of underrepresented composers. 

At The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Bynum made diversity, equity, and inclusion grants to colleges, universities, community music schools, and museums; supported the creation of K-12 music education programs and arts majors at HBCUs; and funded two PBS documentaries. As a dramaturg, Bynum has collaborated on the development of new works with American Opera Projects, the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, and the John Duffy Institute for New Opera. And as a librettist, Bynum recently was commissioned two create two new operatic works that will be produced in the United States and United Kingdom. Bynum has been active with a number of nonprofits, including the activist orchestra, The Dream Unfinished; Luna Composition Lab and American Composers Forum, both of which support equitable practices and access to resources in the creation of new music; and as founding artistic director of the Harmony Theatre Company, which championed the work of underrepresented creators and performers. 

An historian of race and performance, Bynum has published articles on the contributions of people of color to the performing arts and been invited to speak on these topics by the National Endowment for the Arts, the British Consulate, the Sphinx Organization, Harvard University, and the University of Cape Town. Since 2021, Bynum has cohosted The Score podcast, which was recommended by The New York Times for its humorous interviews with luminaries from Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera, RuPaul’s Drag Race, and DC Comics, on a range of contemporary topics in the inclusion, diversity, equity, and access sphere. Bynum holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Columbia University and has taught at its Institute for Research in African American Studies. 

Dr. Rodney Dorsey

Rodney DorseyRodney Dorsey is professor of music in bands and chair of the Department of Bands at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, a position he has held since Fall 2018. He is the conductor of the internationally recognized Indiana Wind Ensemble and guides all aspects of the graduate wind-conducting program. Dorsey’s positions have included director of bands at the University of Oregon, associate director of Bands at the University of Michigan, associate professor of music at DePaul University, and director of Athletic Bands at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music. He also taught public school for eight years in Florida and Georgia. 

Ensembles under Dorsey’s direction have performed at state and national events including the College Band Directors National Conference North/Northwest Regional Conference and the Music for All National Festival. He is an active guest conductor, having led intercollegiate, all-state, and regional honors bands around the country. International engagements include Hungary, Canada, and Bulgaria. 

An active advocate for the composition of new wind repertoire, Dorsey has been involved in a number of commissioning projects, including with composers Andrea Reinkemeyer, Steven Mackey, D. J. Sparr, Anthony Barfield, Stacy Garrop, Andrew Rindfleisch, and John Mackey. 

Dorsey has presented clinic sessions at national and state conferences, including the College Band Directors National Association, National Association for Music Education, College Music Society, and the Midwest Clinic. He has also presented at numerous state music conferences around the country. 

Dorsey’s professional memberships include the College Band Directors National Association, National Association for Music Education, Indiana Bandmasters Association, Kappa Kappa Psi, Tau Beta Sigma (honorary), Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated. His commitment to the music community has been demonstrated by his participation on boards of directors for the Midwest Clinic and Music for All. He is an elected member of the prestigious American Bandmasters Association. His lifelong commitment to teaching saw him recognized as a Yamaha Master Educator.   

A native of Gainesville, Florida, Dorsey is a graduate of Florida State University and Northwestern University in Evanston. He studied conducting with James Croft, John Paynter, and Mallory Thompson, and clarinet with Fred Ormand and Frank Kowalsky. 

Eduardo Herrera

Eduardo HerreraEduardo Herrera (he/him/his) is Associate Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. Herrera is the author of Elite Art Worlds: Philanthropy, Latin Americanism, and Avant-Garde Music (Oxford University Press, 2020), and co-editor of Experimentalisms in Practice: Music Perspectives from Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2018). Herrera is currently working on two book projects: Sounding Fandom: Chanting, Masculinity, and Violence in Argentine Soccer Stadiums and Soccer Sounds: Transnational Stories of the Beautiful Game.  

Herrera previously taught at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, served as visiting associate professor at Harvard University in 2021, and was a Humanities Center Faculty Fellow for 2019–2020 at the University of Rochester. He is currently a Director-at-Large at the American Musicological Society (2022–2023) and has served as Interim Council Chair for the Society for Ethnomusicology (2020–21) and as Board Member-at-Large for the Society for American Music (2017–2020). 

Dr. Álvaro Huerta

Alvaro HuertaDr. Álvaro Huerta is a Religion and Public Life Organizing Fellow at the Harvard Divinity School. Dr. Huerta is also an Associate Professor in Urban & Region Planning and Ethnic & Women’s Studies at Cal Poly Pomona. He’s the author of the forthcoming book, Jardineros/Gardeners: Cultivating Los Angeles’ Green Landscapes with Brown Hands, Migrant Networks and Technology (The MIT Press). He’s also the author of an award-winning book, Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities: The Xenophobic Era of Trump and Beyond. Prior to becoming a scholar-activist, he was a highly successful community activist. As a son of Mexican immigrants, he spent his formative years in East Los Angeles’ Ramona Gardens public housing project (or Big Hazard projects). As a first-gen graduate and Ford Foundation Fellow, he holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley. He also holds an M.A. in Urban Planning and a B.A. in History from UCLA.

Raphael Jiménez

Raphael JimenezPraised for his “tightly wrought” and “stirring, vividly shaped” renditions (The New York Times), Raphael Jiménez is celebrated for his work with orchestras around the world. His recent engagements include performances in China with the symphony orchestras of Zhejiang and Guanxi and in Latin America with the symphony orchestras of Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and Puerto Rico. Jiménez has also led the opera orchestras of Lübeck, Germany, and Palm Beach, Florida, and he has collaborated with several ballet companies including performances with the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center.  

Jiménez currently serves as director of orchestras and professor of conducting at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He has frequently been acknowledged for his remarkable ability to lead, masterfully train, and inspire young players to perform at the highest level. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported, “The orchestra, conducted by Raphael Jiménez, played with a professional sheen rarely heard from student ensembles.” His performances with the Oberlin Orchestra at New York City’s Carnegie Hall and at Symphony Center in Chicago have also been well received: “To say that this concert was impressive for an ensemble of young players would be an understatement: this is an orchestra that any city would be happy to have as its resident professional ensemble” (ClevelandClassical). 

Ricardo Lorenz

Ricardo LorenzThe compositions of Venezuelan-born Ricardo Lorenz have garnered praise for their fiery orchestrations, and rhythmic vitality as well as for raising awareness about global societal challenges that concern the composer. These impressions have earned him two Latin Grammy Award nominations, multiple commissions, including a recent one by the Los Angeles Philharmonic for their 2021-22 season, and performances of his works at prestigious international festivals such as Carnegie Hall’s Sonidos de las Américas, Ravinia Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, France’s Berlioz Festival, Spain’s Festival Internacional de Música Contemporanea de Alicante, the Festival Cervantino in Mexico, Turkey’s Uluslararasi Summer Festival and South Korea’s PAN Music Festival, among others. His orchestral compositions have been performed in the United States by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, New World Symphony, among many others and by orchestras in Venezuela, Germany, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Sweden, Canada, Israel, Argentina, and the Czech Republic. His works for wind ensemble have been performed and recorded by numerous band programs across the United States, including Eastman School of Music, University of North Texas, Michigan State University, University of Michigan, University of Georgia, University of Missouri at Kansas City, Northwestern University, University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana, University of South Carolina, and many others. 

Between 1999 and 2003 Ricardo Lorenz was Composer-in-Residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Armonia Musicians Residency Program and he held the position of Associate Director of the Indiana University Jacob School of Music’s Latin American Music Center between 2003 and 2005. He has received awards and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell Colony, National Flute Association, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Meet-the-Composer Midwest, MetLife Creative Connections, Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, Concert Artists Guild, Ravinia Festival, The University of Chicago, and the American Bandmasters Association/University of Florida Commissioning Project. 

Ricardo Lorenz is currently Professor and Chair of Music Composition at Michigan State University College of Music has served as Composition Faculty of the Wintergreen Summer Music Academy (Virginia) and as Composer-in-Residence of Music in the Loft (Chicago), Sewanee Summer Music Festival (Tennessee), the Billings Symphony Orchestra (Montana), and the Pan and Young-Nam International music festivals in South Korea. Ricardo Lorenz’s compositions are published by Keiser Southern Music and by Boosey & Hawkes and they can be heard on the following record labels: ECM, Naxos, Albany Records, Arabesque Recordings, Navona Records, Cedille Records, GIA Publications, and Blue Griffin Recordings as well as labels in Turkey, Mexico, Venezuela, and the U.K. In 2019, Ricardo Lorenz was honored with the Michigan State University César Chávez Community Leadership Award. 

Lorenz holds a Ph.D. degree in composition from The University of Chicago and a MM degree from Indiana University and studied composition with Juan Orrego-Salas, Shulamit Ran, and Donald Erb. He previously taught at Indiana University, The University of Chicago, and City Colleges of Chicago. 

Teresa Reed, Ph.D

Teresa ReedTeresa Reed received her Ph.D. in Music Theory, Music History and Literature, and African American Studies from Indiana University. Her publications include reviews, encyclopedia entries, and articles in Black Music Research Journal, Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies, Journal of Religious Thought, Popular Music and Society, and Readings in African American Church Music and Worship. She has authored four books, two of which–The Holy Profane: Religion in Black Popular Music (2002) and The Jazz Life of Dr. Billy Taylor (2013)–won national honors from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. She has been featured on National Public Radio's Curtains at 8 and on the BBC's The Gospel Truth, and her work has been favorably cited and/or reviewed in Vibe, Downbeat Magazine, Publisher's Weekly, New York City Jazz Record, JazzTimes, New York Review of Books, and on NPR. She has lectured nationally and internationally on various aspects of music theory and African American music. She is a long-time consultant with the College Board and served consecutive terms as Chief Reader for both AP Music Theory and AP Capstone/AP Seminar. Most recently, she authored music modules for the College Board's Pre-AP Arts curriculum, launched nationally in 2018, and she currently serves on the Development Committee for AP African American Studies. She was on the faculty of the University of Tulsa for twenty-five years, where she served as Professor of Music, Director of the African American Studies Certificate, Director of the School of Music, and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. She was also an adjunct professor at Phillips Theological Seminary and an instructor of music theory at the Barthelmes Conservatory of Music. She currently serves the University of Louisville as Dean of the School of Music. 

J. Gibran Viallobos

J. Gibran VillalobosJ. Gibran Villalobos is the National Engagement Program Manager for the Institute of Museum and Library Services to help in the establishment of the National Museum of the American Latino. Previously, he has held posts as Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Partnerships and Community Engagement Manager for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Cultural Liaison for the Chicago Park District, and Curator-in-Residence for the Chicago Cultural Center.  

In 2016 he attended the Advocacy Leadership Institute and was invited to the White House Office of Public Engagement, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to speak to issues affecting Latinos in Chicago. In 2017 he launched an inaugural summit of Latinx artists and administrators across the U.S; for this project he was awarded the Act Up Award by the Chicago Community Trust. His work has been presented at the Fabrica de Arte Cubano during the 2017 Havana Biennial. In 2019 he was an inaugural recipient of the Field Foundation’s Leaders for a New Chicago Award as well as the Americans for the Arts 2019 Leaders of Color Fellowship. In 2020 he was accepted to the Civic Leadership Academy at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy where he worked with government and nonprofit sector participants to think about effective policy for Chicago’s cultural industries.  He serves as Chair of the Chicago Artists Coalition Board of Directors.  He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Department of Arts Administration & Policy.  

Gibran holds a BA in Art History and a BS in Public Relations from Northern Arizona University and an MA in Arts Administration & Policy and MA in Modern Art History & Theory from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  

He has contributed to exhibitions such as Direct Message, presenting the artwork of Chicago artistic collectives and their relation to language and civic engagement. As part of an international project he has convened the MCA Chicago with the Tate Modern, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Queens Museum and other institutions to create dialogue on civic engagement within contemporary art institutions. He has written catalog entries for Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Rodrigo Lara Zendejas, and Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford. In 2021 he is contributing to the upcoming retrospective on the work by artist Andrea Bowers focusing on the activism and archives of Emma Lozano. He is curator of the symposium Fractures: Creating Around Devastation focusing on water ecology, civic engagement, activism, and architecture. 

Maurice Wheeler, Ph.D

Maurice WheelerDr. Maurice Wheeler is a Professor in the Department of Information Science at the University of North Texas. He joined the department after serving in top administrative positions in public and academic libraries. Wheeler teaches courses that anchor the department’s management curriculum, and directs the Advanced Management Graduate Academic Certificate program and the music librarianship specialization. 

Wheeler’s research is race-centric and focuses on the convergence of culture, politics and information in historical documentation. In addition to earning degrees in information science, he also holds degrees in voice performance. As a cultural heritage scholar, Wheeler explores a variety of disciplinary fields that blend his backgrounds in music and information. His recent research explores the representation of African American opera singers in archival and special historical collections. In 2019, his archival research and curatorial work received high profile exposure through a Metropolitan Opera exhibition he co-curated, “Black Voices at the Met.” Wheeler’s widely recognized scholarship has also resulted in his selection as a research fellow by the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

He has served on an expert national jury for The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and has served numerous times as a grant reviewer for arts funding organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts. Wheeler has been active in leadership roles in the Music Library Association, the American Library Association and many professional cultural organizations. He has also served on several editorial boards and as a reviewer for top publications in the profession.

Ruth Enid Zambrana, Ph.D

Ruth Enid ZambranaDr. Zambrana is a Distinguished University Professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Director of the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity and holds a secondary appointment as Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and School of Medicine. Her scholarship applies a critical intersectional lens to structural inequality and racial, Hispanic ethnicity, gender and economic disparities in population health and higher education trajectories. Recent awards include the 2021-22 Distinguished Research Fellow, Latino Research Institute, University of Texas, Austin, the 2021 Lyndon Haviland Public Health Mentoring Award, American Public Health Association, the 2013 American Public Health Association Latino Caucus, Founding Member Award for Vision and Leadership, and the 2011 Julian Samora Distinguished Career Award by the American Sociological Association, Sociology of Latina/os Section. Her latest book is Toxic Ivory Tower: The Consequences of Work Stress on the Health of Underrepresented Minority Faculty (Rutgers University Press, 2018).