Class Notes

Fernando Gaggini (’25) won first place in the 21st Annual Khachaturian International Competition in the conducting category. Courtesy of Fernando Gaggini

CFA Alumni

Class Notes

Spring 2026 updates from the CFA alumni community

October 31, 2025
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1950s

Morton Gold (’53,’60) is the organist at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Sanford, Congregation Etz Chayim in Biddeford, and Springvale Masonic Lodge #190, all in Maine. Gold has performed his music at the Springvale Historical Society and has guest-conducted the Strafford Wind Symphony in New Hampshire. A master mason for more than 60 years, Gold is mostly retired and happily lives with his wife in Springvale.

1960s

Fred Drifmeyer (’62) sings in the choir at First Presbyterian Church in Cartersville, Ga.

Laura Blacklow (’67) showed her book, Vanishing Flora, Disappearing Jungle, about the Guatemalan rainforest, in the 2025 Handmade Photobooks Exhibition at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Mass., from July to September 2025. Two of her photographs also appeared in an exhibition at the 25th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards for Women Photographers at FotoNostrum Gallery in Barcelona, Spain.

Micaela Amateau Amato (’68) had more than 50 of her gouache paintings featured in Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, a Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era (Eifrig Publishing, 2017), a book praised by Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, and many others. She also created a 100-foot book of stories that unfolds from the center into a large-scale cast paper portrait.

1970s

Edward Evensen (’71) continues to play clarinet in his Dixieland band and in the Temple Band, a historic town band formed in 1799; bass clarinet in the Hollis Town Band; saxophones and clarinet in the Moonlighters Big Band and in the East Bay Jazz Ensemble; and flute, piccolo clarinet, and saxophones in area musicals. Evensen enjoyed his 56th year conducting the Claremont American Band, which ties the longevity record with that of Arthur Nevers, founder of the Nevers’ 2nd Regiment Band.

Barbara Marder (’73) had her artwork selected for WGBH Boston’s Community Canvas initiative. The piece was displayed on WGBH’s Digital Mural in Brighton, Mass., in March 2025.

Lesley Cohen (’74) showed her work in Shift-Response, a solo exhibit, at the Bromfield Gallery in Boston, Mass., in September 2025.

Joan Seidman Kent (’75) showed three pastel works in Moments: Past, Present, Future, a group exhibition held in the spring of 2025 at Till Wave Gallery in Watertown, Mass.

Tracy Burtz (’78) was a finalist for the 2024 Alexander Rutsch Award for Painting. In 2025, her work was featured in group shows—in Nyack, N.Y.; Pound Ridge, N.Y.; Ossining, N.Y.; Middlebury, Vt.; and Nantucket, Mass.—and a solo show at Edgewater Gallery in Middlebury, Vt. She will have a solo show at the Painting Center in New York, N.Y., in March 2026. Learn more at tracyburtz.com.

Howard Kolins (’78) is in his 17th year as production supervisor of the Tony Awards and his 8th year as showcaller for the Webby Awards. He continues to work on a variety of corporate and nonprofit events. In October 2025, he helped produce the Atlantic Antic, one of the largest street festivals in New York, N.Y.

Jane O’Hara (’78) had her work featured in a July 2025 solo exhibition, Animal Instincts, at William Scott Gallery in Provincetown, Mass. In June 2025, Jane O’Hara Projects, a platform for curatorial projects, presentations, and publications, launched a website for her State of the Union—Animals Across America traveling exhibition project, supported by a companion publication, State of the Union. The inaugural exhibition took place at New Bedford Art Museum in June 2023. Learn more at animalsacrossamerica.org.

Julie Ridge (’78) reprised her one-woman show, Bipolar & the English Channel, off-Broadway in December 2025 under the auspices of the Actors’ Equity Association. The show was about Ridge’s zigzag swim across the English Channel, juxtaposed with how that unlikely trek has paralleled her life with bipolar disorder.

Sue Collier (’79,’82) was selected by the New York Foundation for the Arts and David Rockefeller, Jr., as one of eight artists featured in Tapestry of Imagination, a group exhibition held at 45 Rockefeller Plaza in New York, N.Y. The exhibition explored the depths of human emotion—hope, loss, joy, and resilience—across a wide range of media.

Ed Wierzbicki (’79, COM’90) is executive producer and director of a national film and webinar series that trains therapists to better handle crisis moments in adolescent trauma treatment. Based on actual cases, the films are developed through collaborative theater improvisations, original monologues, and dramatic scene work cowritten by therapists and actors from across the United States and Puerto Rico. Wierzbicki is a Regional Emmy Award–nominated director for his 2023 film On Stage/In Session: Shakespeare’s Works on Mental Health.

Ruth Mordecai (’70,’80) showcased her work in 40 Years of Paint and Collage, which ran from July through October 2025 at the Paul Dietrich Gallery at CambridgeSeven in Cambridge, Mass. Pictured: Kiss (Small Series 2) (2022) Acrylic and brown paper, 13.5 x 13 in. (Courtesy of Ruth Mordecai)

1980s

Cindy Gold (’80), a professor emerita at Northwestern University’s theater department, starred as Gertrude Berg in the world premiere of The First Lady of Television at Chicago’s Northlight Theatre, in the fall of 2025.

Julia Shepley (’80) had her work featured in Transmissible, a solo show at Boston Sculptors Gallery, in the fall of 2024. The exhibition featured graphic black ink drawings backed by reflective copper, visually translating her experience of light, shadow, and sound as they move through space. Also on display was a sculptural shadowbox Shepley uses to capture enigmatic photographic images in which forms appear to be traveling through—and suspended in—pools of vibrant color.

Wynn Harmon (’82) played Orazio Gentileschi in the world premiere of Kate Hamill’s The Light and the Dark (The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi), at both Chautauqua Theatre Company and in an off-Broadway production at Primary Stages. He also played multiple roles in Billie Jean, by Lauren Gunderson, at New York Stage and Film, and General Lew Wallace in This Ghost of Slavery, by Anna Deavere Smith, at Wesleyan Center for the Arts.

Michelle Mendez (’83,’90) is a professional artist and member of the Copley Society of Art, Boston, the oldest nonprofit art association in the United States, with a history dating back to 1879. Visit copleysociety.org/user/michellecmendez.

Michael Chiklis (’85) starred in Angel Studios’ sports drama The Senior, which premiered in theaters in September 2025. The film tells the true story of Mike Flynt, a 59-year-old man who returned to college football decades after being expelled from his team to pursue a second chance on the field.

Lyndon Moors (’85) is chair of the Lanesboro, Mass., town finance committee and president of the trustee board for the Berkshire Music School in Pittsfield, Mass. After retiring from a 35-year career teaching music in Maine and Massachusetts, Moors is still active as a performer, having played his 15th show (Camelot) in the pit orchestra for the Barrington Stage Company and as a member of musical ensembles, such as the Flatbed Jazz Band and the Valley Winds.

Thomas Devaney (’86) and Christine Theo Hungate (’86) showed their paintings and sculptures in Concentric Circles, a two-person exhibition held at Gateway Gallery in Portsmouth, N.H., in April 2024. Hungate and Devaney first met at CFA, where their shared love of art forged a lifelong friendship. The exhibition marks the first time they exhibited their work together since their senior show at the School of Visual Arts.

Roy Conli (’87) is set to produce Disney Animation’s Hexed, which will be released in the fall of 2026. The film follows an awkward teenage boy and his mother, who both discover that what makes him unusual may be magic.

Michaela Dempsey (’87) works alongside Mari Carmichael (Questrom’13) at their fast-growing start-up, Levelpath. They’re always looking to grow their Terrier base and encourage alums to check out open roles at Levelpath.

Ellen Harvey (’88) appeared as Fraulein Schneider in the Broadway revival of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club at the August Wilson Theatre in New York, N.Y.

1990s

Marcus Hogan (’92) spent the last four years writing Capulet, a six-part series and prequel to Romeo and Juliet. All six books were published in 2025.

Mark Robertson (’92) was concertmaster for the orchestral scores to several recent and upcoming films, including Final Destination: Bloodlines, American Agitators, Rather, Rule Breakers, Your Monster, and Pixar’s Hoppers.

Paul Woodson (’95) was nominated for his first Audie—for his narration of Hamlet’s Children by Richard Kluger—at the 2025 Audie Awards in New York, N.Y. Woodson and his wife live in northern California.

Dave Shalansky (’96) had a supporting role in Rosemead, a feature film released in June 2025 starring Lucy Liu. He also had a large supporting role in The Missing Peace, a dramatic short written, directed, and produced by Michael Raymond-James and executive produced by Jason Momoa. The film won Best Short Film and Best Acting Ensemble at the 2024 Indie Short Fest in Los Angeles, Calif. It was also accepted into the New York Short Film Festival, which ran in November 2025. Shalansky continues to audition for series regular and guest star roles as well as plays and films. He is also a proud husband and father.

Michele Caniato (’98) was awarded a fellowship residency at Willapa Bay AiR. His Echoes and Refractions—a composition for percussion quartet—premiered in June 2025 at the New Music on the Bayou Festival in Monroe, La. Caniato’s choral composition, Ao Viandante (To the Wayfarer), was released in August 2025 on Ablaze Records. He also attended the Society of Composers conference at the University of Orono in February 2025, where his Half-Time (A Basketball Intermezzo) was performed by saxophonist Andy Wen.

Bonnie Discepolo (’03) appeared in James Gunn’s Superman as Ali Jessop, one of supervillain Lex Luthor’s 12 assistants. Superman quickly rose to the No. 1 movie in the world in the summer of 2025. Yunjin Kim (’93) also appeared in a summer 2025 blockbuster with her turn in KPop Demon Hunters, an animated Netflix film about a South Korean girl group who use their secret identities as demon hunters to protect their fans from supernatural danger. Kim played Celine, a former K-pop idol and retired demon hunter who is the adoptive mom of one of the main characters. (Joe Seer/Shutterstock; Sipa USA/Alamy)

2000s

David Foley, Jr. (’00) played the role of Tom Keeney in the Boston production of Funny Girl at the Citizens Opera House in February 2025.

Ginnifer Goodwin (’01) starred as Judy Hopps in Zootopia 2, which was released in November 2025.

Kayla Mohammadi (’02) exhibited work in Object Lesson, a group show curated by Nancy Gruskin and held at Concord Art, in the summer of 2025.

Brent Wilson (’03), a Los Angeles, Calif.-based conductor and stage director, is department chair of performing arts and director of voice, choirs, opera, and musical theater at Ventura College; director of choral activities at University of California, Santa Barbara; and chorus master and assistant conductor for Varna International Music Festival in Bulgaria. Wilson was assistant conductor and chorus master for Opera Santa Barbara for more than 20 productions and has appeared as guest conductor for the UCSB Orchestra and Opera, receiving top prizes for collegiate opera production from the National Opera Association. He has also worked with the Grammy-nominated ensemble Boston Baroque, the Handel and Haydn Society, Handel Oratorio Society, Long Beach Camerata, Santa Barbara Master Chorale, Boston Lyric Opera, Maine Grand Opera, Granite State Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Opera Theatre Saint Louis. Wilson has been on faculty at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Augustana College, and Viterbo University; is a member of the National Opera Association, American Choral Directors Association, and National Association of Teachers of Singing; and has embarked on a project to rediscover and remount works by Gian Carlo Menotti that have been lost since their debuts. In his free time, he likes to compete in endurance sports, including 5 Ironman competitions and 14 marathons. Most recently, he ran a 75-mile trail in the Italian Dolomites in a weekend.

Coleen Scott Trivett (’04) published her second costume history book, The Costumes of Hollywood (Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2025). Trivett also celebrated tenure as head of the Costume Design and Technology Career Education program in the Department of Theatre and Fashion at Santa Rosa Junior College.

Chris Horn (‘05), who lives and works in the suburbs of Philadelphia, is in his 20th year in the classroom. He directs the symphonic band, competitive jazz band, and pit orchestra, and teaches introduction to music theory, advanced placement music theory, and digital audio production. During his tenure, he has more than doubled instrumental music enrollment, increasing participation from 34 to 86 in the marching band and from 51 to 104 in the concert band. He introduced unique musical opportunities for band students, such as performing alongside the Grammy-nominated rock/pop band Foster the People and for former First Lady Michelle Obama. Along with his staff, he created a competitive indoor percussion ensemble and was a featured presenter at the 2025 Pennsylvania Music Education Association’s state convention, where he conducted a session titled “Elementary Instrumental Recruitment—How We Enrolled 80% of Our Kids.” Horn is proudly married to a family medicine doctor, and is the father of two amazing boys, one of whom has an extra 21st chromosome. Horn is active in the Down syndrome community in Philadelphia.

John Beder (BUTI’03, CFA’08) is a documentary filmmaker whose latest film, How to Sue the Klan, won a 2025 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Short-Form Documentary. The documentary is distributed by PBS and is available for streaming.

Erika Hess (’09) was named artistic director of Chautauqua Visual Arts, where she oversees the visual arts residency and lecture series for the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York.

Chaerin Kim (’09) performed with the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Venezuela in May 2025, playing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and her own harp concerto, Rendezvous. The concert marked the first time in music history that a soloist performed two concertos on two different instruments (harp and piano) with an orchestra on the same stage. Kim became a Grammy Awards voting member in 2025.

Desiree Krebs (’09) is the owner/operator of Fowl Player Productions, formerly called the First Parish Players. Fowl Player Productions is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit theater company that welcomes everyone regardless of age, gender identity, ability, and experience. Their goal is “to make theater with people who love theater,” she writes.

2010s

Jeffrey Nowlin (’10) teaches foundation sculpture and foundation drawing at the CFA School of Visual Arts, while also leading the sculpture sections during its Visual Arts Summer Institute. He is a visiting undergraduate and graduate lecturer in the humanities and art education departments at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where he also is gallery coordinator for its Arnheim Gallery.

Drew Tholke (’10) participated in the BU in LA program and started working in Los Angeles, Calif. after graduating from BU. As YouTube was starting to take off, his acting career transitioned into a producing career; he now works as a film executive for producer Andrew Panay. Tholke develops, creates, writes, and produces studio-level feature films, such as the 20th Century Fox movie Swiped (2025), which premiered on Hulu in September 2025. Previously, Tholke worked on the unreleased Wedding Crashers 2 and was part of the producing team for He’s All That (2021).

Taylor Apostol (’15) had a solo exhibition, Piles, at the Boston Sculptors Gallery LaunchPad from December 2024 to January 2025, which featured recent ceramic and stone sculptures.

Benjamin Ducoff (’15), a filmmaker, joined the founding faculty of Motion Picture Technical High School, a new public vocational school in Queens, N.Y., dedicated to teaching below-the-line skills in film and television. As the school’s work-based learning coordinator, he builds partnerships with industry professionals and places students in hands-on internships and jobs across active film and media productions. Yaniv, his debut feature film, has played at more than 50 film festivals across 10 countries, winning Best Indie Comedy of 2024 at FilmThreat’s AwardThis! event and Best Comedy at the Boca International Jewish Film Festival. The film was the Centerpiece MidFest Film at the Boston Jewish Film Festival and played to a sold-out crowd at Coolidge Corner Theatre. Yaniv opened commercially in South Florida and Eastern Europe, with additional markets forthcoming.

Evan Morse (’15) designed the 2024 Brookgreen Medal, a two-sided bronze medal that is used in an annual series commissioned by Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina, home to a botanical garden, zoo, several historical sites, and the country’s largest collection of American figurative sculpture. In May 2024, Morse joined two international sculptors in New Hampshire to complete large-scale works in marble over the course of three weeks for permanent installation in downtown Nashua.

Aija Reke (’15,‘26) (center right) participated in a 2025 volunteer trip to Moshi, Tanzania, with Daraja Music Initiative, thanks to a scholarship from the BU Women’s Council. “Teaching beginner and advanced violin classes, leading a nature conservation class, and planting African blackwood trees was a truly life-changing experience,” she writes. Daraja Music Initiative focuses on music education and conservation, using African blackwood for clarinets and violins. The economic challenges in Tanzania, including poor air quality and limited access to clean water, made Reke “appreciate the simple things often taken for granted. Despite these challenges, the kindness, hospitality, and peaceful lifestyle of the Tanzanian people made a remarkable impact,” she adds. (Courtesy of Aija Reke)

Padmini Chandrasekaran (’17), Joshua Duttweiler (’17), Sarah Cadigan-Fried (’19), Molly Haig (’18), Vaishnavi Kumar (’18), Kristen Mallia (’18), and other members of Radius Collective held a group exhibition, —graphies, in the winter and spring of 2025 at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell’s University Gallery. Radius Collective has been collaborating since 2019; each year, a theme is selected, artists produce work individually, and then develop a group exhibition focused on the initial idea. The collective has exhibited across the US and as far as Rome, Italy.

Patrick Murphy (’18) published “Funkeiros and criminal organizations in Rio de Janeiro’s Bailes de Corredor” in Sage Journals in July 2025. The article examines cultural interchange between criminal organizations and Rio de Janeiro’s bailes de corredor (corridor events), which feature fighting between two groups of men separated by a space called a corridor, while DJs play Rio funk (a local electronic music).

Mark Stein (BUTI’09, CFA’18) is a lecturer in percussion studies at Central Connecticut State University. He has performed with the Houston Symphony, Houston Grand Opera, Houston Ballet, Louisiana Philharmonic, Hartford Symphony, New Haven Symphony, Boise Philharmonic, Springfield (Mass.) Symphony, Amarillo Symphony, and the New World Symphony. He has also performed during summer seasons at the Grand Teton Music Festival, Ravinia Festival, Caroga Lake Summer Music Festival, and at Tanglewood. He has performed on timpani and percussion for various artists, such as Roberta Flack, REO Speedwagon, Kansas, the Alan Parsons Project, and Little River Band. Stein can also be heard on the Houston Chamber Choir’s recording of Bob Chilcott’s Circlesong.

Bradford Morin Dumont (’19) was appointed assistant professor and director of choral activities at Bridgewater State University after completing a Doctor of Musical Arts in choral conducting at University of Hartford with Anthony Trecek-King (’15).

2020s

Sophronia Vowels (’20) and Sébastien Garbe (’20, CAS’20), recently engaged, live in the San Francisco Bay area. Garbe works for the city’s environment department, where he runs programs to support and promote sustainable transit, while Vowels teaches pre-K through fifth-grade theater classes at area public schools. Vowels is also substitute teaching while applying for single-subject English teaching credential and master’s programs.

Jenna Riedl (’23) recently hiked the Appalachian Trail and discovered a passion for climbing up mountains—as well as a renewed appreciation for electricity and plumbing. Now back in Boston, she takes trips to New Hampshire to work on climbing its 48 4,000-foot peaks. Riedl is part of the MetroWest Writers’ Guild.

Johnny Mok (BUTI’10, CFA’24) performed solo cello in Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo, accompanied by the Brookline Symphony Orchestra, at the Driscoll School in October 2024.

Lana Sage (’24) made her directorial debut at the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York, N.Y., in August 2024. She directed a one-act play, The Beautification Committee, by T. Marie, wherein the mean girls have grown up and now have more time on their hands to ruin lives. “It’s about why we hurt people…and how the most beautiful things are truly ugly,” she writes.

Tommy Vines (’24) started a multimodal production company, Breaking Motion LLC. Its flagship endeavor and first large-scale project is Interloper, a soon-to-be-released scripted television series. Vines is the executive producer, writer, and lead actor on the project, which was filmed in the fall of 2025. Vines credits the Kahn Career Entry Award with helping them to conceive Breaking Motion LLC.

Kevin A. Virgilio (’24) presented a lecture recital alongside Richard Rivale (’25) at the Scandinavian Cultural Center and Library in Newton, Mass., in November 2024, as part of its fall lecture series. The event was a presentation of Virgilio’s research on the development of solo trombone repertoire in Denmark in the early 20th century, and included a recital of works by Carl Nielsen, Launy Grøndahl, and Axel Jørgensen.

Yolanda Yang (MET’21, CFA’24) writes that she believes that art has the power to respond to and shape the spaces we inhabit, particularly in a postcapitalist landscape where interpersonal care is often fragmented. In her project Behind VA Shadows, Yang delved into the intersections of art and community, highlighting the creative expression of museum workers while reimagining how we engage with shared urban spaces. As the arts engagement manager at Boston’s Pao Arts Center, Yang advocates for placemaking through art and cultural programs that honor the rich history and identity of Chinatown.

Fernando Gaggini (’25) won first place in the 21st Annual Khachaturian International Competition in the conducting category. Established in 2003 to mark the 100th anniversary of the legendary Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian, the widely celebrated competition seeks to discover young talent in the categories of cello, piano, violin, and conducting. (Courtesy of Fernando Gaggini)

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