Gayle Levant
ASMAC Executive Board President
Gayle Levant began her musical studies at the age of three on the piano. At the age of eleven, she was introduced to the harp, and took to it instantly. Following orchestral training at USC and UCLA, she played with the Debut Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas.
Gayle’s career in the studios truly began in 1965-66, and now has an extensive list of credits. She is known as the harpist who can improvise after the main music has been recorded, and adds her own personal touch to every project. She has worked with Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, The Carpenters, Joanie Mitchell, Barry Manilow, Celine Dion, Josh Groban, Rod Stewart, Michael Bublé and the list goes on and on.
Milton Nelson
ASMAC Executive Board Vice President
Milton Nelson is a composer, orchestrator, arranger and pianist. He is based in the Los Angeles area and is originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico. A few of Milton’s credits include Arrangement and Orchestration for the 2016 Tony Awards Opening Production number, Supervising Orchestration includes Disney’s The Game Plan and You Again, Dreamworks’ She’s the Man, Showtime’s Reefer Madness the Musical, Jackie Chan’s The Myth Chinese Zodiac, Kung Fu Yoga and Lifetime’s Christmas With Holly. Additional film orchestration includes My Dog Skip, Haunting in Connecticut and Return to Nim’s Island.
Ira Hearshen
ASMAC Executive Board Vice President
Ira’s music writing career began in 1979 when he began working for composer Joe Harnell on 2 concurrent T.V. series ‘Cliffhangers’ and The Incredible Hulk’ as a film music arranger/orchestrator. He has steadily worked since in the Motion Picture, Television, and Recording media for such composers as; Randy Newman, Lalo Schifrin, John Debney, Stanley Clarke, Lee Holdridge, and Michael Giacchino, among others.
Liz Finch
ASMAC Executive Board Treasurer
A native of Kansas City, Missouri, with degrees in theory and composition from University of Missouri, Kansas City (BM) and the University of Wyoming (MA), Liz has worked since 1976 as a music copyist and orchestrator in Los Angeles with many of the best-known arrangers and composers in TV, film, recordings, jingles, and live performance. (Film orchestration on “Shrek”, “Pirates of the Caribbean” “The Dark Knight” to name a few). Besides her background as a French horn player, she grew up studying accordion, which led to her a future of travel with performances around the globe – and many arrangements for ensembles with accordion. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Accordionists and Teachers Guild, International.
Bonnie Janofsky
ASMAC Executive Board Secretary
Bonnie is a native Angelino from a musical family. Her father played alto sax with Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Xavier Cugat and the Dorsey Brothers. She began piano at age 9, followed by drums and arranging/orchestration in college, and then composition and conducting.
Bonnie completed her bachelor program and graduate work at California State University, Los Angeles, and was a participant in the world famous EarleHagen BMI Film Scoring Workshop. She completed the University of SouthernCalifornia Advanced Studies Program, Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television, where she was awarded the annual BMI Award. She is also a 2001 Los Angeles Music Week honoree. She studied composition with noted film and television composers David Angel.
Cooper Appelt
Board of Directors
Born in Texas, Cooper Appelt now lives with his wife in Los Angeles while maintaining a full schedule of performing on upright and electric bass, recording, and writing music. While in Texas, he recorded and toured nationally and internationally with Texas reggae artist Cas Haley (America’s Got Talent), The Ray Johnston Band, ForJAK and the award winning funk band Backside Pick. While living in Dallas, Texas, Cooper performed with many artists including saxophonist Keith Anderson, Shelly Carroll, Bobby Sparks, and was a member of the Bernard Wright Trio. He was also a star on the show Ray Johnston Band Road Diaries, which aired on HDNet.
Cooper earned his bachelor’s degree in Jazz Performance from the University of North Texas while studying with Lynn Seaton (longtime bassist of Count Basie’s Band). He was also a finalist in both the 2009 and 2015 International Society of Bassists Jazz Bass competition.
Laura Dickinson
Board of Directors
In 2017, Laura won three Grammy® awards for her work as a music producer and vocal contractor. In 2018, Michael Bublé’s Nobody But Me album was nominated in the Traditional Pop category, which Laura was honored to work on as vocal contractor with a featured vocal on the opening track. In 2019, Willie Nelson’s My Way album won the Grammy® for Best Traditional Pop Album, marking the second album for which Laura contracted Mr. Nelson’s pre-production vocalist.
Dickinson’s sophomore album Auld Lang Syne ventures into a classic, holiday mood with her 17-piece big band comprised of Los Angeles’ finest musicians. She hand-selected her favorite arrangers and instrumentalists, and oversaw every detail as the sole producer in creating this timeless winter love letter.
Jill Ferguson
Board of Directors
Jill Ferguson was born into a gifted, multi-generational musical family, just a year behind older brother, Dan. She studied flute, then harp with Marjorie Call (Salzedo). She also began studying voice early with (Sally & Lee) The Sweetlands and several others. Throughout her childhood and teens, Jill sang with The Jimmy Joyce Choir on numerous commercials, specials and TV/Film soundtrack recordings with Johnny Mathis, Doris Day, Sammy Davis, Jr, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, the Chipmunks and Red Skelton, to name a few. Jill continued writing, arranging & singing on individual projects, as well as with several groups throughout her other endeavors (Pierce Jazz Choir, Westminster Presbyterian Choir, premiering the original Missa Americana at Vienna Konzerthaus for the International Hayden 200 year Anniversary Festival).
In the 1980s, Jill worked side by side with her father, Allyn Ferguson, co-founder of "The Foundation For New American Music", to commission new American works; and with The Orchestra, helping to contract, manage works, players, sessions, and concerts performed at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion & other venues. Jill served as associate producer with her father on projects, such as Freddie Hubbard "StudioLive", a glimpse inside a live, direct to disc recording studio with Allyn conducting. The show originally aired on BBC TV in the UK.
Charles Fernandez
Board of Directors
Composer Charles Fernandez, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and an award winning composer, has been composing for television, film and stage since 1989.
Specializing in animation, he’s written for shows such as Bonkers, Doug, Toonsylvania, Casper (For which he received two Emmy and one Annie nomination), the Aladdin series, the Mermaid series, the 101 Dalmatian series and Robot Chicken among many other. Among the films he has contributed to are All Dogs Go to Heaven II, All Dogs Christmas Carol, Alvin and the Chipmunks meet the Wolfman, Alvin and the Chipmunks meet Frankenstein, Pebble and the Penguin, Babes in Toyland, Tom Thumb and Thumbalina, Tom Sawyer, Jingle Bells, The Tangerine Bear, Doug’s 1st Movie and The Butterfly Effect. Add to this orchestration and composition on countless trailers, commercials and independent projects and his resume fills up quickly!
Ian Freebairn-Smith
Board of Directors
Ian’s life has been dedicated to music in its many forms, from classical to popular, jazz, choral music, and new music. He has extensive experience as a composer and conductor in film and TV, and is a Grammy Award-winning arranger.
His formal training in music began with private studies in composition with Julius Toldi while in high school. He then attended the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, the University of Pennsylvania, and UCLA. He later studied film scoring with Leith Stevens.
He began studio work as a group singer, then went on to choral arranging, orchestra arranging, and finally motion picture and TV composing. He won a Grammy Award for best arrangement accompanying a vocalist, for Barbra Streisand’s “Evergreen.” He has arranged and conducted for The Hi-Lo’s, The Four Freshmen, Liza Minelli, Frederica von Stade, Andy Williams, Anthony Newly, Stephen Bishop, Harry Nilsson, Paul Williams, Jeff Beck, and many others.
Bruce Healey
Board of Directors
Bruce has a long time career as a professional composer/arranger and his background includes a Bachelor of Music Composition degree from California State University
Fullerton, and graduate studies in composition and orchestration at the University of Southern California School of Music. Bruce plays keyboards and percussion, and conducts.
For over 30 years. Bruce was Principal Music Director/Producer for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Creative Entertainment at Disneyland. In this capacity he has composed, arranged, orchestrated and conducted music for many Shows, Parades, Television Specials, and Special Events produced by Disneyland and The Walt Disney Special Events. Co. all over the world. Bruce’s duties also included producing soundtracks for recorded and live performance musical projects.
Scott Healy
Board of Directors
Los Angeles-based Scott Healy is a Grammy-nominated composer, producer, pianist and multi-keyboardist who multitasks across the musical spectrum. He is best-known for playing in the house band for Conan O’Brien: first on Late Night in NYC, then moving out to LA in 2009 for The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, and now Conan on TBS, where he holds down the keyboard chair in the Basic Cable Band. He released Hudson City Suite, by the10-piece Scott Healy Ensemble, in 2013, to worldwide praise, stellar online and print reviews, national jazz radio airplay, and a 2014 Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Composition. His recent CD, Live at Kilbourn Hall by Scott Healy with the Eastman Chamber Jazz Ensemble, was released in October, 2014. Healy was featured on the cover of the February, 2015 issue of Keyboard Magazine, and he was also featured in an “Indie Life” article in the March, 2013 issue of Downbeat Magazine.
Glenn Jordan
Board of Directors
Glenn Jordan is an award winning songwriter, composer, producer, singer and performer whose music is heard every day by millions of people.
Glenn’s credits as a composer include scoring and providing music for over a thousand episodes of television programs and films in the last 15 years, including The X-files, Millennium, Biography, Doug, 101 Dalmatians, Catdog and Something About Mary. As composer/musical director of Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Glenn was nominated for 4 Emmys and won the Emmy Award in 1991. As composer on Audubon’s Animal Adventure’s he won the Genesis Award in 1996 in recognition of his work to increase awareness of the plight of endangered species.
Andrew Kesler
Board of Directors
Andrew Kesler is an award-winning multi-instrumentalist based in Los Angeles, California. Originally hailing from the prairies of Canada, Andrew has toured Asia, Europe, Australia and North America earning his reputation as a seasoned performer and patron of many musical styles. Alongside his performing career, he works on both sides of the glass as a session player and recording engineer and has collaborated with some of the industry’s best, including Grammy Award-winning and nominated producers Al Schmitt, Tommy LiPuma, Greg Wells, and Jeremy Darby. Andrew studied music at Humber College in Toronto, earning an honors degree in Jazz Piano Performance and Music Production. As an artist he has released four albums of original music featuring some of Canada’s finest musicians. As an engineer, producer, arranger and studio musician he has credited contributions on dozens of records. His talents also extend to the corporate world of jingles and commercial music producing work regularly for BMG with Google, IBM, Nokia, 7UP, Filler Magazine, and Tourism Australia on his list of clients.
Joe Kraemer
Board of Directors
Joe Kraemer has been scoring films since the age of 15, when he composed the soundtrack for his high school classmate Scott Storm’s The Chiming Hour, a feature-length film shot on Super 8 in 1986. That partnership built relationships that would eventually lead him to three career-defining projects: The Way Of The Gun, Jack Reacher, and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.
Kraemer attended Berklee College of Music in Boston to study film composition. Shortly after finishing college he scored the NBC/Warner Brothers pilot The Underworld, with veteran television director Rod Holcomb. Though the series was not picked up, the pilot was ultimately repurposed as a TV movie, where it has gained a cult following, and paved the way to his first breakout score for the feature film The Way Of The Gun.
Jeff Lass
Board of Directors
JEFF LASS – MUSIC WRITER, COMPOSER, ARRANGER, PIANIST AND PERFORMER
Music Writer, Arranger, Pianist and Performer — For The Movie ‘Dick Tracy’ (1990), Jeff Co-Wrote ‘Now I’m Following You’ sung by Madonna on her Platinum album “Breathless” in addition to other songs on an album titled “Dick Tracy” sung by Ice-T, Patti Austin, Darlene Love And Brenda Lee.
For the movie ‘Rage In Harlem’ he co-wrote “Sugar Daddy Blue” sung by Laverne Baker. With Joey Travolta, he co-wrote and arranged “Locked Inside Of Me” a song which has become an anthem for the Autism community sung by Taylor Dayne.
Hummie Mann
Board of Directors
Composer/arranger Hummie Mann has collaborated with some of Hollywood’s most celebrated directors. His feature film scores have ranged from Mel Brooks’ “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” and “Dracula: Dead & Loving It” to Peter Yates’ “Year of the Comet”, the children’s film “Thomas and the Magic Railroad” to “Wooly Boys” starring Peter Fonda and Kris Kristofferson.
For television, he has scored projects for Simon Wincer (the miniseries “P.T. Barnum”), Jonathan Kaplan (the miniseries re-make of “In Cold Blood”), Norman Jewison (“Picture Windows – Soir Bleu”), Peter Bogdanovich (“The Rescuers: Tales of Courage – Two Women”), Joe Dante (“Masters of Horror: Homecoming” & “The Screwfly Solution”), Jim Abrahams (“First Do No Harm”) and Richard Friedenberg (“Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas”).
Richard Niles
Board of Directors
www.richardniles.com
“Niles is one of the best composer/arrangers around and a truly exciting musical force.”
20 x Grammy winning artist Pat Metheny
Dr. RICHARD NILES’ career spans TV & film, pop, R&B, rock and jazz as a composer, producer, songwriter/lyricist, arranger, conductor, broadcaster, recording artist, author and educator. He has contributed to over 40 hits. Records featuring his work have sold over 250 million copies worldwide.
Jeannie Pool
Board of Directors
Jeannie Gayle Pool is a composer, filmmaker, musicologist, film music consultant, and producer. In recent years, her compositions, including works for orchestra and chamber music, were heard in California, Washington, D.C., Florida, Ohio, Toronto, Beijing, France, and Belgrade. Her feature-length documentary, Peggy Gilbert and Her All-Girl Band, narrated by Lily Tomlin, is screened regularly worldwide. She has composed the music for several documentary films and short films. Her music publishing company, Jaygayle Music (ASCAP), publishes the music of Zenobia Powell Perry (1908-2004), among other composers. She reconstructed and orchestrated Perry’s opera about the underground railroad, Tawawa House, for a fully-staged production in 2014 (subject of a new documentary, directed and edited by Elliott J. Barker). She is currently digitizing 20 years of radio broadcasts from her award-winning show on KPFK, “Music of the Americas,” for release as podcasts.
Sylvester Rivers
Board of Directors
Composer, arranger and pianist Sylvester Rivers has recorded with numerous hit artists including Lionel Richie, Diana Ross, The Jacksons, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dionne Warwick, Nancy Wilson, Kenny Rogers, New Edition, Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Martha Reeves, Lamont Dozier, Barry White, the Love Unlimited Orchestra, Shalamar, Cheryl Lynn, Gloria Gaynor, Candi Staton, The Sylvers, Marc Bolan & T. Rex, Ray Parker, Jr. & Raydio, Deniece Williams, Johnny Mathis, Billy Preston, Syreeta Wright, Michael Henderson, Earl Klugh, Stanley Turrentine, Najee, Maxine Nightingale, Aretha Franklin, The Fifth Dimension and many others.
Greg Sims
Board of Directors
Greg Sims is an award-winning composer for film and television, as well as an expert arranger, orchestrator, songwriter and music producer.
Greg’s television credits include The Oprah Winfrey Show (7 years), The Dr. Oz Show, Super Soul Sunday, and numerous other programs on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). He composed the closing theme for Winfrey’s first prime-time special on ABC, Oprah’s Legends Ball.
Raymond Torres-Santos
Board of Directors
Raymond Torres-Santos is a composer, conductor, arranger, pianist, educator and author, equally at home in both classical and popular music. His works include orchestral, electronic and vocal music for the concert hall, ballet, film, theater, television and radio.
His works have been performed and/or commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, North Massachusetts Philharmonic, the symphony orchestras of Reading, Queens and Washington-D.C. Opera; and the Bronx Arts Ensemble, Continuum, New Jersey Chamber Music Society, West Point Woodwind Quintet, North Jersey Philharmonic Glee Club, North/South Consonance, Quintet of the Americas, Gabrieli Quintet and Voix-Touche in the USA; the symphonies of Vancouver and Toronto as well as the Canadian Opera Orchestra in Canada; the Vienna Symphony, Prague Radio Symphony, Georgia Symphony, Soria Symphony, and Warsaw Conservatory of Music Chorus and Orchestra in Europe; the National Chinese Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony, Seoul Symphony, Kaohsiung Philharmonic and Taipei Philharmonic Orchestras in Asia; the Buenos Aires, Chile, Colombia and Mexico City Symphony Orchestras in Latin America; and the Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestras in the Caribbean.
Evita Wagner
Board of Directors
Hailing from the beautiful town of Warstein, Germany, Evita started playing piano age 5 and was, by the age of 13, the informal rehearsal accompanist at the local music school’s musical theatre workshop. At age 16, she became an organist at her hometown’s church.
Deciding to complement her background in music with the necessary knowledge and skills in textual and film analysis before embarking on a professional film music career, Evita graduated from Bonn University in Interdisciplinary American Studies with an MA thesis on popular film and how narrative choices in these films shape interactive tie-in products such as video games and subsequent DVD releases, while minoring in Economics and Public Law.