Podcasts and Video Library

My name is Ryan Campbell. I am a painter, muralist and sculptor. Focused on Geometric works that address concepts of Light and Space. I make works that reside in both public and private collections. 

Most recently in 2020, I was named the resident artist at the Palm Springs Museum where I was able to lead both educational and demonstrations to students and general public along with creating a pop up studio within the museum. 

Simeon Den has been a dancer/choreographer/ photographer and educator for over 50 years. In 1970’s New York he was a student of Alvin Ailey, Joyce Trisler, and Martha Graham and performed and taught each of their Modern Dance styles—the Horton Technique and Graham Technique; and performed in four Broadway productions including the original Stephen Sondheim staging of Pacific Overtures, the Yul Bryner revival of The King and I, and Pal Joey with Lena Horne.

He owned and directed Danceworks Honolulu, a dance school and  performing arts & dance company for nearly two decades before moving to Los Angeles in 2001 and establishing Palladino/Den Photography in Hollywood and downtown L.A. with his husband, Peter Palladino. Known for his large format b&w fine art photographs printed on heavy textured watercolor paper, he was represented by the Lia Skidmore Gallery.

In 2010, they purchased the historic Cathedral City house of Agnes Pelton, the posthumously celebrated, American desert plein aire Modernist painter and have become the self-appointed champions of her legacy. They established and administer the not-for-profit arts advocacy, Agnes Pelton Society, and safeguard her catalogue of paintings.

In his current incarnation, Den integrates his many years of  art expertise and passion for the Agnes Pelton legacy by creating “transcendformances,” a word he coined and a style he devised-- a  New Genre Art discipline that combines performance (dance, vocalise, poetry, music, Spoken Word, and the playing of crystal “singing” bowls) with Transcendental Art and Performance Art. Transcendformances are a result of visions, ideas, and concepts that emerge from meditations that are presented as contemporary rituals and demonstrations of the energetic healing arts. In the tradition of the Agnes Pelton spiritually inspired works of art, he regularly conducts sound bath meditation/improvisations at the Pelton House, integrating the live music and chakra balancing of the crystal “singing”  bowls. He accepts commissions to create and conduct transcendformance rituals to mark and celebrate special and notable occasions (i.e., weddings, birthdays, grand openings, etc.).

www.agnespeltonsociety.com

Dr. Kellori Dower is the Dean of Fine and Performing Arts at Santa Ana College in Santa Ana, California. She was the director of two award-winning high school choral music programs prior to serving as Director of Choral Activities at the collegiate level. Past appointments have included High School Principal, Assistant Principal and District Arts Administrator positions. She was the 2016 recipient of the Outstanding Music Educator Award for the California Music Educators Association Southeastern section. She has written several published choral works; her most recent choral publication, Spiritual Songs, was published by Hal Leonard in the Henry Leck Creating Artistry Series. Her choral ensembles have performed in some of the most distinguished venues in the country, including Carnegie Hall, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall and New York’s Lincoln Center. Dr. Dower is an active choral adjudicator and clinician has conducted All-State and regional High School Honor ensembles across the U.S. She is an executive and National board member and presenter for the National Collegiate Choral Organization (NCCO). Her work and research regarding culture and music led to the creation of collegiate courses in Rap and Hip Hop, Gospel Music and African-American folk compositions.

Ezra Edmond is a Writer, Director, & Producer from Los Angeles, CA. Born with a strong imagination and passion for telling stories, he studied animation and screenwriting at the University of Southern California - learning to produce as a means to turn his projects from dreams into realities. An avid traveler with a bi-racial background, Ezra believes that stories can come from anywhere and anyone, that fostering genuine connection with crew & collaborators is what yields the best results on screen. Over the past ten years, Ezra has developed stories for web & screen, created VFX for shows including Key & Peele, The Good Wife, & Outlander, and has produced & directed animated content for Disney, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Google, LEGO and more. He is currently submitting his recent short animated film Blewish (based on growing up both Black & Jewish) to festivals, and is writing & illustrating a children's book for Charlesbridge publishing, planned for release in 2023. Ezra is an active member of ASIFA-Hollywood (International Animated Film Society), WIA (Women in Animation), and CTN (The Creative Talent Network). Ezra is featured in the 2nd edition of Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive by David B. Levy, was an official selection of Coverfly's Pitch Week (2020) with his original pilot "After the Rain", and is currently placed #5 on the top-ten Red List for Historical Television (Half-hour)s of the year with his original pilot "Welcome to DeeTown". For more information, check out www.EzraEdmond.com.

Please see the short film Blewish Instagram link.

Blewish is a 4:22 minute long animated short film about growing up both Black & Jewish!

Luis Fausto is a designer and co-founder of CREATIVO, a branding and marketing firm located in Palm Springs, CA. As an entrepreneur Luis has worked with nonprofits and corporations to optimize their design, messaging and sales for over a decade.

“I believe that consistent and engaging branding can level the playing field for small businesses and nonprofits to not only compete but thrive. CREATIVO does this by forming connections with customers in creative and memorable ways.”

A second generation immigrant Luis understands first hand the hurdles faced by immigrant families. He comes from a strong working class family background and thanks his parents for supporting his career path and goals.

“Identity is key to knowing who you are and what you want to do, I encourage students to explore their own identity and fall in love with who they are. We all contribute to the fabric of the country and your identity, culture and voice is needed.”

Check out Luis' company at https://creativo.design/#home.

Paul Ideker was named President & CEO of the Redlands Symphony Association after serving as the Interim Executive Director of the organization for the prior seven months. Mr. Ideker spent the previous 25 years as a consultant, with a focus on arts management for cultural organizations throughout the United States.

As a consultant, Mr. Ideker’s work emphasized organizational advancement including strategic planning, management, fundraising and communications. His clients have included both large and small arts organizations including San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Ballet, American Conservatory Theater, Rancho Los Alamitos Historic Ranch and Gardens in Long Beach, and the US Forest Service among many others.

To find out more about Redlands Symphony, please visit https://www.redlandssymphony.com/. 

Knight launched his latest collection of paintings and drawings on October 23, 2019. The works are part of his new Masterpiece Mash-Up Series where he re-imagines paintings from artists such as Pablo Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, and Grant Wood. The collection debuted in NYC (Time Square) in the last quarter of 2019.

Knight has worked with organizations such as Habitat for Humanity to build homes for the less fortunate. He has also been involved in activities like preparing meals alongside Midnight Mission for the homeless and mentoring young ‘troubled’ kids to pursue arts at no cost.

Knight partnered with the Palm Springs Unified School District and the BAM (Boys Art Mentorship) program in California and utilized his brand of street art to inspire and mentor at-risk youth. During this mentorship program, Tysen engaged students with an interactive program and taught them how to express themselves artistically, which has in return seen the drop-out rate of men of color in these programs reduced.

Tysen Knight won the award for the category, Best Feature Film, at Oregon Documentary Film Festival, in 2018, for his documentary, The Art Of Hustle: Street Art Documentary. He also won the ''Best Director'' Award 2019 at the Marina Del Rey Film Festival for his second film The Art Of Hustle: Homeless Street Artist Documentary.

Tysen also won the artist “Spotlight” award at Red Dot Miami (Art Basel Weekend). 

Tysen is also Artist Educator-in- Residence for the Palm Springs Art Museum: January 23, 2020 - February 9, 2020 (Sheffer/Scheffler Arts Education Space).

Tysen was selected as featured artist for (Black History Month) Exhibition on display at the Palm Springs Art Museum: January 17, 2020 - February 9, 2020.

Tysen performed for a Live Art Performance at Eight4Nine (Palm Springs) February 3, 2020, 6:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. for Bloomberg Group.

Tysen also mentored and painted at the (Palm Springs) Boys & Girls Club on February 20, 2020.

Isa Lapaj is a professional dancer and the owner of Step By Step Dance Studio in Palm Springs, for the past twenty-five years. His dancing has taken him around the world to compete and teach. He has also been the dance master for the Red Hot Ballroom program, introducing hundreds of students to the joy of ballroom dance during the past ten years.

To learn more about Isa's studio and dance classes, please visit http://stepbystepps.com/. 

NELMS MCKELVAIN received his Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and his Masters of Music degree from the University of Texas at Austin with artist–teacher John Perry.  After graduation he relocated to Greenville, NC, to be associate professor of piano at East Carolina University. Then he spent a year accompanying and coaching singers in New York before moving west to pursue a wide variety of free-lance musical activities in Los Angeles including private teaching, accompanying and musical directing in the theater. He was assistant lecturer in piano at the University of Southern California while doing doctoral study in piano performance at USC and joined the music faculty of the Idyllwild Arts Academy in 1989 where he served as piano teacher for twenty-six years and Dean of Arts for sixteen years. Many of his former students have gone on to continue their studies at prestigious institutions such as The Juilliard School, The Colburn School, Oberlin Conservatory, Boston Conservatory, Eastman School of Music, USC, UCLA and the San Francisco Conservatory to name a few.  

For five years from 2014 until 2019 Nelms was the Education Director for the Hi-Desert Cultural Center in Yucca Valley and taught piano and musical theater voice classes for the ARTS|TECH Academy. He was musical director for four of the Cultural Center’s award-winning summer youth musicals and mainstage shows like Spitfire Grill, Godspell and Little Shop of Horrors. In September 2018, he became assistant director and pianist for the re-imagined Hi-Desert Master Chorus. He has performed organist and pianist duties for many churches since his junior high and high school days and is currently the organist at the First Church of Christ, Scientist in Palm Desert.

Shea New serves as adjunct faculty in dance at College of the Desert where she has taught since 1987. Her life in the arts and passion for dance guided her to create and found the Dance Under the Stars Choreography Festival in 1998 which sprung from a COD dance concert. Now known as the Palm Desert Choreography Festival and produced by the McCallum Theatre Institute, Shea serves as Artistic Director. 

Before embarking on a professional career, Shea received her BA in choreography from UC Irvine, fortunate to have studied with renowned choreographers Eugene Loring and Antony Tudor. Shea began her career as a dancer in Les Folies Bergere and as a founding member of the Nevada Ballet Theatre. She transitioned to lead adagio dancer in many extravaganza shows across the United States. Shea went on to appear in movies and television before focusing her skills behind the scenes for such projects as Paragon Pictures’ Tips, Sinatra My Way, Fantasy Spring’s Festivale!, The Golden Years of the Silver Screen, Blues Boulevard, Broadway Bow and The Planet ÔK along with many local productions in the Coachella Valley.  Currently she is starring in a full length dance film, The Anniversary, which is making the rounds at film festivals around the world.

The DTL has honored her with the Michael Grossman Most Inspirational Award for her work in the arts, a special award for Blues Boulevard and other awards including best choreography and best set design. She co-directed COD’s McCallum production of Evita with Dr. Darlene Romano sharing a DTL award for direction and an additional award for best choreography. The American Pen Women has honored her as a Woman of Distinction. Other awards include Outstanding Adjunct faculty in 2012 for COD, the Governor’s Scholar Award presented by Ronald Reagan and Best Choreography in Cathy Roe’s Ultimate Dance Competition. Shea has assisted many non profits in her field and currently serves as a board member for Palm Springs Dance. 

Make a difference, not a mark. Karen Riley believes that it is up to all of us to make the world a better place for people, animals and the environment through creative solutions involving art and recycling.

Karen is the Executive Director and a founder of the Student Creative Recycle Art Program (S.C.R.A.P.) Gallery, the environmental arts education program. Since 1997, the S.C.R.A.P. Gallery has been addressing two of today’s most urgent issues – the environment and the education of youth throughout the Coachella Valley and beyond. The essence of what the S.C.R.A.P. Gallery is captured in the Four Rs – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Responsibility. S.C.R.A.P. Gallery is an award-winning program, recognized as an Outstanding Organization by the North American Association of Environmental Education.

Riley supports a variety of art and environmental endeavors throughout Southern California serving on the boards of the Coachella Valley Art Center, East Valley Art Foundation and as a 5 Gyres Ambassador.

Riley received her bachelor’s degree in Journalism from California State University, Long Beach and her master’s degree in Environmental Education from Fairfax University. She is also the author of Landfill Lunch Box, Argollas Plasitcas y Otras Cosas/Plastic Rings and Other Things, Don’t Trash My Planet, The Eco Deck and Recycle Road Trip. She is currently working on a recycling art compendium to be published in 2018.

Check out all the great things Karen is doing at https://www.scrapgallery.org/. 

Triny Rios is an artist and bilingual Associate Professional Clinical Counselor (APCC#4645) based Southern California. Rios completed a B.A. in Visual Arts (studio) at UC San Diego and a M.A. in Counseling (Community Mental Health) at Loyola Marymount University. She specializes in trauma, depression, and Latinx mental health. She incorporates her art background, when clinically appropriate, as a tool for introspection and healing. She is also certified in various evidence-based practices geared towards parenting and children’s mental health. She recently transitioned to a group private practice after three years in a community mental health setting, as a school based bilingual therapist. During her time in community mental health, she provided individual therapeutic services to children, adolescents, adults and families using individual and family therapy.

Irene is currently the Executive Director of the Cabot’s Pueblo Museum, located in Desert Hot Springs. Irene has a strong background in education, accounting, strategic planning and collaborative leadership. Through her work at the museum, Irene has partnered with community organizations to make the museum more accessible for children and adults alike. She has served on the Program and Communication Committees of the Western Museum Association.

Irene has previously served as the Board Secretary, First Vice Chair, Second Vice Chair. She currently chairs the Board Development Committee.

Irene has served on the San Gorgonio Board of Directors since 2008.

You can learn much more about the work Irene does at https://www.cabotsmuseum.org/. 

Liliana Rodriguez cut her teeth as a film projectionist before joining the film festival world in 2013. She is the Artistic Director at the Palm Springs International Film Society, which mounts the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Palm Springs International ShortFest.

Howard Shangraw An award-winning actor and director, his professional acting career includes productions off-Broadway, summer stock, feature films, episodic television, daytime soap operas and regional theatre productions for South Coast Repertory Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, Laguna Playhouse, Grove Shakespeare Festival, and various equity waiver theatres in the Los Angeles area. Howard’s extensive directing resume includes productions of classical and contemporary repertoire and musicals for professional and community theatres, colleges and high schools. He has directed shows for the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Matrix Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Stella Adler Theatre, Teatro Mediterranean in Barcelona, Spain, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts acting company and Hi-Desert Cultural Center, where he also served as artistic director. Also a playwright and composer, his original musical, The People Versus B. B. Wolfe, was produced by South Coast Repertory and toured Orange County under a special grant from Target stores. As an acting teacher, he has taught acting for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, South Coast Repertory Theatre’s adult and youth Conservatory programs, Hi-Desert Cultural Center, and Idyllwild Arts Academy, where he chaired the theatre department from 2004-2014. He will be directing the new play Eyeless In Colonus, a modern reimagining of the death Oedipus Rex this coming August in Joshua Tree, CA. (Www.windwalkersmedicinewheel.com for tickets)

Susan Stein is the Creative Producer/Director of Palm Springs Life’s Fashion Week El Paseo in Palm Desert, California—the biggest fashion event on the West Coast and possibly the United States. Additionally, she creates, designs, produces, and directs virtual and IRL fashion shows and events. 

Under the umbrella of McCallum Theatre Education (formerly McCallum Theatre Institute), Kajsa leads a team of education coordinators, teaching artists and other artistic staff in producing and implementing dynamic programs serving close to 40,000 students, teachers and other community members each year.  In partnership with local schools, McCallum Theatre Education makes the arts available and accessible to students through in-school residencies in dance, theatre, music, and the visual arts and high-quality performances presented at the McCallum and at partnering school sites. Via its Summer Institute for Educators, McCallum Theatre Education provides professional development in aesthetic education for hundreds of educators annually. In addition, well-established artistic production initiatives like the Palm Desert Choreography Festival and Open Call Talent Project serve as powerful vehicles for developing emerging artists and presents engaging and affordable performances open to the general public. Since its launch in 1997, McCallum Theatre Education has served over 660,000 students and other community members with quality programming in the arts.

Kajsa was born in Sweden and moved to the U.S. (Palm Desert) in 1993. She joined the staff at McCallum Theatre that same year as a Development Coordinator, a position she held until September 1997 when she was promoted to Director of Education and charged with the responsibility to launch the education division, a realization of an ambition to increase the Theatre’s focus on arts-centered education for children and adults and more deeply serve the local community. She became VP of Education in 2019. The joy and passion that drives the work is constantly fueled by active collaboration with McCallum Theatre Education’s brilliant teaching artists, staff, artists, local educators, volunteers and involved students of all ages.

In 2005, McCallum Theatre Education received the Desert Business Achievement Award for Non-Profit of the Year. Kajsa was named Woman of Distinction in the Arts by the National League of Pen Women in 2007, and in 2009, she received the City of Palm Desert’s Corporate Athena Award. In 2010, Kajsa and the McCallum education team were awarded a Shiny Apple Award from Palm Springs Unified School District for their “tireless devotion to the commencement and expansion of the 5^th Grade Project serving all 16 elementary schools in the district.”  In 2015, McCallum Theatre Education received the Community Service Award from the Palm Desert Chamber of Commerce. And in 2018, Kajsa received the Helene Galen Excellence in Education Award from the Women Leaders’ Forum, Coachella Valley.

A graduate of the Cultural Studies Program at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Kajsa held positions with Paletten Art Magazine and Jules de Vries International Saxophone Competition prior to moving to the U.S. In her free time, Kajsa enjoys writing and making music, hiking the beautiful outdoors and spending time with family and friends. She lives in Palm Desert with her husband Frank and their children Olivia, Adam, Simon, and their beloved cat, Sliver.

Go to https://www.mccallumtheatre.com/index.php/education to find out more about Kajsa's work in aesthetic education!

Kristine trained at The American Conservatory Theatre as a professional actor and has extensive experience in a variety of theatrical genres and forms. After performing her own story," Benjamina," at the Foothills Storytelling Festival in Auburn, California, Kristine was awarded lifetime sponsorship from Poets & Writers, New York to perform her work throughout the United States. As part of Fielding University's former MA in Collaborative Leadership program, Kristine performed her own show as the Keynote called: “For Teachers Only––What I Should Have Known,” at the La Crosse ME-PD Learning Community Weekend, in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

As a veteran K-12 teaching artist, Kristine and her students have collaborated to create innovative podcasting, drama, and improvisation classes and shows. She is passionate about facilitating environments that support student voice, encourage the development of community, increase dialogue, and address conflict resolution. Kristine has piloted projects with teachers and administrators to address bullying, social justice issues, and indigenous ways of knowing––work that enhanced student’s sense of themselves, encouraged empathy, and deepened awareness and respect for different ways of knowing, thinking and being. Kristine recently completed her doctorate in Educational Leadership for Change at Fielding Graduate University.

Grammy-award winning keyboardist George Whitty has spent 30 years playing on the road with the Brecker Brothers, Herbie Hancock, David Sanborn, Richard Bona, Chaka Khan, Sadao Watanabe, and a dozen others, and his resume as a session musician and producer includes some of the best-selling records of all time: Santana’s Supernatural (with Dave Matthews), Celine Dion’s Falling Into You and These are Special Times, and more than 300 other CDs. As a producer/keyboardist, his Grammy-winning streak began with Chaka Khan’s The Woman I Am in 1992 and extends through three award-winning releases with the Brecker Brothers, most recently Randy Brecker’s 34th and Lex, 2004’s Grammy-winner for Contemporary Jazz Record of the Year. In April 2010, he completed work on several tracks for Herbie Hancock’s CD The Imagine Project, programming Herbie’s live rig for the tour as well. As a composer, he’s written for hundreds of episodes of television and several award-winning films, composing for a dozen shows from The Road to Stardom with Missy Elliot to As the World Turns, for which he was nominated for a 2006 Emmy award. In 2014 he won an Emmy award for scoring the long-running series All My Children. George recently finished the score to the feature film comedy The Getdown, which is in the rotation on Showtime, and has recently been working with Herbie Hancock, both as keyboardist in Herbie’s band at the Hollywood Bowl for 2012s “Concert for Peace”, and as an arranger/keyboardist, recently completing several orchestral arrangements for a duo CD for Herbie and classical pianist Lang Lang. George arranged 3 classic Herbie pieces for the LA Philharmonic’s 100th Anniversary Concert at the Hollywood Bowl, featuring Herbie and his band, and for a performance by Herbie at Disney hall in Los Angeles. In March of 2020, he arranged several pieces for full orchestra for Residente’s sold-out performance with the LA Phil, the night after two more pieces he arranged for Herbie Hancock premiered at Disney Hall. In May 2018, George and his trio Third Rail played a nearly sold-out three nights at the Cotton Club in Tokyo. In 2020 George finished production and writing on a duo CD for Eric Marienthal and Randy Brecker, Double Dealin, in addition to a number of other CD projects. In addition to all of his studio playing, producing and arranging projects, George maintains a busy schedule as a touring artist, currently playing around the world with Frank Gambale’s band, David Sanborn, Randy Brecker, Armand Sabal-Lecco (Paul Simon bassist), and Chris Minh Doky, in addition to ongoing Third Rail projects. He is currently mixing and mastering a steady stream of CDs, conducting clinics and master classes and teaching around the world. In the summer of 2015 he became the Jazz Piano instructor at Artistworks.com, the leading online lessons website. In between all his musical activities, he enjoys life in the mountains outside Los Angeles with his two boys and two cats.