Who We Are
We are only as strong as the community around us. Our community is growing every day!
Nora Maynard (they/she), a versatile vocalist & violinist in the Boston area since 2009, is the originator of the Instrument Petting Zoo Project.
Nora recently enjoyed performing snippets of opera in the Celebrity Series' “Concert for One” Public Performance Project. In 2014, Nora founded the WholeTone Music Academy; a Somerville based collective of performing & teaching musicians. Nora incentivizes WTMA's members to develop teaching styles that blend mind-body modalities with music education.
In 2015, they founded WholeTone Opera along with Scenic Designer Helen McCarthy, designed to feature female, femme, and non-binary artists, musicians, & staff. Their most recent production was "La Zombiata" in 2018, a zombie-themed opera, employing approximately 50 Boston area artists, musicians, and crew.
Nora was featured on the cover of Somerville Scout magazine Jan 2019 regarding her recurring class, the "Protest Choir Project", and recently became the Music Co-Coordinator of Extinction Rebellion MA. They are also a member of the internationally touring social-justice-oriented choir, Voices21c, having most recently performed with them as a soloist at their featured performance in the Choralies 2019 Festival in France.
Karyn Alzayer has been a practicing artist since 2012. She works primarily in henna body art, fiber art, and painting and often combines techniques from these mediums.
Alzayer is most well-known for her recent piece, Caged Ducklings in August 2019 that took place in the Boston Public Garden. Internment camp cages and mylar blankets were placed over the baby ducklings in the famous Make Way for Ducklings sculpture, separating them from their mother and making a bold statement on child separation that was featured across national news outlets.
Alzayer continues to work at the intersection of art and activism, currently serving as the chair of the Everett Cultural Council, and as the President and Executive Director of Integral Arts Everett, a non-profit organization dedicated to cultivating and expanding opportunities to engage with the arts for the citizens of Everett and surrounding communities.
Dedham Bunny Project (2018)
Helen McCarthy is currently a Boston-based scenic artist with over 15 years of experience working in immersive/installation art, theatre, film, corporate, and commercial capacities. She is a proud member of Local USA829 IATSE and her work can be found from Broadway to Black Rock City. With deep roots in theatre, she is passionate about large scale collaborative installations and building art and experiences that bring people together.
Throughout her time in the Boston area she has worked for for many companies including Boston Ballet, the A.R.T. , Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Huntington Theatre Company.
Upon graduating, she applied and was accepted into USA829 as a scenic artist. She has continued to branch out from theatre into more film, corporate, and commercial work.
Eric Bornstein is the Award-winning mask maker of Behind The Mask Studio/Theatre specializing in custom made masks, event planning, arts education, and mask theater programming.
Behind The Mask was recently awarded the commission of 120 award statuettes for the prestigious Reggae Gold award event in Kingston, Jamaica. Previously, Eric was awarded a Fulbright award to revive and reinvigorate the art of giant puppet effigies in Jamaica 2017. He won the 2016 IRNE award for Best Puppetry Design for Company One's Shockheaded Peter, and was part of the Liars & Believers team that won the Excellence in Production Design award at the New York Musical Theatre Festival 2012 for his masks in Le Cabaret Grimm. Eric was recently featured on the PBS hit show, Pinkalicious and Peteriffic. He is currently the artist-in-residence at the First Church Boston UU.
https://www.behindthemask.org/
thealumniassociation.com/home/4837811-eric-bornstein/profile
Julia Austenfeld (they/them/theirs) is a soprano, composer, and conductor who teaches voice, piano, and songwriting/composition. They are currently pursuing the MM in Vocal Pedagogy at New England Conservatory, where their research interests include whistle register phonation and transgender voices on testosterone.
Julia is active as a local performer of opera, musical theatre, and choral music. As a voice teacher, Julia teaches students of all levels, whether you are a beginner of any age or preparing for your next audition. They also specialize in teaching transgender singers, particularly those pursuing testosterone therapy.
Julia, a North Carolina Music Teachers' Association State Honoree in piano, enjoys teaching beginning to intermediate piano lessons to all ages. They also draw on their work as a singer-songwriter and composer to offer songwriting and composition coaching.
FlightOrVisibility (aka Rafael Natan) is an arts organizer, educator, and songwriter who believes that visibility is a superpower whether chosen or not.
Using the violin and voice together, their music reminds us that activism is love, self-care is love, and it is our duty to express these loves.
In community, you will find FlightOrVisibility doing work for Weird Folk Fest, a grassroots performance series with programming based around community needs; Make Shift Boston where they serve as the events coordinator; and as an oboist and backup singer for Anaís Azul, a Peruvian diaspora baroque pop artist who sings songs of healing.
They also perform as part of Petting Kazoo, a queer multi-instrumentalist classical-folk cross-over duo, and are the founder of the Boston Artists Employment Network.
Photo courtesy of Susana Aragorn
Kass Melo is a Boston-based performer and music teacher with lots of energy and a big heart. She studied at Berklee College of Music and received her B.A in both Songwriting and Performance.
Kass’ teaching philosophy is individualistic and modified based on the needs of her students. She keeps things light and playful so that students feel confident enough to be guided by their own artistic intuition. Curiosity and compassion are at the heart of Kass’ teaching.
In lessons, Kass focuses on building foundational techniques and helpful resources. She is conscious of the mind-body connection in music and institutes this to create a calm space for learning to blossom. For her vocalists especially, Kass believes in building a strong, healthy, mind-body practice.
Kass actively performs across the east coast and is constantly learning from her own experiences, as well as her students.
Lela Clawson-Miller is a solo and collaborative pianist, singer, harmonium player and yoga instructor. She combines her love of the expressive arts, human development and mindfulness/movement modalities, inspiring students of all ages to be themselves, trust the creative process and develop a regular music/mindfulness practice.
She graduated with a degree in music from the University of Northern Colorado, and currently attends Lesley University, pursuing a Masters of Education with a focus in community and healing through the integrated arts. She continues to grow musically through her own songwriting/poetry pursuits, collaborative work in the Boston area and sound healing events.
Sav Hauge is a contact improviser with strong skills in obscure instrument acquisition.
They help to run a weekly contact improvisation class and jam in Jamaica Plain, a monthly somatics exploration group, and dance parties at their queer coop. They feed their soul public dancing for the dogs walking along the Southwest Corridor, and practicing authentic movement, alongside noodling around on the organ, piano, guitar, melodica, balaphone, and sacred harp (aka, the human voice).
When not occupied with noisemaking or dancemaking, you can find them cooking rice noodles again and forgetting to clean their bike chain.
Mattia Maurée is an interdisciplinary composer who focuses on film, chamber and large-form classical works, and twisted pop. Their scores in critically acclaimed films have played in thirteen countries. Closer to home, they were a finalist in the Mass Cultural Council 2019 Artistic Fellowships Program in music composition, and had a poem selected by Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola for installation in City Hall as part of the 2019-20 Mayor's Poetry Program.
While their primary pursuits can be solitary, Mattia also loves teaching and sharing art in community. In spring 2019, they taught a 10-week class on cartooning to middle schoolers in Roxbury. They also teach and perform on their primary instruments: violin, voice, and piano. Their public-facing art projects have recently received generous support from The Emerald Necklace Conservancy, MASS MoCA, and the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture.
Photo Courtesy of the Jamaica Plain Gazette
Pampi is founder of In Divine Company, an activist multimedia contemporary temple dance theater collective. A 20+ year newcomer-settler-resident of Massachuset and Wompanoag land, Pampi is a darker-skinned nonbinary second-genx casteD-Bengali culture worker who flourishes the intersection of healing and education and develops community-centered art that releases creative potential and drives collective change-making.
Only recently it dawned on them that they have been developing a contemporary version of the natak - a musical dance theater form indigenous to S. Asia - one rooted in its complex histories and one seeded in them since childhood. Each time they perform Pampi hopes to acknowledge the complex history of colonialism (both European and Hindu) in forms we know as temple dance and kathak that ultimately was born as repressive economic sanction on womxn (compelled to live as courtesan/ sex workers) who were and remain of communities treated as low or out of caste (Dalit); they acknowledge the more recent (continued and violent) history that allowed temple dance to be acceptable for upper-caste people (like themself) to perform.
Please get in touch with them to learn more about AbunDANCE, a meditative movement and song initiative for wellness in community! Instagram @ thirdeyefell
Madelaine Ripley is a communications and technology enthusiast, multi-media artist, mercurial web developer, event producer, and small business consultant.
Carrying the torch for theater, passed down three generations on their family tree, Ripley is passionate about using the arts, events, and our digital landscape to cultivate strong communities informed by creative direct action & equitable communication. If that can be done with a violin in hand, covered in sequins? All the better.
Ripley is a founder of the Department of Public Art, a studio space inbetween Davis & Porter Square in Somerville, MA. Space and venue management is a passion of Ripley’s, and as such a primary goal of the studio is to offer affordable studio space for musicians unable to balance the costs of a suitable environment in which to hone their craft and call a homebase. The Department of Public Art is home to the WholeTone Music Academy, a collective of somatic mind body music teachers.
In their free time, Ripley keeps house with their partner and a small yet loud cat named Siren, delves into nature, makes art for nobody but themself, and gets way too philosophical about damn near every topic.
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