Theresa J. May is a trumpet player and educator based in Cleveland, Ohio. She received her master’s degree in trumpet performance from the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music and her Bachelor of Music from the University of Dayton. Theresa has taught music at Cuyahoga Community College and John Carroll University, as well as privately at Academy Music and Olmsted Falls schools. May has performed regularly with Gabriel’s Horns, Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, Mourning [A] BLKstar, and the Cleveland Brassworks. She has performed in the Colour of Music Festival, a festival for Black classical musicians, as well as with Kyle Kidd & Company. Other performance experience includes Cleveland Opera Theater Orchestra and DIVA Jazz Orchestra, under the direction of Sherrie Maricle, in a production of Maurice Hines’ Tappin’ Thru Life at the Cleveland Playhouse. She has also been featured as a guest artist in the Alumni Recital Series at the University of Dayton.
Interviewed by Tamar Sella, 10/22/2020.

Hasu Patel is a composer, performer, and educator based in Cleveland, Ohio. Born in Baroda, India, Hasu plays sitar in a style known as Gayaki Ang (vocal style), and has studied with teachers including Prof. N.B. Kikani, and Ustad Anwar Khan Sahib. She has performed nationally and internationally at venues including the Beijing International Congress on Women in Music at the China Conservatory of Music. She has been honored for her achievements in music and public service with awards including the International Peace Ambassadors from the United Nations and the Ohio Heritage Fellowship Award from the Ohio Arts Council. Hasu has recorded and released multiple albums and has composed dozens of compositions in both Indian and Western Classical contexts. She served as a faculty member at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music for over twenty years, teaching students who went on to play professionally across genres.
Interviewed by Tamar Sella, 10/20/2020.

Cantor Yvon F. Shore is a cantor and educator based in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is the Director of Liturgical Arts and Music at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. She earned a master’s degree in Sacred Music and Ordination through HUC-JIR, New York in 1995. She received a bachelor’s degree in Music Education from West Chester University, College of Visual and Performing Arts with a double major in flute and conducting. Cantor Shore took additional studies in ethnomusicology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York with Bathja Bayer, Amnon Shiloah, Edwin Seroussi, and Johoash Hirshberg. She continued graduate studies with an emphasis in musicology at the University of Cincinnati, College Conservatory of Music. At HUC, she teachers and oversees curricula, as well as leads prayer services. She has taught and lectured on topics from Music of the Moroccan Jewish Community to Classical Reform Jewish Music and Prayer.
Interviewed by Tamar Sella, 10/27/2020.

Since moving to Ohio in 2005, Erica has led an active career as a performer and teaching artist in the region of Northeast Ohio. In addition to the Akron Symphony Orchestra, they are the principal cellist of the Erie Philharmonic and former principal cellist of the Canton Symphony. They perform in a variety of chamber music and recital settings within the community and abroad. Erica has toured nationally with Sphinx Virtuosi, a chamber orchestra comprised of the nation’s top Latinx and African-American string players, and has appeared as a performer and lecturer at many of Cleveland’s cultural and medical centers, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Mixon Hall, and the Cleveland Clinic. In addition to an active performance career, Erica is a music educator, having served on the faculty at The University of Akron School of Music from 2013-14 and at the Cleveland State University Department of Music from 2014-16.
Interviewed by Tamar Sella, 09/14/2020.