Max Alvarez is a film historian who has been presenting multimedia cinema history courses for Sundays at JASA since the fall of 2013. He is the author of The Cinéphile’s Guide to the Great Age of Cinema (2020), The Crime Films of Anthony Mann (University Press of Mississippi 2013), and a major contributor to Thornton Wilder/New Perspectives (Northwestern University Press 2013).
Kim Breden is the founder and executive muse of Be Mused Productions which specializes in educational entertainment. Be Mused Children’s Theatre Company has offered musical theater workshops for children, preschool through teen in Westchester and Dutchess Counties. In addition to directing and producing these workshops, Kim provides music programs celebrating Broadway’s greatest hits, for museums, libraries, and nearly 50 Senior Residences in the tri-state area. Kim is a volunteer teaching artist and facilitator with Rehabilitation through the Arts (RTA). For the past 16 years, she has directed full musical productions and workshops in maximum and medium security prisons in New York State.
Jennifer Gilchrist is a veteran New Yorker who now resides in Metro Detroit. She taught literature courses at Hunter College and has published articles in Twentieth-Century Literature and Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. In addition to her instruction at JASA, she is the review editor of Supernatural Studies: A Journal of Art, Culture, and Media. With a specialty in modernist narrative, she received her Ph.D. in twentieth-century American and British literature from Fordham University in the Bronx.
Jane Marsh was the first singer to win the Gold Medal in Moscow’s International Tchaikovsky Competition. Among Verdi, Strauss, and Bel Canto, her repertoire includes the signature Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov heroines. She has appeared as a performer and M.C. in international and U.S. radio and television venues and since 2007, has presented Metropolitan Opera Guild lectures and master classes on Bel Canto, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, Mozart, Strauss, and the Russian repertoire. She was awarded the New York Handel Medaille for exceptional contribution to the world of music.