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Steven A. Russell is the Artistic Director of The New Jersey Gay Men's Chorus and the Director of Sacred Music at St. Thomas More Church in Manalapan, New Jersey. He has directed the Rutgers University Queens Chorale and the Shrewsbury Chorale, and was the conductor of the Monmouth Civic Chorus on their tour of Scandinavia in 1996 as well as their assistant conductor. Steven taught music in public and parochial schools for several years, and directed the music at churches in Colts Neck, Keyport, Atlantic Highlands, Navesink, and Edison, New Jersey.
He studied music at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota, singing with Paul Christiansen and the Concordia Choir, and finished his Bachelor of Music in Music Education degree magna cum laude at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, singing with Joseph Flummerfelt and the Westminster Choir throughout the United States and at the Festival Dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. He earned a Master of Music in Choral Conducting at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, studying with Richard Westenburg.
Steven is half of the piano duo, Polymania, performing throughout New Jersey and in the Bahamas. He has been the musical director for musicals throughout Central New Jersey, and was the pianist for a reading of Me and Al at the York Theater in New York City. He recently gave his first solo cabaret at Fiddleheads in Jamesburg, New Jersey.
Steven has studied conducting with Frauke Hasemann, Allan Crowell, and Richard Westenburg, piano with Harold Zabrack, organ with David Drinkwater, and voice with Marvin Keenze and with Bill Reed at the Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York City.
Steven grew up in Avon Lake, Ohio, and lives with his husband, Joe, in Matawan, New Jersey.
Gary Madison has been the Principal Accompanist for the New Jersey Gay Men's Chorus since 2004. Previously, he has held the positions of Music Director for the Baltimore Opera Company, the Baltimore Opera Touring Theatre, Annapolis Opera Company, Minnesota Repertoire Theater, Minnesota Music Theater, and the Universities of Maryland and Minnesota. Mr. Madison was also the Co-Founder and Music Director of KinderOpera Theatre in Washington, D.C. Beginning his career as a singer, he apprenticed with the Santa Fe Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Minnesota Opera and the Goldovsky Opera Institute. He has directed and performed both on and off-Broadway, most notably in premieres by Terrence McNally and Katherine Houghton, the original Broadway production of The Phantom of the Opera, and a tour of Side By Side By Sondheim that was highly praised by Stephen Sondheim. Mr. Madison is also the proud author of 14 complete opera English surtitle translations, and he was instrumental in the development and design of the first computerized surtitle systems used in U.S. opera houses.
In addition to teaching voice, piano, musical theatre, acting/directing and improvisation at numerous U.S. colleges, he has been a coach/accompanist for such artsts as Leontyne Price, Joan Sutherland, Eleanor Steber, Carol Neblett, Aprile Milo, Ruth Welting, Luciano Pavarotti, Richard Leech, James Morris, Jean Stapleton, Roberta Flack ... and Blondie.
Gary currently teaches voice and piano privately in Woodbridge, NJ, is an adjunct professor at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, NY, and in December of 2007 gave a Carnegie Hall concert to a sold-out house and standing ovation. A 12-year survivor of cancer and lupus, he is also a naturopath and teaches workshops in Sospiration: Breathing for Life and Total Body Detoxification.
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