Leadership and Faculty
Denise Kinney
Director
Denise Kinney is the founder and Director of Music and Mindfulness, a summer learning program for musically advanced high school students from underserved backgrounds. Most recently Denise stepped down from a 15-year tenure in not-for-profit leadership. In 2005 she succeeded her mother, Welthie Fitzgerald, the founder and Executive Director of Musicopia, an arts-focused, Philadelphia-based charity. Under her leadership, Musicopia grew to annually serve over 12,000 students from low-income backgrounds, offering over 2,000 outreach programs.
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Denise holds a Bachelor's Degree in Nursing from Widener University and a Masters from Villanova University. Denise currently works as a RN for Christiana Care Home Health. Over the course of her career Denise has held several senior executive leadership roles in healthcare, including hospitals, acute rehabilitation and long term care. She has been a foster mom, is an avid equestrian and an amateur violinist.
Rachel Segal
Chamber Music Coordinator
Rachel Segal is a violinist, arranger, educator, mentor, and pet Mom. She has commissioned, premiered, and performed many works of contemporary composers, prioritizing works by women and composers from traditionally underrepresented communities. She has performed and recorded with some of the world’s leading pop, hip-hop, and rock artists, including Tony Bennett, Peter Gabriel, Steve Martin, and Devotchka.
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Ms. Segal received her Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Michigan and her Master of Music degree from Yale School of Music. She spent twelve years as a tenured member of the Colorado Symphony and Concertmaster of the Central City Opera Orchestra and has served as Concertmaster of the Orchestra Sinfonica Portugesa in Lisbon, Portugal, and the South Bend Symphony, Principal Second violin of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.
Ms. Segal is the Founder and Executive Director of the Primavera Fund, Associate Director of the Young Musicians Debut Orchestra, first violinist of the Fairmount String Quartet, and performs frequently with Post Classical Ensemble, Baltimore Symphony, and other groups in the Philadelphia area.
Joseph Illick
Artistic Director & 2025 Conductor
We are honored to have Joseph Illick as our Artistic Director and Conductor. Illick Is currently the Composer in Residence and Musical Director Emeritus of the Fort Worth Opera. Over the past 50 years, Illick has held numerous prestigious conducting and leadership posts in opera and symphony. He is an active, internationally acclaimed pianist in solo and chamber music, and is an award-winning composer.
For ten years, Illick served as the Executive and Artistic Director of Performance Santa Fe. His experience includes serving as the Artistic Director of Greater Miami Opera, Lake George Opera Festival, Shreveport Opera, Voices of Change (Dallas), and Voices Intimae (Dallas). As a concert pianist, he won first prize in the Mid-Somerset Festival in Bath England and is active both as a piano soloist and in chamber music both in Europe and the United States. His compositional achievements include being the recipient of the Van Someron Award for composition of a song cycle. Over the course of his career he has composed numerous full length operas and symphonic works.
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He and his wife Gina are committed to educational outreach and mentoring the next generation of musicians.
Mandy Jiang
Assistant Director
A freshman at Syracuse University, Mandy Jiang has been playing violin since she was ten years old. She is a Kessler Scholar attending SU on the Setnor Award, a full-tuition music scholarship. This fall semester, she began playing mellophone to march with the Syracuse University Marching Band for the Buffalo Bills and at the Snapdragon Stadium for the Holiday Bowl.
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Her involvement with non-profit Project 440 included enggaging in programs such as Doing Good, Instruments For Success, the Youth Advocacy Council (where she was appointed to be the Youth Representative to the Board), and a summer internship.​ Mandy also created We Are Music! (WAM!), which aims to instill mental health awareness and promote accessibility in music for younger students through mindful teaching and song creation. The WAM! team led a 3 month session with 7 elementary school students to produce a total of 21 songs using Soundtrap.​ Mandy’s past musical involvement most notably included being a Philadelphia Orchestra All-City Fellow for four years, and as a PMAY artist for three years. She was also a student of Temple University’s Community Music Scholars Program (CMSP), and All-City Orchestra for numerous years. In previous summers, Mandy was a student Mindfulness Camp, where she was the winner of the Anthony DeGrazia Award.
Today, Mandy is beyond excited to be the Assistant Director for the 2026 session of Music and Mindfulness. Her role allows 360-involvement in the fruition of Music and Mindfulness Camp. From revamping the website to creating organizational spaces to ensure sustainable practices for future iterations of camp, she is incredibly grateful to shadow Director Denise Kinney. She cannot wait to meet all of our returning and new campers!​
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Tam Tran
Violin and Viola
Tam Tran is an active soloist, chamber musician, and a regular performer at the White House as a violinist and Assistant Principal violist of "The President's Own" U.S. Marine Chamber Orchestra. Tam has performed chamber music with members of the Emerson String Quartet, Ani Kavafian, Colin Carr, Itzhak Perlman, and Yo-Yo Ma. He performed on the "Axelrod" Antonio Stradivarius from the Smithsonian Collection in Washington, D.C. Tam has performed for the late Queen Elizabeth, performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Camp David, and has been featured on PBS, HBO, the Late Show with David Letterman, and on NPR's "Performance Today." Tam studied with Emanuel Vardi at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, Richard Young of the Vermeer String Quartet at Northern Illinois University, and Lawrence Dutton of the Emerson String Quartet at Stony Brook University. Tam enjoys learning different genres of World Music like French Gypsy Jazz, Brazilian Chôro, Argentinian Tangos, Italian Folk, Persian, Irish, Greek, and Klezmer music.
Eric Stephenson
Cello
An exceptionally versatile cellist, his style ranges from classical to jazz to rock and folk. He has performed with numerous orchestras like the IRIS Orchestra in Memphis, TN and the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder, CO. Eric is also a regular substitute for the Cleveland Orchestra. Eric earned his Bachelor and Master of Music Degrees with Honors from the Cleveland Institute of Music and was a recipient of the Ellis A. Feiman Award in Cello while a student of Stephen Geber. As a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, he served as Assistant Principal Cello of the Aspen Festival Orchestra from 1999-2004. Composing and recording is a huge part of his life. In his spare time, he enjoys biking around Brooklyn and playing the tenor sax.
Kevin MacConnell
Jazz and Bluegrass Coordinator &
Double Bass and Bass Guitar
Bassist Kevin MacConnell’s impressive career has taken him from playing with orchestras on concert stages to Broadway shows, from numerous recording studios to the sets of television shows, from jazz festivals to great clubs. He has performed with such jazz legends as Mel Torme, Nancy Wilson, Billy Eckstine, Joe Williams and tenor saxophonist Ernie Watts and made national and international television appearances/performances. Highly respected on the jazz scene Kevin is also a cross genre musician in bluegrass, classical and popular music.
Doug Marshall
Bluegrass Guitar, Banjo, Fiddle, Dobro
Originally a classical clarinetist, Doug began playing Blue Grass in the 1980s and has not stopped since. Now an esteemed Bluegrass multi-instrumentalist, Doug is renowned as a local musical celebrity. He teaches lessons in bluegrass guitar, banjo, fiddle, and dobro, and plays regularly with his band at regional events and music festivals.
Alejandra Santillanes
Flute
Alejandra Santillanes is a Mexican-American concert flutist based in Baltimore, MD. A passionate and dedicated educator, she maintains a private teaching studio, and is a Teaching Artist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's OrchKids Program. Highly driven to work with El Sistema model programs which provide equitable access to music education for young people, Ms.Santillanes has also been guest faculty Teaching Artist with Peabody Preparatory's Tuned-In Summer Program, and Musicians for the World Inc. As a collaborator and performer, she is a freelance orchestral musician and formerly served as principal flutist of Boston's CODA Ensemble, a chamber group dedicated to bringing under-performed and newly commissioned works alike to the spotlight. Ms. Santillanes is an alumni of the Virtual Flute Music Festival and the Domaine Forget International Music Festival in Quebec, where she has performed for flutists such as Emmanuel Pahud, James Walker, Helen Blackbum, and Sonora Slocum. She holds degrees from The Boston Conservatory (M.M.) and Florida Southern College (B.M.), and is forever indebted to her primary teachers and mentors, Sharon Sparrow, Elizabeth Rowe, Linda Toote, and Colleen Blagov.
Bill Williams
Trumpet
Bill Williams has served as principal trumpet and soloist with major orchestras and chamber ensembles internationally. He has served as principal trumpet with the San Francisco Symphony, is a frequent guest principal with orchestras including the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and serves as solo trumpet of the Menuhin Festival Orchestra in Gstaad, Switzerland.
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Bill is a founding member of Youth Music Culture Guangdong (YMCG), where he collaborates with YMCG Artistic Director Yo-Yo Ma, conductors Yu Long and Michael Stern, and Silk Road Ensemble musicians on a program of artistic, educational and cultural exchange.
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Bill serves as a performance coach internationally at institutions including the Juilliard School, the University of Michigan and the Eastman School of Music and as the Dean of Fellows at the New World Symphony. He holds a Bachelor of Music from the Eastman School of Music and a Master of Arts degree in Psychology from the New School for Social Research.
Michael Peck
Percussion
Mike Peck is a native resident of Utah, where at the age of 13 he began taking drum lessons with the talented local percussionist Jamie Jespersen who helped advance Mike from rock drumming into the the thrilling world of jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms. Mike continued his percussion studies with the renowned Jay Lawrence and then moved on to complete a Bachelor of Arts in Music at Brigham Young University, where broader musical training prepared him for a variety of musical pursuits, most notably in the world of choral music. As a percussionist, Mike currently runs a jazz trio that performs for private events. He also regularly provides percussion for the Salt Lake Choral Artists, with whom he also performs as a chorister. As a conductor and arranger, Mike also founded the Kekchi Choir which performs choral music in the Kekchi language of Guatemala and Belize.
Heather Bloodworth
Mindfully-Infused Music
Heather holds her undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin and a 2-year Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification through Sounds True, the Awareness Training Institute, and the University of California at Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. Heather has taken intensive teacher training in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction at the University of California – San Diego and holds her 200-Hour Yoga Instructor Certification. She currently teaches Mind Body Health at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania. With over 20 years of Health and Wellness management experience and program development, Heather created HuemanWorks, a Mindfulness company on a mission to shift the way the world breathes, thinks, moves, and feels. Heather is also a singer/songwriter and performer. Her first release, “Falling to Fly '', shares her personal story of early childhood trauma and how finding Mindfulness as a middle-aged woman not only saved her life, it has inspired her life work and passion for teaching Mindfulness and using Music as a guide for discovery and healing.
Jenn Bennett-Mintz
Mindfulness/Wilderness Wellness
Jenn first found mindfulness and a yoga mat twenty years ago, when her work called for a nomadic lifestyle, these practices became her anchor. During her travels she could find her center whether she was amidst snow covered mountains, at sea, or along the trail (and later as a balance for deskwork). She has had the honor of sharing these practices with others for a decade, offering seasonally-aligned practices in and out-of-doors, in the classroom, at her wellness sanctuary in Boston, VA, and along the surrounding hills, rivers and trails this special part of the Blue Ridge offers.
Julie Fitzpatrick
Mindfulness/Horse Vibrational Wellness
Julie’s passion for horses, a legacy from her mother, has inspired her immersion in the world of equestrian sports, excelling in various disciplines, including eventing, dressage, and show jumping. She has adopted the gentle methodologies of Fritz Stahlecker's “schooling horses without force” and Tristan’s TRT method which teaches the horse to manage their own tension. She has trained with esteemed equestrians Kevin Babington and Richard Maxwell and is currently honing her skills under the tutelage of Thierry Durand.
For over a decade, she has managed a United States Pony Club center, coached collegiate teams, and directed numerous summer camps. As a certified equine coach and Equis life coach, her journey has evolved towards harnessing the transformative power of horses to foster human growth. With a philosophy centered on lifelong learning, she is committed to enhancing the symbiotic relationship between horses and humans, enabling both to achieve their full potential.
