Winter 2024
Do you have news to share?
Maybe you recently got married or had a baby, celebrated a promotion or professional milestone, or had a gathering with some UHart friends. Whatever your news may be, share your UHart pride with your fellow alumni by submitting a class note or tagging us on social media. Select news and posts may be published in a future issue of H magazine. Notes are posted on a quarterly basis in March, June, September, and December and are archived after two years.
1977, 1984, 1989 | David Katz
David (Volosin) Katz (Hartt) has retired after 38 years as Founding Music Director of The Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra, receiving the honorific of Founding Music Director Laureate.
Katz led the the midwest’s unique ensemble of attorneys and judges more than 150 times in his long tenure, including three appearances at the Chicago Symphony’s Orchestra Hall, and conducted the very first performances anywhere of Gilbert & Sullivan’s operetta, Trial by Jury, featuring a cast and orchestra made up entirely of members of the legal profession, performing in a working courtroom. Katz’s book about his nearly four decades making music with Chicago lawyers, entitled “Wonderful Counsellor,” will be published later this year by DelGatto Press.
Former music director of the Adrian (MI) Symphony, the Danbury (CT) Symphony and OperaMaine, Katz is founder and chief judge of The American Prize National Nonprofit Competitions in the Performing Arts, which honors, among many others, legendary Hartt professors Vytautas Marijosius, Friedrich & Virginia Schorr, and Hartt Community Division student (and Tony Award-winner) Charles Nelson Reilly. https://theamericanprize.org. Katz tours internationally in his own one-man play, MUSE of FIRE, about the secrets of conducting.
1981 | Mark Zampino
Mark Zampino (A&S) was honored with SCSU's 'Outstanding Career Service Recognition Award'.
1984 | Lee Ann Leahy
Lee Ann Leahy (Barney) and her freshman roommate, Ruth Leighton Graff '84 (ENHP) met up on the Thursday before Hawktober Weekend. She introduced Ruth to her husband, Steven Graff ‘84 (Barney) and they have been married almost 40 years!
1990 | Susan Montgomery
Susan Montgomery (HAS) is an Artist in Residence at the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at UMASS Amherst. Her exhibit Fatal Flora: Renaissance Revenge Narratives is on view from September 28, 2024-January 30, 2026.
1991 | Beth Rosenberg & Ron Plante
Beth Rosenberg (A&S) and Ron Plante (A&S) got married in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 28, 2024, with many of their friends from the University of Hartford in attendance. Beth and Ron met in 1988 as sophomores, stayed in touch after graduation and many (many) years later took their friendship down a new road!
1995 | Peter Furlong
On January 4, 2024, Peter (Hartt) was called in to London at the last minute to rehearse and perform as Siegfried in Wagner’s opera “Siegfried” (known as the Everest of tenor roles) with London’s Regents Opera at Covent Garden. The performance was a critical success.
Peter will be back in London as Siegfried in Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” (The Twilight of the Gods) and to reprise the role of Siegfried as Regents Opera presents Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle in February of 2025.
1996 | Pradip Singh
Praddip Singh (A&S) was named Director at the Housing Authority of New Orleans.
2003 | Glenn Shafer
Glenn Shafer (M'93, M'03) grew up in West Hartford, the youngest of five. My dad was an orthopedic at Hartford Hospital and my mom an artist. I was very fortunate to have them in so many ways. I graduated Kingswood Oxford School in 1985. Then I went out west to the University of Colorado and that was a great four years, graduated in 1989. When I moved back to West Hartford, I completed two graduate degrees at the University of Hartford. The first was an MA and the second was an MBA. I worked four consecutive jobs post college and then I took a chance in January 2003 when I was 32 years old to start my own firm, Shafer Investment Management Co. I use LPL Financial as my broker dealer.
I simply help clients with their IRA, Roth IRA, brokerage accounts and a few others. For me, it's not a job at all and I very much enjoy it and have flexibility in my work. It was a home run to take a chance to do that after working since I was 15. And I am very glad to have spent the time at the University of Hartford. I met great friends and the Professors were terrific. Thank you for all you did for me.
2012 | Tim Corpus
Tim Corpus (Hartt) is now serving as the Executive Director of the Ear Taxi Festival, the largest contemporary classical music festival in the Midwest. Originally founded by Augusta Read Thomas and Stephen Burns, the Ear Taxi Festival will bring three weeks of new music performances and professional development events to Chicago in October 2025.
Tim is also still an active composer, writing music for film and live performance with premieres scheduled throughout 2024. His recent "Great Lake Concerto" was premiered at the historic Auditorium Theater with soloists Vadim Karpinos (Chicago Symphony Orchestra) and Ed Harrison (Lyric Opera of Chicago) conducted by Maestro Emanuele Andrizzi with the Chicago College of Performing Arts Symphony Orchestra.
2012 | Courtney Mason
Courtney (CETA & HAS) and her husband (both UHA alumni and college sweethearts) are working within our fields of study as leaders at top companies in NYC. I am an Art Director in Brand Marketing at Comcast and he is a Senior Engineer in Mechanical at Syska Hennessy Group. He is working on projects for JPMorgan and Meta while my projects are for brands within the Comcast Advertising division.
We have worked in New York City for over a decade and we continue to invest in our education to further advance professionally.
2015 | Mike Casey
Mike Casey's (Hartt) ninth release 'Valencia' featured by BBC, Bandcamp, NPR and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who calls it "A lovely jazz performance that soothes the soul", is out now. Listen on all platforms
2016 | Amber Sayer M'16
Amber Sayer's (ENHP) first novel, Finally Found: An Autistic Girl's Adventures Through Adolescence: Book 1, was published in October.
It tells the story of Kiera, a bright, quirky 12-year-old and her path to receiving her autism diagnosis as well grappling with its implications, all while juggling the challenges of middle school. The book is emotionally evocative yet written to be relatable to middle-grade and young adult readers of diverse backgrounds.
Finally Found will help neurodiverse girls feel seen by the author as well as help neurotypical readers appreciate more fully the perspectives of the autistic girls they love. As autistic girls are often undiagnosed until much later in life, Amber is eager to start to fill the void of literature on this subject that she experienced at Kiera's age.
Amber received her own autism diagnosis at the time she was in the MSPO program at UHart, and since graduating, has written thousands of articles for leading publications in the health and fitness industry. Her memoir, PR: A Personal Record of Running from Anorexia was published in 2013.
2017 & 2018 | Madeline Makings
Madeline Makings (A&S, CETA) married Geoffrey Hook '18 on November 9, 2024 in San Diego. Geoff and Madeline met during their senior year and started dating shortly after. Celebrating alongside them they were joined by friends of graduating classes of 17’, 19’ and future class of 25’.
2021 | Brooke Movitz
Brooke Movitz ‘21 (ENHP) and Matt Guerra ‘21 (Barney) got married on August 3, 2024. Brooke and Matt met their freshman year of college and have been together ever since.
2022 | Lillian Hinkle
Lillian Hinkle (M, Barney) married Michael Peck on Sept. 7, 2024 at Mystic Seaport Museum. She has been living and working in Washington, D.C. for over three years. The couple plans to settle in Connecticut.