FACULTY & STAFF BIO'S
Laura Greenwald is Concert Series Director and a member of the Faculty Council at Caldwell College where she teaches voice and directs the college choir. She also serves as an Affiliate Artist teaching voice at Drew University. She received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Manhattan School of Music, where she studied voice with Hilda Harris and Maitland Peters and coached with Dr. Richard Mercier and Dr. Kenneth Cooper. Laura received her BME from Baldwin-Wallace College and Master of Music in Voice Pedagogy from Westminster Choir College where she studied with Judith Nicosia.
Dr. Greenwald has performed in concerts and recitals in Ohio, Vermont and the New York Metropolitan area, as well as in Salzburg, Austria and Spoleto, Italy. She has participated in the Brattleboro Opera Theatre, Blanche Moyse Baroque Workshop and Orchard Hill Chamber Music Festival in Vermont and the Aquarius Opera Workshop in New York, as well as the University of Miami’s Salzburg Seminar and the Vocal Arts Symposium in Spoleto. Having completed her doctoral thesis on the text setting of Libby Larsen she has recently specialized in performing music by women composers in concerts at Caldwell College, Drew University, the Festival of Women Composers at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the Lunchtime Recital Series in New Brunswick, Princeton University Chapel’s After Noon Concert and Ohio University’s Conference on Women in Music. She was a winner of the S. Orange Symphony’s 2000 Concerto Competition and performed Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate with the orchestra. Her most recent recital, “What’s a Woman to do?” with Dr. Nan Childress, included vocal and piano music by women composers and was presented at Caldwell College and the Nicholas Roerich Museum in Manhattan. Drs. Greenwald and Childress were honored to perform works by Libby Larsen and NJ composer, Catherine Hostetler with the composers present, at the Seventh Festival of Women Composers, held in Pittsburgh. Laura is a soloist and choir member at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Montclair, NJ where she assists with children’s music.
Before relocating to New Jersey, Dr. Greenwald taught high school choral music and elementary general music in Ohio. She has taught private voice lessons since 1983 at various locations including The Pingry School, Caldwell College and Drew University. Dr. Greenwald is a member of MENC, NASM, the International Alliance of Women Musicians, The Voice Foundation, NYSTA and the New Jersey Chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing for which she has served as both treasurer and secretary. She resides in West Orange with her husband David Strom.
Max Morden is a musician noted for his ability to cross styles, from big band jazz to Bach cantatas. As a trumpeter, he can often be found performing in the pit orchestra for Broadway’s Beauty and the Beast and with many of the ensembles around the state including the New Jersey Choral Society and the New Jersey Symphony. Presently he is the concert master, arranger, and assistant conductor of the highly acclaimed Gramercy Brass Orchestra in New York City, which just completed a recording of patriotic favorites on the Koch International recording label that is scheduled for a spring release. You can also hear Max on a new recording by the New Jersey acoustic rock group, Gabriel’s Hold. He is also the principal trumpet soloist for numerous churches throughout New Jersey.
As a composer and arranger, Max has written for many different ensembles including Distinctly Brass, the Princeton Chapel Choir, St. Thomas the Apostle Choir, Verona Jazz, and The Gramercy Brass Orchestra, for which he did arrangements for Jazz singer and pianist Dena DeRose, as well as jazz legend Dave Brubeck. Max has also arranged brass quartet accompaniments of standard hymns, which he hopes to record and perform with a new group he is forming called The Brass of Glory.
Mr. Morden is currently in his 13th year as an educator in the music department of the Verona Public Schools and serves as the trumpet instructor at Caldwell College. He is also president of Verona Summer Music, which offers summer instruction to well over 300 students. Max resides in Verona, New Jersey with his wife of 18 years, Robyn, and their two children, Matthew and Amanda.
Rob Middleton is a prize-winning composer and an active saxophonist and educator in the New York area. He has performed with many jazz greats, including Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Phil Woods, Harry Connick Jr., Lionel Hampton, The New York Voices, Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Lovano, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Woody Shaw, Oliver Lake, David Liebman, Randy Brecker, John Faddis, Joe Williams, George Coleman, Jimmy Cobb and has recorded with Lionel Hampton and others.
Rob's performance career has taken him to major jazz clubs and festivals in this country and abroad. His compositions and arrangements are performed regularly in the New York area. His arrangement of "Windmills of Your Mind", recorded by the Chico O' Farrill Afro-Cuban jazz big band featuring Rob as the soloist, can be heard in the 1999 hit movie "The Thomas Crown Affair". Rob’s other recordings include the recently released CD “Urban Soundscapes” by the band NewYorkestra, which he co-leads.
Rob is a professor of music at Caldwell College and maintains an active teaching studio in the area.
Nan Childress received her D.M.A. in Piano from Rutgers, The State University's Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1997. She received her M.M. from the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music and B.A. from Portland State University. Areas of research included performance on historic keyboard instruments and music by women. She is an avid orchestral, chamber and solo performer, playing on both historic and modern keyboards. Dr. Childress has performed for and with international artists including Jean Pierre Rampal and Lukas Foss.
Dr. Childress has served as musical director for professional musical theater productions in Oregon, Ohio, West Virginia and New York. She was pianist for the off-Broadway production of the Schmidt and Jones musical Collette Collage, directed by the authors. Other musical productions include Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado and Pirates of Penzance, Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd and Pacific Overtures and Leonard Bernstein's On the Town and Westside Story. She has taught musical theater courses for Musical Theatre Works in New York City and at Northern Kentucky University.
She is published in Women and Music in America since 1900: An Encyclopedia (The Oryx Press) and The Encyclopedia of New Jersey (Rutgers University Press). She writes music criticism for the Classical New Jersey Society music journal and has presented papers and performed at music conferences in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
Dr. Childress has been on the faculty of Caldwell College since 2001. She is an active member of the Music Educators Association and the New Jersey Music Teachers Association. She adjudicates for piano competitions and evaluations, and has served as a docent for the education department of the State Theatre in New Brunswick.
After graduating Berklee College of Music in 1987, Joshua Rubin embarked on career as a performing guitarist and teaching. He performed with such artists as George Coleman, Claudio Roditi, Grady Tate and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas in venues including Carnegie Hall, The Knitting Factory, Village Gate, Pier 16, Avery Fisher Hall, and Alice Tully Hall. Josh has recorded a number of CDs as sideman and as featured soloist.
Noah Gest has been actively studying, performing, and composing music since the age of eight. He has extensive experience on the guitar, banjo, electric bass and piano; but he specializes in percussion. Mr. Gest has a Bachelor of Science in Music Education from William Paterson University, and has been teaching percussion at Caldwell College since the fall 2002 semester. He has also been teaching music in the Caldwell/West Caldwell School System since 1999. He has performed as a member of the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble at such venues as Symphony Space, Cooper Union and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center; he is also currently the timpanist for the South Orange Symphony.