Dru Davison is a music program leader for the Memphis-Shelby County Schools in Memphis, Tennessee, and an active researcher in areas of creative leadership, education policy, and program development. Davison recently served as project chair for the Tennessee State Board of Education’s Standards Revisions for Arts Education. He is active with the National Association for Music Education, with past service as chair of the council of Music Program Leaders, where he oversaw the revisions of Opportunity-to-Learn Standards for Music Instruction. Prior to his work in administration, Davison taught instrumental music in rural and urban areas, was an adjunct jazz and saxophone instructor at Arkansas State University and was a teaching fellow at the University of North Texas, where he received a doctorate in music education. He recently developed a course in creative leadership for Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. He is also active as a freelance saxophonist in the Memphis area.
Dru Davison is a music program leader for the Memphis-Shelby County Schools in Memphis, Tennessee, and an active researcher in areas of creative leadership, education policy, and program development. Davison recently served as project chair for the Tennessee State Board of Education’s Standards Revisions for Arts Education. He is active with the National Association for Music Education, with past service as chair of the council of Music Program Leaders, where he oversaw the revisions of Opportunity-to-Learn Standards for Music Instruction. Prior to his work in administration, Davison taught instrumental music in rural and urban areas, was an adjunct jazz and saxophone instructor at Arkansas State University and was a teaching fellow at the University of North Texas, where he received a doctorate in music education. He recently developed a course in creative leadership for Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. He is also active as a freelance saxophonist in the Memphis area.
Jesse Cannon II is the director of vocal and elementary music in Forth Worth Independent School District and currently serves as the vice president and vocal division chair for the Texas Music Educators Association. He was recognized as a Music Teacher of Excellence by the Country Music Association Foundation in 2022, was honored as the Duncanville High School Teacher of the Year in 2021, and received the Grammy Signature School Award for the Duncanville High School Choral Department.
Jesse Cannon II is the director of vocal and elementary music in Forth Worth Independent School District and currently serves as the vice president and vocal division chair for the Texas Music Educators Association. He was recognized as a Music Teacher of Excellence by the Country Music Association Foundation in 2022, was honored as the Duncanville High School Teacher of the Year in 2021, and received the Grammy Signature School Award for the Duncanville High School Choral Department.
Flowerree W. McDonough was named by the National Art Education Association as the Tennessee Art Educator of the Year in 1999 and the National Emeritus Art Educator in 2018. The Tennessee Arts Academy Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to her in 2011. The Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts named her Tennessee Visual Arts Educator of the Year in 2009 in a ceremony at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville.
Until her retirement in 2013, McDonough served for thirty-two years as chair of the Bearden High School Fine Arts Department in Knoxville, Tennessee. During her tenure, her students garnered numerous scholarships and won scholastic gold, silver, and honorable mention awards. At Carnegie Hall, she was honored at the national teacher recognition ceremony for having several national student winners. After being named a Twenty-First Century Classroom Teacher, the resulting grant funds jump-started her students’ technological understanding of visual production techniques. She received a fellowship of the National Endowment for the Humanities and subsequently participated in the Excellence in Teaching Institute at Ohio Wesleyan and in Florence, Italy.
She served as president of the Tennessee Art Education Association, as well as National Art Education Association’s southeast region secondary director, and has also chaired statewide art education conferences. In 2000, she represented the state in several events as state finalist for Tennessee Teacher of the Year. Working with Leadership Knoxville, she has coordinated the art experiences for new class members each year since she became a member in 2003. McDonough has been a frequent clinician and adjudicator at regional and national events. McDonough passionately serves both students and teachers of the arts in her dual roles as an adjudicator for the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts and as a Tennessee Arts Academy Foundation board member.
The Tennessee Arts Academy presents a new feature during this year’s Virtual Winter Retreat. “Tennessee Talks” will present the thoughts and reflections of a notable Tennessean whose life’s work has had a major influence on the arts, arts education, and the lives of all citizens throughout our great state. Much like the Academy’s “Musings,” Tennessee Talks will be a time of meaningful inspiration and introspection.
This year’s Tennessee Talks guest of honor is Flowerree McDonough.
Bradley Foust is the fine arts supervisor for Bartlett City Schools.
Atticus Hensley is the band director for East and West Middle Schools and the fine arts coordinator for Tullahoma City Schools.
Jeff Smith is the director of visual and performing arts for the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.
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Lanae Dickstein is the director of bands at Haynes Bridge Middle School in Alpharetta, Georgia. Prior to this position, Dickstein was the director of bands at Central Middle School in Carrollton, Georgia. She received her degrees from Georgia State University in Atlanta. She serves as an organizer for the Georgia Music Educators Association Middle School All-State Band and also organized the Carroll County Middle School Honor Band. Dickstein has been a clinician at the 2022 Georgia Music Educators Association In-Service Conference as well as the 2022 Midwest Clinic International Band, Orchestra and Music Conference. She is a French horn player and enjoys teaching and performing in the metro Atlanta area. Dickstein is also a member of the Georgia Music Educators Association and the National Association for Music Education.
Julia Heath Reynolds is the newly appointed assistant professor of music education at Belmont University. Prior to joining the faculty at Belmont, Heath Reynolds coordinated student teaching and taught courses in elementary and secondary methods and music in special education at Indiana State University. She is an active presenter and clinician and is a member of the Tennessee Music Educators Association, National Association for Music Education, and the International Society for Music Education.
Angela Tipps is completing her twenty-fifth year at the Middle Tennessee State University School of Music. She conducts the SOAL Chorale (for soprano and alto) and TEBA Chorale (for tenor and bass), oversees music appreciation courses, teaches basic and choral conducting, and serves as musical director for the theatre department. She also conducts the Middle Tennessee Choral Society, an eighty-voice community chorus that performs major works with orchestra each year. Tipps is also the organist and director of music at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Murfreesboro.
Jonathan Bernstein’s plays and musicals have been produced all over the country. Under the auspices of the Jerome Robbins Foundation, he is currently developing a new project titled Here in the Bright Colorado Sun, his second collaboration with Susan Misner. Before this, they premiered The Shape She Makes at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which won multiple Elliot Norton Awards. Directing credits include material at the Atlantic Theater Company, the Kennedy Center, Williamstown Theatre Festival, New York Stage and Film, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and many others. Bernstein has worked at New York’s City Center, Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage Theater, Roundabout Theatre, Public Theater, and 52nd Street Project. He produced the 2021 short film Bend, which won the top prize at the Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera Festival. He is a professor of playwriting and script analysis in the graduate musical theatre writing program at New York University, and he serves as the artistic director of The Performing Arts Project, an international arts training not-for-profit for youth.
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Joshua Rashon Streeter is an assistant professor of theatre education at Emerson College. His teaching focuses on critical pedagogy, pre-service and in-service education, drama and theatre education, Theatre for Young Audiences, musical theatre, and arts integration. Streeter’s scholarship analyzes the pedagogies used in rehearsals and classrooms and considers the relationship between process and product in a creative experience. Recently he received the 2021 Ann Flagg Multicultural Award from the American Alliance for Theatre and Education and the 2021 Provost’s Excellence in Inclusivity Award from James Madison University. He was also one of three national finalists for the Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement for Early Career Faculty. Streeter was also one of the twelve writers for the national theatre standards and continues to work as a consultant to numerous state departments of education. For the past fifteen years he has created and facilitated workshops across the nation.
As a mixed-media artist, Robyn McClendon tells stories and encourages others to do the same through the visual context. As a healer and Reiki master, she helps others to shed old stories and replace them with ones that are empowering, self-directed, and not burdened by cultural mores and family histories. As an artaeomythologist, she leads retreats and workshops that combine the visual arts, idea generation, and book arts. Through these seminars, participants find a voice for their story and are empowered to move forward and recognize a more authentic artistic experience. In her quest to find answers, she studied and worked as an artaeomythologist for the past thirty years teaching at the Smithsonian Institutions and Corcoran Galleries. She has combined her archaeological adventures and knowledge of historical symbols and icons to formulate theoretical research in the area of human consciousness.
Mike Mitchell is an artist and arts educator living in Nashville, Tennessee. Also known as mikewindy, he is a 2020 Makey Makey Ambassador, has achieved the Tennessee Art Education Association Middle Region Art Educator of the Year award, and is Tennessee’s only Crayola Creativity Ambassador. He sits on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s rural, educational, arts, culture, and history committee. He earned a degree from the University of Memphis in 2004, where he investigated making art using a wide array of media, including video, sound, painting, printmaking, ceramics, metal casting, stop motion animation, collage, and performance. He has continued those investigations over the past twenty years and exhibited his work in public spaces all over the world, including galleries, trains, street corners, and outside the grocery store where he has been shopping for forty years.
Denice Hicks has been performing for more than fifty years and is currently the artistic director of the Nashville Shakespeare Festival, a company dedicated to community enrichment through professional theatrical experiences and interactive workshops. Educated at Point Park University, Hicks starred in her first Shakespeare role as Juliet at the historic Pittsburgh Playhouse in 1979. She moved to Nashville in 1980 to perform at Opryland USA, was an original company member of the Nashville Repertory Theatre, and was among the founders of both the Darkhorse Theater and People’s Branch Theatre. She has been a guest lecturer at many universities and with the Cooperative Center for Study Abroad program for three weeks in Stratford-upon-Avon and in London. Hicks has been involved in more than seventy productions of Shakespeare’s works, with some of her favorite roles being Puck, Ophelia, Juliet, Rosalind, Olivia, Cassius, theDuke of York (Richard II), and Ariel. Non-Shakespeare favorite roles are Stella (A Streetcar NamedDesire), Ouiser (Steel Magnolias), and Lenny (Crimes of the Heart). She toured the entire state as Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst for Humanities Outreach of Tennessee. Hicks is thrilled to be reviving her passion for Emily Dickinson’s poetry with Stephanie Shine and is honored to be working with Tennessee Shakespeare Company.
Collaboration is a leap of faith. Join Denice Hicks and Stephanie Shine, creators of I Dwell in Possibility: Emily Dickinson Emerges. Explore the collaborative process between three women: Hicks and Shine, working together for the first time, and Emily Dickinson, immortal in her writing and ever present in the collaborative room. Highlights from the show will be shared as Hicks transforms in the moment to bring Emily Dickinson into the twenty-first century.
