Ithaca College

Please join us for short presentations and performances at 5PM each day. The Zoom link is available in the Fine Artists at Five forum of the Keep Teaching Sakai site. This week’s artists include:

Pablo Cohen, Monday April 27

Jennifer Tennant, Tuesday, April 28

Kathleen Mulligan and Norman Johnson, Wednesday, April 29

Cory Brown, Thursday, April 30

Christin Schillinger, May 1

Fine Artists at Five is hosted by the Center for Faculty Excellence.

Pablo Cohen’s playing has been described as displaying “grand class and enlightened emotion...” and as having “fluid and delicate shape” He is known as "one of the foremost South-American guitarists." As a featured artist at concerts and festivals, Cohen has performed around the world, from Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, to Panama, Puerto Rico, Martinique, Caracas, Buenos Aires, Paris, and Seoul. He is an active chamber musician in a wide range of ensembles, and a duet performer with such diverse instruments as bandoneon, marimba, saxophone, and jazz guitar. He has been a featured soloist with many orchestras, has recorded Latin American concerti, and has been featured on National Public Radio and on television for the Public Broadcasting System. Cohen has received numerous prizes and awards for his performances in national and international competitions. 

Jennifer Tennant is a health economist by training, and her research focuses on disability and mental health policy. She has written a number of articles on health economics and disability policy and has recently started writing creative nonfiction.  She has had essays published inPleiades, The Smart Set, A VELVET GIANT, and Hoxie Gorge Review.

Kathleen Mulligan is an actress and vocal coach, and a proud member of Actors' Equity Association. She has performed with The Acting Company (Off-Broadway and National Tour), The American Repertory Theatre, The Huntington Theatre Company, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, PCPA Theaterfest, Fort Worth Shakespeare in the Park, and Hope Summer Repertory Theatre in Holland, MI. Mulligan has received grants and awards for her international projects, including "Finding Women's Voices”, which focused on the empowerment of women through voice, “Voices of Partition” which drew on interviews with survivors of the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, and "Common Ground," which explored the effect of violence on public spaces and community. Since 2010, she and her husband David have managed their charitable organization “Wheels for Women,” which provides driver training to victims of domestic violence and the sex trade in Kerala, India. Kathleen is the recipient of a World of Difference Award  from The International Alliance of Women and a New Leader Group Award from the Institute of International Education.

Prior to his retirement in 2018, Norm Johnson Jr, taught movement and scene study at IC for 28 years. He has performed medieval mummer plays on a foldout stage pulled by a team of oxen, served as bother a puppeteer and puppet-maker, mask maker and performer. He was an animal wrangler for the PBS production of The Scarlet Letter. He also danced contact improv and directed full-length dramas with the entire population of the Rhode Island School for the Deaf.  Additionally, he founded both the Great Interplanetary Soapbox Revival and Pan-Twilight Circus, and served as the second artistic director of the Kitchen Theatre Company, here, in Ithaca.

Razan Abu Ismail, an ambitious 22 year old fresh grad with a bachelors in Business Administration and a concentration in Marketing and Management. For as long as I could remember I had a passion and love for the performing arts and my dream was (still is) to pursue a career in the industry. My goal is to become a professional production manager or theatre manager where I can use my business skills to enrich and grow with each project I work on!

Cory Brown is an award-winning poet. His latest two books include What May Be Lost (2014), and Elisions(2019), both from Cayuga Lake Press. His first collection, A Warm Trend, from Swallow's Tale Press, won a national manuscript competition in 1989. Among other journals, his poems have appeared in Bomb, The Chattahoochee Review, West Branch, Northwest Review, Postmodern Culture, The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review, The Pedestal, Rosebud, Nimrod International Journal, and Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics. In addition to poems, Brown has published essays, including essays on the pursuit of happiness; on the history of the role of the self mostly as it has played out in Western literature since the Renaissance; and on the metaphysics of American white racism. His personal essay "Compliance" was published in South Loop Review and was a top-three finalist in Missouri Review's 2013 essay contest. 

Christin Schillinger is a bassoonist who is hailed as a "soloist, teacher, and force of nature" by The Double Reed (Journal of the International Double Reed Society).  Schillinger specializes in the accessibility of the avant-garde, aiming to broaden the audience for both new music and bassoon. American Record Guide refers to her playing as "full of life and inspiration." Schillinger works closely with living composers. Her 2018 solo album Bassoon Unbounded highlighted works from the 21st Century written in her dedication. Her prior solo albums, Bassoon Transcended (2013) and Bassoon Surrounded (2009), produced for MSR Classics by Swineshead Productions, include world-premiere recordings of new works. Collaborative composers remark on her "natural interpretation" and "perfect musical choices."