Biographies
Mike Bond began his musical journey first taking piano lessons at 4 years old. By the time he was six, he was winning high honors competitions and performing at Carnegie Hall in NYC.
Bond, a Rutgers University cum-laude graduate, and top of his class, received the prestigious Excellence in Jazz Performance Award and the Arthur G. Humphrey award for his Bachelor’s dual major in Music Education and Jazz Piano Performance in 2012.
Since then, he has performed with world class artists, including but not limited to, Orrin Evans, Billy Kilson, Byron Landham, Conrad Herwig, Todd Bashore, Mark Gross, Bruce Williams, Josh Evans, Gene Perla, Ryan Devlin, Curtis Lundy, Sarah Hanahan, and the Captain Black Big Band.
Bond toured the Midwest in both 2021, and 2022 with saxophonist Ryan Devlin feat. legendary artists Gene Perla, and Adam Nussbaum.
He is a core member of the AAPI Jazz Collective, taking traditional Asian songs and re-imagining them in the style of Black American folk music. He has played many prestigious events with them, including the Metropolitan Museum’s Lunar New Year celebration and to welcome the diplomatic visit of the current President of Taiwan Lai Ching-Te to New York City. They recently had an album release “Identity” at Joe’s Pub this past July.
In September 2023, Mike was hired by Elle magazine to improvise live accompaniment for both Babyface and Offset for the magazine’s “Burn Ballad” feature.
As a music director, Bond has played and music directed/played keys for a variety of community theater companies while in school, and shortly after graduating including but not limited to, Into the Woods, Spring Awakening, Legally Blonde, Evita, Pirates of Penzance, the Fantasticks, and others. He won a statewide Perry award for outstanding music direction for Pirates of Penzance in 2016.
Bond then began music directing for professional regional theaters. This includes music directing & accompanying Tony award winning tap dancer Savion Glover at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (2020 & 2022), and music directing, and arranging for Broadway lead, Andrew Polec’s solo cabaret at Bucks County Playhouse in 2021. He most recently music directed alongside Broadway choreographer, and director, and performer T. Oliver Reid, in Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 and Into the Woods at Rider University.
In the summer of 2025, he served as pianist for Alphonso Horne’s Off-Broadway show the “Oscar Micheaux Project” working with Prospect Musicals at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York City.
Michael Gilch is a versatile Asbury Park-based music director, composer, arranger, and pianist. He plays in Broadway pits, Village jazz clubs, and conducts pit orchestras in many NYC/NJ/PA regional theatres, universities, and high schools. An accomplished songwriter and orchestrator in his own right, he has toured as a pianist and MD with many theatre, rock, and jazz acts for the past two decades. He graduated magna cum laude from Rutgers University with a B.A. in English and a minor in Italian.
Louis F. Goldberg has conducted more than 300 musical productions across the United States and Europe including tours of Man of La Mancha, Cabaret, Chicago and 42nd St. Recent projects include a four-month stint Off-Broadway at the York Theatre playing Ted Shapiro in Red Hot Mama: The Sophie Tucker Songbook, a role he premiered at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, followed by engagements at the Players’ Club in NYC, the Plush Room in San Francisco, Santa Fe Stages and at London’s Greenwich Theatre. In Philadelphia, Louis has conducted St. Louis Woman and Peter Pan and Wendy at the Prince Music Theater, Dirty Blonde at the Wilma Theatre, and Evita at the Walnut St. Theatre.
As a pianist, Louis was a 1985 Stravinsky Award finalist and won silver and bronze medals in the International Piano Recording Competition. He has been the musical director for productions at the Cleveland Playhouse, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Florida Repertory Theatre, Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma, Syracuse Stage and for more than 10 years worked as a performer, arranger and orchestrator at Hershey Park in Chocolate Town, USA.
Louis has taught in the musical theatre programs at Syracuse University, the University of Oklahoma and the University of the Arts. He currently serves on the faculty of the musical theatre program of the School of Communication, Media and Performing Arts at Rider University. At Rider, Louis has directed Brecht’s The Good Person of Setzuan, the musical revue Cole, and has served as music director for Sondheim’s Assassins, The Theory of Relativity, Once on This Island, White Christmas, A Little Night Music, Merrily We Roll Along, The Full Monty, The Wedding Singer, The Light in the Piazza and Rent.
Pianist Julia Hanna has performed widely in the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, building an extensive repertoire of solo and chamber music. Currently, she serves as a coach and accompanist at Westminster Choir College, where she has worked with many prominent artists and renowned voice programs such as the CoOPERAtive summer program and the Florence Voice Seminar in Italy. As an accompanist she has also performed and toured with several choirs from the New York area, in which capacity the New York Times has praised her performances as “vivid” and “deft.” In 2018 Julia was honored to be a featured performer in a Philip Glass opera workshop in North Adams, MA. In 2021, she was the featured pianist for the Princeton Festival Opera. Recently she was musical director and pianist for the Philadelphia premiere of “The Stronger,” an one-act opera. She also performed with Cappella Sur in the Internacional de Cant Coral Catalunya festival.
Julia is a native of Taiwan, where she began studying piano at age 5. There she attended an experimental music-focused grade school until moving to the United States. Here she studied with Paul Hoffmann and Barbara Gonzalez-Palmer, earning a BM in Piano Performance and MM in Collaborative Piano at Rutgers University.
Native of Osaka, Japan, pianist Dr. Akiko Hosaki is acclaimed for her sensitive playing, and one of the most sought-after collaborative pianists and vocal coaches in the New York – New Jersey area. She is currently on the faculty of Westminster Choir College of Rider University and The College of New Jersey.
Brought to the US by Dalton Baldwin, legendary collaborative pianist, Dr. Hosaki was his assistant at Académie internationale d'été de Nice, France, since 2013 until his passing in 2019, and was at Mozarteum Sommerakademie in 2017 and 2018. She was invited to give a master class in Hong Kong in 2016 and 2017. In 2024, she held a masterclass on Japanese Art Song and a concert in NYC as a part of “Summer of Art Song Festival 2024” hosted by Art Song Preservation Society of New York.
Dr. Hosaki has collaborated with regional opera companies such as the Princeton Festival Opera, the New Jersey State Opera, Opera North, and the Castleton Festival. In 2006 and 2007, she served as assistant conductor for Opera New Jersey, and was the music director for Romeo and Juliet with the Delaware Valley Opera Company in 2009, for which a review said, “She conjured up out of the piano nearly all the colors of Gounod’s orchestral score yet never overwhelmed her singers.” In her busy schedule, she still frequently works with Boheme Opera NJ and Opera Magnifico.
As accomplished accompanist/basso continuo player, Dr. Hosaki also enjoys working with conductors and instrumentalists, and frequently performs in chamber music concerts and the keyboard/basso continuo in orchestras. She was seen on the tours with the American Boychoir in the mid-west and southern states in the United States and Taiwan. In the instrumental world, she has performed at the World Saxophone Congress XIII, Tubonium 2 and 3. She currently works with Jubilee Singers at Westminster with the conductor Vinroy D. Brown, Jr.
In addition to Westminster, she currently works as collaborative pianist at Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program. She is also the director of Westminster’s High School Vocal Solo Artist program.
Dr. Hosaki holds degrees from Musashino Academia Musicae in Japan, Westminster Choir College, and University of Minnesota.
Nicholas Kaminski is a composer/lyricist, music director and actor originally from Edison, New Jersey and now based in Manhattan. Of his songwriting, BroadwayWorld says “Mr. Kaminski has a talent for catchy melodies and wry, self-deprecating lyrics that have the elegance of Bock & Harnick combined with the bawdiness of William Finn. [...] It is well worth your time to check out this exciting new writing voice before you have to pay Broadway prices.” Nicholas holds his Bachelor of Arts in Music from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and was a private songwriting student of Mark Hollmann (Urinetown).
Favorite credits: Music Direction: Khan!!!! The Musical (Off-Broadway). Cabaret (National Tour, AMD/Accordion/Synth), Bright Star (Surflight Theatre, MD/Piano/Accordion), The Rocky Horror Show (Ten separate productions, MD/”Narrator”/”Dr. Scott” variously); Acting: Souvenir (Surflight Theatre, “Cosme McMoon”), House Hunters (HGTV, “Himself”), Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings (Carnegie Hall, Ensemble).
Instagram @njkamins | www.KaminskiMusic.com
MICHAEL McASSEY conducted and music directed the Broadway national tours of AVENUE Q, TITANIC: THE MUSICAL, PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT and toured with Donny Osmond playing keyboards for Liventʼs JOSEPH…etc. Based in Manhattan, he has music directed all over the country including Westchester Broadway Theatre, Cohoes Music Hall, Ogunquit Playhouse, Atlantic City Hilton and Surflight Theatres in NJ, Arizona Broadway Theatre in Phoenix and 5 years at The Crystal Palace in Aspen, CO.
As a teacher, vocal coach and accompanist he has worked at PACE University, NYU-Tisch, New York Film Academy and Royal Caribbean Productions. He has been a Broadway audition accompanist for over 30 years.
He appeared with Barbara Cook and Patti LuPone in Paris and toured with Ms. LuPone in her nightclub act, THE ARGENTINA TURNER REVUE. As an actor he made his Broadway debut in LATE NITE COMIC, numerous Off- Broadway, National Tours and Regional productions including starring as Max in 3 companies of THE PRODUCERS, Edna in 2 companies of HAIRSPRAY, Herbie in GYPSY with Sally Mayes and as John Gustafson in GRUMPY OLD MEN THE MUSICAL.
A proud member of Actorʼs Equity since 1977, he is a three-time winner of New York Cityʼs MAC Award (Outstanding Male Vocalist, Piano Bar Entertainer and Show Of The Year), two Backstage Bistro Awards and last year was named “The Clown Prince of New York Cabaret!” by Broadway World.
Dr. Martin Néron is a collaborative pianist, diction specialist, and teacher of Vocal Coaching and French Mélodie at Westminster Choir College of Rider University.
Dr. Néron is Artistic Director of the Vocalis Consort and co-founder and co-artistic director of the Federation of the Art Song, organizations dedicated to expanding and diversifying the song repertoire through performance, competition, and education. He has guided initiatives that commission new works, broaden the canon through inclusive programming, and feature recurring collaborations with recitalists such as Metropolitan Opera tenor Paul Appleby and the late American art-song pioneer Paul Sperry. In 2021 he spearheaded the Canto Latino CyberChallenge, an international competition celebrating Latin American vocal repertoire, created as a one-time response to the pandemic to sustain opportunities for singers and pianists.
A committed advocate of culturally responsive practice, Dr. Néron has arranged Quechua, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, and Catalan folk melodies, approaching each project with a sense of stewardship that honors source communities. His scholarship on the ethics of adapting Indigenous music—illustrated through his Cuatro canciones Incaicas—has been presented in lecture-recitals and invited talks at the Longy School of Music, the College Music Society International Conference in Bogotá, and the International Congress of Voice Teachers in Toronto.
He has appeared as a guest artist and lecturer at institutions including Harvard and Tufts Universities, Princeton University, the University of Kentucky, SUNY Potsdam, The College of New Jersey, Rowan, Butler, and Ohio State Universities, Washington State and Tennessee Tech Universities, and Ecuador’s Universidad Central and Fundación Cultural Armonía. From 2019 to 2021 he served on the faculty of the Taos Opera Institute, and from 2017 to 2019 he was Vice-President of the Joy in Singing Foundation.
A recognized authority on lyric diction and art-song interpretation, Dr. Néron is the author of Francis Poulenc: Selected Song Texts (Leyerle Publishing) and more than a dozen peer-reviewed articles in the Journal of Singing. His performances and recordings span classical, crossover, and world music, including collaborations with Grammy Award–winning and -nominated artists such as the Shanghai Quartet, Victor Prieto, and members of the Silk Road Ensemble. His discography ranges from French mélodie to Greek contemporary art songs and global lullabies, and his artistry has been praised by Opera News for its attentiveness and depth.
Dr. Néron holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from the Manhattan School of Music, a Master of Music from Westminster Choir College, and a Bachelor of Music from the Université de Montréal.
Professional collaborative pianist and teacher, Jamie Olszak has been accompanying at Westminster Choir College since 2000. Ms. Olszak recieved her M.M. in Piano Accompanying and Vocal Coaching from Westminster Choir College of Rider University where she studied with J.J. Penna and Dalton Baldwin. She received her B.A. degree in Music with honors from Elizabethtown College where she studied with John Harrison. Ms. Olszak enjoys assisting students on their musical journey while at Rider and collaborating on their recitals.
Ms. Olszak also maintains a thriving private piano studio with students ranging in age from young children to adults. She enjoys fostering a love and appreciation of music of all styles to enrich students’ lives. Ms. Olszak resides in a historic home in Hunterdon County, NJ, with her husband, 11 year old son, and 5 cats.
A dedicated pianist and vocal coach, Jihye Park has been serving on the coaching staff at Rider University since 2008.
She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Piano Performance from Hanyang University in Seoul, followed by a Master’s degree and Graduate Performance Diploma in Piano Performance from the Peabody Conservatory. She further pursued doctoral studies (DMA) at Northwestern University.
An active collaborator, she has worked extensively as an accompanist for numerous masterclasses and esteemed summer vocal programs, including Voice Experience and the CoOPERAtive Program. Since 2009, she has been the principal pianist for the choir Cantus Novus, continuing to bring her artistry and insight to both performance and education.
Jonathan Rose is an accomplished pianist, voice teacher and music director whose Broadway credits include My Fair Lady, The King and I, Carousel, Pippin, End of the Rainbow, Nice Work If You Can Get It, Les Misérables, Next to Normal, Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, South Pacific, West Side Story, and the original production of The Color Purple. His work Off-Broadway includes productions such as The Secret Garden, Once on This Island, Miss Evers’ Boys, Little Shop of Horrors, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Talk of the Town, and Feast in Time of Plague. He has also contributed to special presentations like Show Boat with the New York Philharmonic and cabaret works including Imbecile d’Amour. Throughout his career, Rose has been recognized for his ability to bring musical and vocal excellence and nuance to a wide range of theatrical productions.
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