Alumni Notes
A 2022 Tony nominee for excellence in arts education, Janeece Freeman Clark (BM ’99, voice) serves on the faculty at Manhattan School of Music and Seton Hall University, and she is the founding, producing, and artistic director of Vanguard Theater Company in Montclair, New Jersey. Freeman Clark is a 2023 SMTD Alumni Award winner.
Ned Hanlon (MM ’08, SM ’10, voice) – a member of the Metropolitan Opera Chorus since 2014 and the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA) since 2009 – was elected AGMA president in June 2023. Hanlon also founded a nonprofit that raised nearly $750,000 to support out-of-work artists during the pandemic.
Nancy Yunhwa Rao (MM ’89, voice and music theory; PhD ’94, music theory) is a Distinguished Professor of Music at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, and currently editor-in-chief of the journal American Music. The 2024 SMTD Alumni Awards honored Rao with the Professional Achievement in Music Award.
Daniel Neer (SM ’95, voice) performed world premieres of two new vocal works Tin and Meat and Algo Viene. A sneak peek of his libretto adaptation of Andreyev’s He Who Gets Slapped, a collaboration with composer Alex Burtzos, was recently offered at Orlando’s Steinmetz Concert Hall.
Scott Lefurgy (BM ’99, voice; BS ’99, biochemistry) was promoted to professor of chemistry at Hofstra University (Long Island, New York). (6/2024)
Dennis C Jackson (DMA ’70, voice) finished a year as president of the Denver Lyric Opera Guild. The organization has an annual competition with a top prize of $10,000. Jackson was formerly the head of the opera program in the College of Music at the University of Colorado, Boulder, for 25 years.
Lyricist/Composer Sheilah Rae (Bernstein-Gross) (BM ’67, voice) was awarded a Special Vivace Award from the Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation on April 20, 2023 in honor of her artistry in theatre and support of the theatrical field. Many U-M alumni were in attendance.
Mindy Greenblatt Streem (BMA ’01, voice), who also earned a BS in biology and MS in orthodontics at U-M, has been practicing orthodontics clinically in Cleveland, Ohio, at Parker & Streem Orthodontics. She is also a ClearCorrect clinical advisor to practitioners around the country, and she lectures on how to treat LGBTQ+ youth in the dental setting. (9/2023)
Performer and lyricist Daniel Neer (SM ’95, voice) serves on the voice faculty at Temple University. He recently performed with Washington National Opera, American Repertory Theater, and Experiments in Opera, as well as world premieres including Polar Bear with Sara Carina Graef, Hopper Haiku with Ellen Mandel, and the opera And Here We Are with Matthew Welch, for which Neer supplied the libretto.
After a busy 2022, Andy Papas (BM ’07, voice) joined Boston Lyric Opera’s production of the acclaimed opera Omar in May 2023. At the June 2023 Ojai Music Festival, he helped premiere a new chamber version of the opera titled Omar’s Journey. In summer, he reprised the title role in Don Pasquale for Opera Saratoga and for Union Avenue Opera in St. Louis.
Bass-baritone Ian Williams (BMA ’15, voice; BTA ’15) is now a two-time finalist for the 2022 and the 2023 Lotte Lenya Competition held at the Eastman School of Music. Williams is also a co-founder and “co-managing divo” of Opera on Tap Fort Wayne, the first Opera on Tap chapter in Indiana.
Andrew Munn (BMA ’14, voice) performed Schubert’s Winterreise with pianist Rami Sarieddine at the Berlied Festival in Berlin in January 2023, and he headlined the Berliner Festspiele’s MaerzMusik in March 2023. In May 2023 he sang Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses by Michelangelo in concert at the Hungarian State Opera.