Staff

David Edelman, Excutive Director, joined the NYCGMC in March of 2005 having most recently served as Executive Director of Contemporary American Theatre Company in Columbus, Ohio. He has also served as Associate Producer at Olympia Dukakis’ Whole Theatre, Managing Director of the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey and Managing Director of the Delaware Theatre Company. David has long volunteered his time in many civic, political, and community organizations. In the 1980's he served two terms as President of the New Jersey Theatre Group, the statewide association of professional theatres and was a founding Board member of ArtPride, the state’s arts advocacy organization. David served as President of the Board of the New Jersey Lesbian and Gay Coalition, was an early organizer with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and volunteered for GMHC in the early 1980’s. David has served on numerous boards and committees including AIDS Delaware, Sister Cities of Wilmington, the Wilmington Arts Commission, Wilmington Riverfront Business Improvement District, Wilmington Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, the Brandywine Valley Cultural Tourism Planning Committee, the Ohio Department of Education’s Arts Standards Advisory Committee, HRC-Columbus’ Membership Committee, and served as founding President of the Delaware Liberty Fund, an LGBT political action committee. He is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, earned an MFA in Acting at Rutgers University, and completed the Strategic Perspectives in Non-Profit Management program at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration.

Dr. Charles Beale joins NYCGMC as its Artistic Director having recently served as Musical Director of the London Gay Men's Chorus since 2002. In that time, LGMC has grown from around 80 to over 200 members and is now the largest gay arts organisation in Europe. LGMC has a deserved reputation for the openness, diversity and innovation of its repertoire, the passion and commitment of its singers and its groundedness in the gay communities of London and the UK. LGMC is an open access, non-audition mixed ability chorus with small and large ensembles, and regularly sells out the best concert halls in London, such as the Barbican Hall and the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Singing everything from Jan Sandstrom to Kylie Minogue, from high opera to political song, from the latest dance music with backing tracks to a cappella part songs, recent tours have also taken them to the Sydney Opera House, the Various Voices Festival in Paris 2005 and the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC. Here, Charles closed the show by conducting a combined choir including members of Washington DC and Heartlands Gay Men's choruses in his own arrangement of "Come What May".

Originally trained as an organist, Charles studied at Cambridge, England, where he conducted chapel choir three times a week for 3 years from 1982-85. He did his first degree in classical music, while running the University Big Band in his spare time. After 2 years as a high school teacher, he specialised in jazz performance at Masters level at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he won the Rose Morris Prize as a composer and jazz pianist in 1989. Charles has a stylistically diverse and active freelance performing career. He recently directed members of the London Philarmonic Orchestra in an improvised performance at one of London's major concert halls. His playing has also included national radio broadcasts as a classical pianist in Stravinsky’s ‘Paroles Tisses’, an organ concerto with the UK's National Youth Jazz Orchestra, West End theatre work on shows including ‘An Evening with Anthony Newley’ and ‘Sweet Lorraine’. He has playing and arranging credits on albums and singles by pop and dance artists including Whitney Houston and Adeva, and gigs regularly on the London jazz scene, with the likes of Bobby Wellins and the Frank Williams African Jazz Quintet.

Singing and the voice has become a growing specialisation as both performer and educator since he began at the London Gay Men’s Chorus, and this is gradually replacing jazz as his main career focus. He was an active member of the UK’s Association of British Choral Directors, where he gives clinics, and is committed to the cause of GALA, giving clinics at the 2004 Gala Music Director’s Retreat and at GALA 2004 itself. He is currently co-writing a new ‘Voiceworks’ book for Oxford University Press with a fellow GALA MD, and has written a number of sets of arrangements for Faber’s acclaimed Choral Basics’ series, including ‘Disco Classics’, ‘Frankly speaking’ (A Sinatra selection) and ‘All that Jazz’ (a ‘Chicago’ selection). He also designed the artistic strategy for London’s winning bid to host Various Voices 2009, Europe’s equivalent to GALA.

Charles has a burgeoning career as an educator and academic. While in London, he taught 2 days a week at the Royal College of Music in London, one of London’s international level conservatoires, where he was Area leader for Aural training, taught history and arranging, and was Professor of Jazz Piano and directed the Royal College of Music Big Band. Since completing his Ph.D. in 2001, he has written a critically acclaimed book 'Jazz Piano from Scratch', and a number of important academic articles, including the chapter on Jazz Education in the recent Oxford Companion to Jazz.

He was Lead Jazz Consultant to the Associated Board for ten years from 1996, helping design new exam syllabuses in jazz worldwide. He also trains and moderates examiners and adjudicators, facilitates workshops and seminars for classroom and instrumental teachers and was nominated for a prestigious national Jazz Parliamentary Award in 2005 for services to jazz education. In the past 10 years, he has toured internationally, adjudicating, examining and doing workshops for teachers in the UK, the US, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia and Singapore.

Committed to the cause of gay rights, Charles has been with his Singaporean Indian partner now for 15 years. Both have benefited from the power of gay activism. Early in their relationship, they were part of the ‘Stonewall Immigration Group’, a political organisation that eventually won its campaign for the UK government to allow the foreign national in a same-sex couple to be allowed ‘resident’ status in the UK on the basis of their relationship.

James Followell has served as Music Director & Arranger for Uptown Express, the pop octet of Big Apple Performing Arts, since 1987. James has worked as a musical director, accompanist and arranger with many Broadway and cabaret luminaries including KT Sullivan, Jeff Harnar, Sharon McNight, Karen Mason, Ann Hampton Callaway, Kristen Chenowith, and the incomparable Hildegarde in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Zankel Hall, the Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room, London’s Pizza on the Park and Prince Edward Theater.

Theater credits as a musical director include off-Broadway’s SHOWTUNE,celebrating the words and music of Jerry Herman (vocal and piano arrangements), and THE BEST OF TIMES (featured pianist/singer) at the Vaudeville Theater in London’s West End.

He also has served as musical director/pianist for the Off-Broadway hit, FOREVER PLAID, and toured with its 1st national company. He most recently served in these capacities in the Buffalo Studio Arena and Cleveland Playhouse production of the sequel, PLAID TIDINGS(directed by Stuart Ross).

Wesley Webb, Music Director of the Youth Pride Chorus, is a native of North Dakota, a composer and a writer. Webb served for four years on faculty at New York University teaching writing and has taught music and theatre in the public schools in both Minnesota and New York. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis as well as an M. F. A. from NYU's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. Wes is currently Associate Program Director at National Dance Institute, an organization founded by renowned ballet dancer Jacques d'Amboise that brings dance education into area schools.

Chip Prince, NYCGMC accompanist. As a seventh-grader in Lancaster, New Hampshire, Chip was roped into playing the piano for his junior-high chorus and liked it so much that he continued accompanying choirs through high school and "far too many years of college" at Brigham Young University. Since then he has conducted and played keyboards in Broadway and Off-Broadway shows such as Les Misérables, Ragtime, Fermat's Last Tango, Grey Gardens, The Fantasticks, Titanic, and Baz Luhrmann’s La Bohème. Between Broadway gigs he collaborates with cabaret artists Evangelia Kingsley and Mary Setrakian as music director/pianist. Chip has recently sung tenor professionally as a member of the 2006 Bard Festival Chorus. As an amateur he has sung with Harold Rosenbaum’s Canticum Novum Singers (including appearances in Peter Schickele’s P. D. Q. Bach concerts), the One World Symphony Chorus, the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, and Nelly Vuksic’s Americas Vocal Ensemble. Chip’s partner of over ten years is John Bauder.

Jonnah Speidel, Our Lady J, has worked with the talents of Antony (Antony & the Johnsons), John Hill, Natalie Joy Johnson, Rebecca Luker, Bebe Neuwirth, Kembra (The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black), Armen Ra, Anthony Rapp, Scotty the Blue Bunny, and Shequida in NYC hot spots including Caroline’s on Broadway, The Cutting Room, The Duplex, Feinstein’s at the Regency, Joe’s Pub, and Makor (92nd Street Y). Jonah has served as music director for theatre productions at The Actor’s Studio, LaMaMa ETC, and NYU’s CAP21, and as a pianist has accompanied American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, The Balanchine Foundation, The Metropolitan Opera, and the Mark Morris Dance Group, where he was a featured performer in the MMDG Music Ensemble. Other credits include Off-Broadway: Brundibar, I Love You, You’re Perfect… Now Change!, Fame; National Tours: The Music Man, Miss Saigon. Composition credits include scoring Bertolt Brecht’s Caucasion Chalk Circle for NYU’s Steinhart School of Continuing Education, the one-woman show ILL (as Our Lady J) and the current musical-in-progress The Gift, based on selected works by Jean Genet. Jonah is currently Assistant Music Director for Rosie’s Broadway Kids- Rosie O’Donnell’s in-school musical theatre program for fifth-graders in selected New York City public schools. www.OurLadyJ.com

Tom McGillis has been the principal sign language interpreter for NYCGMC since 1988. His other artistic signing credits include Christmas Revels and several productions with Very Special Arts Theatre Company, the George Street Playhouse and the Paper Mill Playhouse. Tom has voice-interpreted signed productions, including Progress at the Hudson Guild Theatre and Handstone Productions' Anna and Danilo. He studied artistic interpretation at the Juilliard School. He has presented workshops for GALA Choruses, addressing interpreting issues for choral performances. By day, Tom is Vice President of Human Resources for Guideline, Inc., a global business advisory firm. Tom also serves on several business advisory boards, and is a dedicated advocate for individuals with disabilities, in employment, education, and the arts.