Dolores Hydock is an actress and story performer, whose work has been featured at a variety of concerts, festivals, and special events throughout the U.S. She is a touring artist for the Alabama State Council on the Arts, a speaker with the Alabama Humanities Foundation, and a member of the Southern Order of Storytellers. Her six CDs of original stories have all received Resource Awards from Storytelling World Magazine. Find out more at her website storypower.org

Kim Bain, Lori Ardovino, Sallie White, Jon S. Remley

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BACKGROUND to CD: Pianist Heather Coltman and Soprano Diane McNaron presented the US premieres of Cuatro Canciones, Dos Canciones and Piezas Breves, by Argentine composer Valdo Sciammarela, on the Dorothy F. Schmidt College Chamber Music Series at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, on October 28, 2007. His song cycle Cantigas de Amigo, also featured on the recital, has been performed by McNaron for years, after Austin, Texas choral arranger Howard Burkett discovered a rare copy in a Birmingham, Alabama music store. Recently establishing contact with the composer, following a search also involving colleagues at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, McNaron and Coltman will release an album of his works, including songs, piano solo and chamber music, late in 2008. This marks the first time most of this music, largely unpublished, has been recorded. The vocal and piano portions will be recorded at Florida Atlantic University recording studios.

In 1997 Tony Lombardo and Tom Dameron had dinner at Chez Lulu in Mountain Brook and at that dinner the legendary Pineapple Skinners came to life.  Both men had a burning desire to play traditional jazz and thought that a five member acoustic band would be the perfect format to do so.  Joining them were their friends Chuck King, Sam Ranelli Jr. and Mike Cogan.  The group experimented with a number of styles of Dixieland Jazz and finally evolved as a group with their own distinctive and eclectic sound.  The band plays all styles, but with just enough of a twist to be different.  On their CD you can hear traditional jazz, big band tunes and even ukulele and lap steel.

The Band’s name cam from an episode of the Andy Griffith Show that finds Barney buying Thelma Lou a present...he picks her up a pineapple skinner.  Tony should know because in the early 1990s he taught a course at UAB about the classic sitcom.

The members of the band are all unique individuals in their own right.  Tony teaches at John Carroll High, Tom is an artist and Hospital Pharmacist at Carraway Methodist Medical Center, Chuck teaches music, performs and is a professional photographer, Mike works for DHL and repairs and restores instruments, and Sam works for EWTN.  Tom and Tony deal with the business end of the group while Chuck and Mike are the real musical directors with Sam being the spiritual advisor.  There is a brotherhood shared that transcends the music...they also enjoy and have fun together.

The band plays traditional gigs, but also has been hired for funerals, weddings and one divorce.

You can visit their website at http://www.pineappleskinners.com

Cellist Craig Hultgren is a long-time activist for new music, the newly creative arts, and the avant-garde.  This year he has performed solo concerts and chamber music in St, Louis, Miami, Atlanta, Denver, Memphis and Bowling Green, Ohio.  A recipient of two Artist Fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, he is a member of Thámyris, a contemporary chamber music ensemble in Atlanta.  A cellist in the Alabama Symphony, he also plays in the Chagall Trio and Luna Nova, a new music ensemble with a large repertoire of performances available as podcast downloads on iTunes.  Hultgren is featured in three solo CD recordings including The Electro-Acoustic Cello Book on Living Artist Recordings.  In 2004, the Birmingham Sidewalk Film Festival 48-Hour Scramble cited him for the best soundtrack creation for the film The Silent Treatment.  Every other year, he produces the Hultgren Solo Cello Works Biennial, an international competition that highlights the best new compositions for the instrument.  He teaches at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the Alabama School of Fine Arts and Birmingham-Southern College where he directs the BSC New Music Ensemble.

Artburst Performances Include: An Evening of Kurt Weill Called by Marilyn Horne, "a pioneer for his age," Thomas Bagwell served as assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera from 1997-2006. Other long term opera house affiliations include the Washington National Opera and the Santa Fe opera. He has been a participant at the Marlboro Music Festival and has collaborated in recital with such luminaries as Midori, Marilyn Horne, Susan Graham, Frederica von Stade, Denyce Graves and James Morris. His career has taken him to such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Musikverein, the Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall and many others.

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Grant Dalton is the Instructor of Percussion Studies at Samford University where he directs the Samford Percussion Ensemble and Samford Steel, the university’s steel drum band.

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Karen Bentley Pollick is a native of Palo Alto, California where she was concertmaster and conductor of the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra and studied with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco. She then attended Indiana University where she studied violin with Josef Gingold, coached string quartets with Rostislav Dubinsky and graduated with a Masters of Music Degree in Violin Performance in 1987. Other violin teachers include Nathan Milstein, Yuval Yaron, Glenn and Harold Dicterow, and David Balakrishnan.

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