Lower east side performing arts
Board of Directors
artistic director & treasurer
Mary Hurlbut
Mary Hurlbut has sung with Sonora Trio, Art Loisaida Foundation, Downtown Music Productions, the Downtown Ensemble, the American Festival of Microtonal Music, The Lark Ascending ,The SoHo Baroque Opera, Cygnus Ensemble, and The New Music Consort. Venues have included The Kitchen, Roulette, La MaMa La Galleria, Symphony Space, Merkin Hall, Weill Hall, Theater for the New City, the Performing Garage and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. She has shared extensive collaborations with composer Elodie Lauten. She appears on 4Tay Records and has performed on WNYC’s New Sounds. She has also appeared on Chanel One, and participated in the Women’s Work series curated by composer Beth Anderson. She is on faculty at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, Greenwich House Music School and the Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology.
president
Carolyn Ratcliffe
She is a longtime East Village Resident who has been active in many neighborhood organizations as well as chairs the Arts and Culture Subcommittee of CB#3. She holds a Masters in Non Profit Management and a BA in Art and works as a Development Director for Downtown Music Productions.
secretary
Nicholas Birns
Nicholas Birns is a scholar and critic born in New York City. Raised in the East Village, he pursued an academic career focused on global literary history. He serves as an instructor at New York University and has authored several academic texts, including Contemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet Dead and Theory after Theory.
Birns has edited numerous volumes on Latin American and world literatures. His bibliography includes extensive contributions to literary journals, encyclopedias, and reference works concerning modern fiction and poetry.
media director
Jeffrey James
Jeffrey James is an arts consultant who has worked with many composers, instrumentalists, conductors, orchestras, chamber ensembles and arts related organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America since 1981. He was Operations Manager for Long Island’s Nassau Symphony Orchestra from 1988 to 1991, when he opened Jeffrey James Arts Consulting. He was the Executive Director of the Vakhtang Jordania International Conducting Competition in Ukraine and a juror and Special Adviser for the Ibla International Music Competition in Italy and has been part of New York Foundation for the Arts SOS Panels and the NY State Council on the Arts’ Decentralization Program Advisory Board . He is President of 4Tay Records. Locally, he has served on the Boards of Directors of the American Chamber Ensemble, the Gemini Youth Orchestra, and the LI Arts Council at Freeport. He is past Chairman on the Board of The Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame and lives in Farmingdale, NY with his wife Lisa, a renowned poet. His website is at http://www.jamesarts.com.
