STAFF
Joel Ponce, System and Outreach Administrator
Joel joined the GLFCAM family at the start of the second season. A Bay Area native, Boonville has quickly become another home for him. Joel has been helping run everything from Academy programming to website management. He works to introduce GLFCAM to new spaces and set up the systems to strengthen our connection with our community.
Outside of the Academy, Joel works as a software engineer. He graduated with a BA in Music Theory from Whitman College where he studied voice and championed opportunities to study and perform music outside of the Western canon. He is currently living in Mexico City where he enjoys singing, writing, and, as the Academy’s Resident Vegan, testing out new vegan recipes for the Academy.
Stephanie M. Neumann, Operations and Audiovisual Administrator
Stephanie joined the GLFCAM family partway through its third season and has been excited to help support fellow artists! She is a composer, saxophonist/vocalist, conductor, and educator, and will take on the role of operations manager—keeping an eye on deadlines, maintaining organization, and working on special projects such as audio/visual. Compositionally, she is interested in using psychoacoustics and spatialization to promote musicality of objects and environments as well as writing pieces that are accessible to a variety of levels and musical backgrounds. You can find her composing and performing works for solo, chamber, and large ensembles, while also continuing her passion as a singer-songwriter. She has worked with groups such as Voci, Portato Portato, Mills Performing Group, Risa Juraslow & Dancers, Lauren Baines Dance/Theatre, and is a member of both the Oak Wind Saxophone Quartet and The Sleight Ensemble. She received an MA in Music Composition from Mills College, BA in Music from Miami University, and a certificate for Audio Engineering from The Recording Workshop.
Working as both an administrator and audiovisual editor/technician at GLFCAM, Stephanie enjoys maintaining organization and efficiency, as well as diving into multiple AV recording and editing projects. http://www.stephaniemneumann.com/
Florinda Larkin, Development Administrator and Director’s Assistant
A Bay Area native, Florinda is thrilled to join the GLFCAM family in its fourth year. A Brazilian-American jazz singer, she has performed in the NYC cabaret scene, as well as in many local jams and original musical theater works. She holds a BA in French Language and Literature from Whitman College. With a background in non-profit work, primarily in community engagement in the direct services arena, she’s honored to help Gabriela as she hones her vision and leads the Academy to thrive as a ground-breaking, paradigm-shifting organization. These days, you’ll find her singing to her husband’s guitar, serenading their sweet pooch Bubba Mingus while tending to her cottage garden.
Ever curious and flexible, Florinda enjoys juggling various tasks in supporting Gabriela and GLFCAM in its daily operations. She also takes charge in finding new grant and funding opportunities to grow our reach.
Jungyoon Wie, Program Development and Archive Administrator
Jungyoon joins the GLFCAM family in its fourth year. She uses her experience as a composer to support GLFCAM artists in various ways, including developing programs, doing PR and proofreading music scores for our composers, as well as compiling study materials for an online library.. She is one of the biggest fans of Gabriela and her Academy.
A Francis Richard Fellow from Cycle Eight (“Mallets and Strings”), Jungyoon is a composer, educator, and a pianist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has collaborated with wonderful creative artists and organizations such as Toko Shiiki (director of film, Han for string quartet), the Del Sol String Quartet, Converge String Quartet, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, American Composers Forum, and the National Orchestra Institute among others. She received the Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition from the University of Michigan in 2020. With her recent move to San Francisco during the pandemic, she found a new love of collecting and propagating indoor plants.
Danny Gouker, Artistic Wellness Counselor
Danny is a trumpet player, composer, and psychotherapist based in New York City. He is an alumni of GLFCAM cycles 6 (Duo Cortona) and 8 (Mallets and Strings). He has released three albums of composed and improvised music, two for the jazz quartet Signal Problems, made up of long-time friends and collaborators. He has also contributed to the original projects of numerous musicians in the New York area over the last 10 years with an emphasis on generosity and friendship as tenets of his side man work.
His work as a composer-performer is built around a love for exploring dynamics of human interaction, looking for playful ways to challenge performers and audience members to experience what transpires between each other and amongst themselves with new eyes and ears. He loves the unique experience GLFCAM offerings bring to composers and performers, allowing time for experimentation, flexibility, and authenticity.
In 2019, between his two GLFCAM cycles, Danny chose to further pursue his love of human interaction with a Master’s degree in Social Work. Since 2020, he has been working full time as an Licensed Master Social Worker in community mental health settings as well as private practice in NYC. He has developed special areas of focus working with creativity, spirituality, relational trauma, and the criminal justice system. Danny is looking forward to bringing the breadth of his experience to developing the Artistic Wellness program with GLFCAM.
Iman Habibi, Facilitator-Mentor for Composing Earth
Iman Habibi, D.M.A. (Michigan), is an Iranian-Canadian composer and pianist, and a founding member of the piano duo ensemble, Piano Pinnacle.
Hailed as “a giant in talent” (the Penticton Herald), "whose technical mastery is matched by his musical and cultural literacy" (Hudson-Housatonic Arts), Dr. Habibi has been commissioned by The Boston Symphony, The Philadelphia, and Toronto Symphony Orchestras, The Orchestra of St. Luke's and The Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, and has been programmed by The Carnegie Hall, The Tanglewood Music Festival, and The Canadian Opera Company, among others.
He is a 2022 laureate of the Azrieli Music Prizes, and has received multiple SOCAN Foundation Awards, The International Composers’ Award at the Esoterics’ POLYPHONOS (2012), The Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Awards for Emerging Artist in Music (2011), Brehm Prize in Choral Music (2016), as well as numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, BC and Ontario Arts Councils.
For more, please visit: ImanHabibi.com
Marco-Adrián Ramos, Administrative Intern
Marco-Adrián Ramos is a Mexican-American composer whose potent and eclectic music spans a variety of media including works for voice, instrumental and electroacoustic ensembles, and dance. His work has been sought and performed by a variety of institutions and ensembles including the FLUX Quartet, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, 45th Parallel, the Juilliard Orchestra, the Yale Philharmonia, the New York Youth Symphony, the Houston Symphony, ZOFO Piano Duo, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Emmanuel Music, the Aspen Music Festival, the Next Festival of Emerging Artists, and the Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music.
Recognitions include three ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, an artist grant from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, the Arthur Friedman Prize (Juilliard), the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the William Schuman Prize from the BMI Foundation. Marco-Adrián holds degrees from The Juilliard School and Yale University’s School of Music; cherished mentors have included artists like Christopher Lacy, Mari Kimura, Rebecca Scott, Derek Bermel, Gabriela Lena Frank, and David Lang.
Jainned McDonnell, Bookkeeper
Jainned McDonnell, a first-generation Thai American, raised in the rich mosaic of San Francisco and now calls the serene hills of Anderson Valley home. Living off the grid and nurturing her home garden, she finds inspiration among the redwood trees. As a dedicated bookkeeper in Boonville, Jainned is also on a transformative journey, pursuing her doctoral degree in psychology. She's excited to be a part of the growing community of passionate composers at GLFCAM.
Jeremy Lyon, Property Manager and Videographer
A Napa native with forbearers who sought their fortunes in the California Gold Rush, Jeremy is connected to the Anderson Valley through his grandfather, a Boonville native, who owned a music store in coastal Fort Bragg and spoke Boontling. While music was a constant in his family — Jeremy’s father was a 70s rock-n-roller and his brother is an accomplished electric bass player — Jeremy was compelled towards nature as part of what would become the back-to-the-land movement. His interests took him to the mountains, rivers, and forests where for decades, he honed his skills as an outdoorsman and gardener. His work rehabilitating pit bulls and rescuing exotic animals as well as managing a fishing lodge in the Trinity Alps further round out this adventurer upon whom wilderness philosopher John Muir would have smiled.
Nowadays, Jeremy’s time is taken up with building his dream farms along principles of permaculture, Timberstone Mountain Farm and the Timberstone Guest Cottage (Lyon House), both of which he co-owns with his composer lady Gabriela. As videographer and co-host for the Academy, he delights composers and performers with gifts from his treasure hunts of local semi-precious stones, showing off reptiles and chickens he hand-raises, and serving as a general nature guide to Boonville and the surrounding areas of Mendocino County.