Teachers and Speakers

Celebrating the Spectrum is led by MSU Professors of Piano Deborah Moriarty and Derek Polischuk, both veteran performers and recording artists, the Celebrating the Spectrum festival assembles each year an array of knowledgeable individuals to offer a well-rounded experience for participants.

Deborah Moriarty is professor of piano and chair of the piano area at the Michigan State University College of Music, where she is a recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Award. A Massachusetts native, she made her debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at age 11. She has served on the piano faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music and the University of Lowell. Moriarty attended the Curtis Institute of Music, the Juilliard School, and the New England Conservatory of Music, where she received her Master of Music degree with honors. Major teachers include: Russell Sherman, Theodore Lettvin, and Beveridge Webster. A medal winner in the “Concours Debussy,” she is an active recitalist and soloist with orchestras throughout the eastern United States. She has also performed in Belgium, Japan, Colombia, Mexico, China, Italy, and the former Soviet Union. Moriarty is a founding member of the Fontana Ensemble of Michigan, and as an advocate of new music, has participated in numerous premiere performances including Milton Babbitt’s “Whirled Series” at Merkin Hall in New York City. She has recordings on the Crystal, CRI, Blue Griffin and Centaur labels.

Derek Polischuk is professor of piano and director of piano pedagogy at the Michigan State University College of Music. Polischuk received the Doctor of Music Arts Degree from the University of Southern California where he studied with Daniel Pollack. Polischuk has worked extensively with pianists on the Autism Spectrum for many years, and he has published articles on the subject in the MTNA e-Journal and American Music Teacher. At MSU, Polischuk has been the recipient of the Curricular Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Award and the Teacher-Scholar Award. In 2013, “Terra Incognita,” Polischuk’s recording of Impromptus by Franz Schubert and Thomas Osborne, was described in a review as a “thought-provoking mix of sensual pleasure and deep reflection.” In 2024, he released “Many Hands,” a recording of classical works by women composers featuring collaborations with four of his top MSU students.

Randy Napoleon was born in Brooklyn and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and he began his journey in jazz immediately after finishing his studies at the University of Michigan. Jeff Hamilton of the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra invited the young Napoleon to do a series of performances with them at the Hollywood Bowl. From there, Napoleon’s career took off, first touring nationally and internationally for a year with pianist Benny Green, and then full time with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. A three-year stint with crooner Michael Buble followed; Napoleon is featured on Buble’s Grammy-nominated CD “Caught in the Act.” Today, Napoleon is one of the most sought-after guitarists, known as a forward-thinking musician with a passion for the jazz guitar tradition. In addition to backing the best, he leads his own bands, joined the MSU College of Music faculty in fall 2014 where is serves as associate professor of jazz guitar and associate director of jazz studies.

Patrick Johnson is assistant professor of music theory at the MSU College of Music. He utilizes his dual expertise as a concert pianist and a music theorist to engage his students artistically and intellectually, striving to enrich students’ aural and expressive understanding of music while helping them to analyze and to think critically about it. He is the recipient of MSU’s Excellence-in-Teaching Citation (2013), awarded to six teaching assistants university-wide and the highest honor for instructors of that rank. As a pianist, Johnson performs regularly throughout the Midwest as a solo, chamber, and orchestral pianist. He received a Bachelor of Musical Arts in piano performance, with high honors, from the University of Michigan and holds a Master of Music degree in music theory and both a Master of Music and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance from Michigan State University.

David McCarthy teaches interdisciplinary courses on African American arts and entertainment, community song, the global 1960s, remote work and estranged labor, and sound technology at the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. He organizes community events, including an arts series in Lansing’s juvenile detention facility, a concert series for a mutual aid society devoted to experimentalism across the performing arts in Mid-Michigan, and annual caroling parties featuring an eclectic international repertoire. His research can be found in the academic journal Twentieth Century Music, the edited volume The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies, the socialist journal Against the Current, and other publications. For more information, please visit his website, 21potluck.com.

Lauren Julius Harris is a Chicago native and was educated in its public schools. His belief that music matters, the topic of his presentation for this program, grows out of a love for music first nurtured by his parents, his best teachers. Thanks to them, he had the good fortune to begin learning about and enjoying music and other art forms while still a child, starting with piano lessons on his mother’s Baldwin grand. These were precious gifts and enriched his life. In 1965, he joined the faculty in the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University, where he’s been ever since. A member of the program in Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Harris teaches courses in developmental psychology, history of psychology, and neuropsychology. His research ranges from laboratory studies of cognition, emotion, and laterality of function, to studies in the history of psychology and neuroscience. Throughout, he’s been fortunate to have outstanding colleagues and students. He has served on the editorial boards of Developmental Psychology, the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, Developmental Neuropsychology, Laterality, and Brain and Cognition.

Rosanna “Nahnie” Barberio grew up in Lansing and earned associates degrees in dance and civil engineering technology. She studied at The Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in New York, returned to LCC as a modern dance and movement for the actor instructor, and performed, choreographed and directed various theater and dance productions. In 1994, she moved to New York to continue at Graham School, and in 1996 received a scholarship for Teacher Trainee Certification in The Graham Technique. While completing her training at Graham School, she began studying another discipline, The Pilates Method of Body Conditioning, and received her Pilates Certification in 1999. The following year she opened her own Pilates studio in Brooklyn where she lived and taught for eight years. Rosanna returned to Michigan, teaching The Pilates Method at her own studio. She has been a Celebrating the Spectrum staff member at MSU since its launch in July 2016, where she teaches Introduction to The Pilates Method to the select group of young musicians.