Teaching Artists/Specialists

Ronald Radford is known internationally as the American master of the Flamenco guitar. He began his career as the protégé of the legendary Carlos Montoya. As the only individual ever to be awarded a Fulbright scholarship in Flamenco, Ronald studied with guitar masters Diego del Gastor and Paco de Lucia. He has traveled thousands of miles in Spain studying the music and life of the Spanish gypsies. From Australia to Switzerland and from Canada to Panama, his international tours have taken him to 15 countries. He has been enthusiastically received at concerts in New York’s Carnegie Recital Hall and Washington’s Kennedy Center, as well as many other venues throughout the US. Ronald was born in California but now resides in St. Louis.

Robert Reed uses his theater and operatic experiences in his roles with the Union Avenue Opera. Robert earned his bachelor of arts in music from Oklahoma Christian University of Science and Arts, and then moved to St. Louis, where he worked on his master’s at the St. Louis Symphony Community Music School. He won several district meet auditions, and sang with many regional opera companies, including Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Tulsa Opera, Muddy River Opera Company, and Union Avenue Opera Theatre. Robert has also sung with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

Tessa Reed is a senior Dance major at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville with a Religous Studies minor. She’s performed in SIUEs main stage productions of Dance in Concert, and in the SIUEs spring dance production, Opus. This, however, will be something new for her, performing with Atrek Dance Collective.

Linda Relerford is a poet and teaching artist.

Ed Reggi is a professional improvisational actor who has toured around the world. He attended The Second City in Chicago – birthplace of Improvisational Theatre – and studied with the company’s founder Paul Sills. Reggi received a bachelor of fine arts from Fontbonne University in 1995. In July of 2000, he founded the St. Louis Improv Project. Reggi is a member of Actors Equity Association and serves as the Coordinator of Theatre Department at the Center of Creative Arts and as the Artistic Director of Paper Slip Theatre.

After a childhood in New York City, Daniel Romano attended the University of Southern Florida, where he majored in journalism. He always wanted to work with children, so he quit journalism school and became a pre–school teacher. At Webster University, where he received a bachelor of arts in education, he met Lynn Rubright, professor and master storyteller, who gave him the idea of teaching “Family Stories”. Audiences loved hearing of his adventures growing up in an extended family in Queens. Today Daniel brings folktales and stories from the Old West to audiences at the public libraries, St. Louis Storytelling Festival, and at many schools and day care centers throughout the area.

For close to 30 years, Stan Roodman was a professor at St. Louis University School of Medicine. He served as Technical Director of the Clinical Immunology Laboratory and as Director of the Graduate Program in Pathology Department. After retiring from SLU in 1999, he began volunteering one day a week at Carver School mentoring and tutoring students in reading. For many years he has served as a judge in the Honors Division of the Science Fair. Stan has also helped science teachers develop science lessons that utilize the experiential or hands–on approach to learning. From 1992–1996 he was head of the High School Biology Teachers’ Internship program in Immunology in St. Louis.

Adam Rugo has been studying African Drumming and culture for the last ten years. He teaches all ages from young children and high school students to college students, adults, and the elderly. Adam has studied and performed with master African drummers and dancers here in the United States and in the Ivory Coast, West Africa. He hopes that, through drumming and dance, people from different parts of the world and with different heritages can understand one another and share the joy of movement and music together. Before he took up African drumming, Adam played guitar in rock bands. He learned from reading books about the music that much of American pop music has its rhythmic foundations in Africa, so he decided to go back to the source and learn how the music he loves got created.