CURMUDGEONLY YOURS -- Richard Bonte

Véronique Findling is a French writer, practicing family therapy psychologist and retired business lawyer. A graduate of ‘Sciences Po’ (Political Science Institute of Paris) and the Sorbonne where she obtained a Master’s in European Law, she divides her time between Paris and Provence in the South of France. ‘Masquerades (2018)’ is her first novel.

DaVid Pineda-Huezo was born in Honduras where he was a rising young star cellist at the

prestigious Victoriano Conservatory of Music, and where he also earned a Diploma in Performance and String Pedagogy. He has apprenticed with renown violinist Alejandro Huezo in Honduras, as well as with cellists Carlton McCreery and Martha Gerschevski in the USA. Today, DaVid is not only a talented and hardworking musician, he also restores historically significant bows and instruments. He is a verified appraiser of stringed instruments and often collaborates with auction houses in the United States and England.

Robert Cooperman is the founder and president of Stage Right Theatrics, the country’s only conservative theatre company. He is a playwright, with productions in both Columbus, Ohio and New York City. Originally from Queens, Robert is an Adjunct Professor of English and Theatre at Ohio University, Lancaster. He lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife, Sandra, a German Shepherd Dog (Chakotay), a Collie (Ginger), and three parrots (Tiki, Inca, and Trinity).

Laurie Stoner is a retired CIO (Chief Information Officer) who worked in the commercial printing and agrochemical industries. After moving to Florida, she picked up screenwriting for fun and to develop the artistic side of her brain, but apparently, she couldn’t get too far away from project management. She has led/moderated the Screenwriters Circle and then Sarasota Screenwriters for 15 years. She started Southwest Florida Films in 2017 to develop community film projects.

Ettore Farinelli is an architect living in Rome, Italy. He is the managing director of his company, Silo Impianti. Ettore is an avid skier and loves to go boating in beautiful Sardinia. Art and architecture are his passions, but he can talk about any subject. We will be speaking to him today about Italian politics.

Playwright Jack Gilhooley has been awarded two National Endowment for the Arts grants (Individual Playwright and International to Centaur Theatre, Montreal), four Florida Arts Council Playwriting grants, two Fulbright Guest Artist Awards (to Spain and Ireland), a Eugene O’Neill conference playwright residency, two Puffin Foundation awards and a New York Foundation for the arts grant. His plays have been produced with five Ford Foundation development subsidies. He was awarded the very first John Ringling Fund Artistic Fellowship. His myriad productions have been throughout the US, including on the Asolo mainstage, as well as in England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Australia. He’s an alumnus of the famed New Dramatists in New York.

Robert Spence has spent most of his life as a health administrator but also as a Medic and Operating Room Technician during the height of the Vietnam War. In 1967, Robert was drafted into the US Army. For over a year during 1969-1970, Robert served his country in the 3rd Surgical Hospital in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. When he returned from the war, he obtained his Bachelor’s Degree and a Master’s in Health Administration from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1974. He has worked as an OR Tech at St. John’s Hospital in Smithtown, New York as well as a Health Administrator in the Department of Corrections, a hospital administrator in the Clinton Correction Facility during the 1980’s as well as a regional health administrator.

Alessandra Gianoglio lives in Milan, Italy. She is a multilingual and multicultural millennial and was born in the 1990s in Los Angeles. She was brought up almost from birth in France and schooled in French, British and American English schools. She speaks her three mother tongues, French, Italian and English, in addition to excellent Venezuelan accented-Spanish and Brazilian-accented Portuguese. Alessandra Gianoglio is a multilingual broadcast journalist who has worked for both Fox and Sky Sports in Italy—specializing in tennis reporting. She has played tennis at an international and Division 1 college level for the University of South Florida in Tampa and owns a B.A. in Psychology, an MBA and an MS in Sports and Entertainment Management, all from USF. Today, she lives in Italy, the country from where her mother is from, and is pursuing a career in acting and television.

Robert Vodnoy is the music director of the Chamber Orchestra of Sarasota which he founded in 2017. During the summer season, he is the conductor and music director of the Whiting Park Festival Orchestra, which performs a huge array of popular and classical favorites on the Chicago Lakefront. This past summer was his 18th season with the Whiting Park Orchestra. In October, just prior to returning to Florida, he conducted the fall production of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street at the Memorial Opera House in Valparaiso, Indiana.

Professor Vodnoy has guest-conducted numerous orchestras throughout the world, including the Symphony Orchestra of the Zhejiang Song and Dance Theatre (China), the Orchestra Sinfonica de San Remo (Italy), the Czech National Symphony and the Seoul Philharmonic, just to name a little of what he’s done. Robert Vodnoy was the long-tenured music director of the Southwest Michigan Symphony and the Northwest Indiana Symphony. He also holds a BM summa cum laude and an MM in composition from the University of Hartford.