Faculty & Staff

FULL TIME MUSIC FACULTY

CRAIG BOVE Composer/performer Craig Bove earned his undergraduate degree at Northwestern’s School of Music and completed his formal training with a PhD at SUNY Buffalo, studying under such NewMusic luminaries as Morton Feldman, LeJaren Hiller, Donald Erb, and Bernard Rands. His compositions have been performed throughout the country in both live performances and radio broadcasts. He has served as the conductor of the Middlebury Wind Ensemble and has performed, conducted and presided over concerts of new and standard repertoire including performances at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York, the BOCA Art Center in New York, KPFARadio in San Francisco, and NPR Radio affiliates in New York, Vermont and California.He has performed regularly with free jazz ensembles, big bands, and small jazz combos. Mr. Bove’s own compositions reflect an interest in forging a personal musical language. The emotional collectivism of Mahler is paired with the underpinnings of Webernian structure. His most recent works have taken as their sources the model of a perpetually evolving psychological narrative as an associate/guide to the persistence of nascent sound. He has written for orchestra, various combinations of chamber groups, and vocal ensembles.

At CPCC, Bove teaches Music theory, Music History, Composition as well as conducts the pit orchestra for Opera Theatre productions. He also serves as discipline chair for the music department.

REBECCA COOK-CARTER Rebecca Cook-Carter is a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee. She received her Bachelor of Music Degree in Vocal Performance from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and her Master of Music Degree in Vocal Performance from Indiana University at Bloomington, where she studied with the renowned teacher, Margaret Harshaw. After graduating Rebecca spent the next five years at the San Francisco Opera, where she participated in the Merola Opera Program, won the 1978 San Francisco Opera Grand Finals, and apprenticed in the San Francisco Opera/Affiliate Artists Program (currently known as Adler Fellows). During this time Rebecca sang many roles both leading and secondary. Her apprenticeship in San Francisco culminated with her performances as Micaela in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s production of CARMEN and as a substitute for an ailing Monserrat Caballe as Amelia in UN BALLO IN MASCHERA. In 1981 Rebecca was also a National Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera Auditions.

As a lyric spinto soprano, Rebecca has sung leading roles in major opera companies in America and Europe, such as Zurich Opera, San Francisco Opera, Nationaltheater Mannheim, Portland Opera, Basel Opera, Hawaii Opera, Hamburg Opera, Miami Opera and many others. Rebecca has also returned to her hometown of Chattanooga on many occasions to perform with their symphony and opera company. As a result she was proclaimed a ‘Distinguished Citizen’ of Chattanooga.

Rebecca returned from Europe, where she lived for ten years, with her family to Charlotte, North Carolina. Along with performing, Rebecca also directs the CPCC Opera Theatre, where she has developed a thriving operatic training program. As a result, Rebecca has the unique privilege of performing and also sharing her knowledge and expertise. Her most challenging, yet rewarding role has been that of wife to Ellis, and mother to Austin and Kayla.

BEVERLY RUSSELL Beverly Maulden Russell grew up in Kannapolis, NC. She received a B.S. in Applied Music from Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC where she was a piano student of Dr. Jess Casey and later earned an M.A. in Performance from the College of New Jersey in Trenton, studying with Jack Ervin. Additional study was with the late Gary Towlen, a former CPCC Visiting Artist. Since moving to Charlotte in 1979 Beverly has taught diverse piano-related classes at CPCC including applied piano, piano pedagogy, piano literature, class piano and piano ensemble. Prior to her work at CPCC she taught the music education program at St. Ann’s Catholic School. In the summer of 2000 she became music librarian in the Sloan-Morgan building and continues to perform and teach piano classes and private students.

SARA SPENCER Sara Starnes Spencer teaches Theory I and II and the three early music ensembles, organizes the Thursday Recital Series and is college organist for graduation ceremonies. A native of Hickory, NC and child of educators, she attended public schools and studied piano with Grace Hart and organ with Larry Lowder and Dr. Richard Peek prior to graduation from high school. She graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in organ performance and studied her junior year at the Mozarteum Academy in Salzburg, Austria. Her teachers included Elizabeth Lasley, piano and Ray Ferguson, Josef Friedrich Doppelbauer and Fenner Douglas, organ. She earned her Masters in Sacred Music from Union Theological Seminary in New York, studying harpsichord with Eugenia Earle and organ with Dr. Vernon de Tar. In 1967 she moved to Charlotte to serve as Organist and Music Assistant at Myers Park Baptist Church. Throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s she balanced the roles of mother, free-lance musician, part-time instructor in the CPCC music department and community volunteer, working with her neighbors in the Dilworth Community Development Association. She served on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission and the Charlotte Historic District Commission and was elected to the Charlotte City Council for five terms (1993-2003) as District 1 representative.

Sara believes in the power of public education and the community college’s open-door philosophy which offers opportunity to everyone. In fact, she honed her skills in recorder, krummhorn, harp and tenor viola da gamba in the community college environment.

Sara teaches three early music ensembles whose students are a mixture of traditional music students and life-long learners, some with extensive music education. This student mixture creates a dynamic teaching-learning environment. The Evening Recorder Ensemble is comprised of life-long learners who work to improve their playing skills and to learn more about Renaissance and early Baroque culture and music. The Early Music Consort is a by-audition ensemble playing later Medieval, Renaissance and early Baroque music. Most members play recorders and some other winds – krummhorns, flutes, shawm, sackbut, cornetto, etc. Current membership includes a viola da gamba quintet and harp quartet. The Baroque Ensemble, also by-audition, uses the college’s French double harpsichord, built by Richard Kingston.

ROXANNE WATSON Roxanne Holt Watson received the Bachelor of Music Degree from the State University of New York at Potsdam, the Master of Music Degree from Indiana University, and the Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her DMA document title is Six Chants Polonias (Sech Polnische Lieder): Liszt’s Transcriptions from Chopin’s Songs, Opus 74. Dr. Watson is the music director of the CPCC Opera Theatre. Previously Dr. Watson has taught at Wingate University and Montreat College. She has been on the board of the Charlotte Piano Teachers’ Forum and serves as an adjudicator for piano contests/festivals in North and South Carolina. She is an active soloist, accompanist, and chamber music collaborator.

HOLLY MAURER received a BA from St. Lawrence University in music and religion and the MM from The New England Conservatory in performance practice of early music. She performs regularly with Carolina Baroque of Salisbury, NC and has been a member of Carolina Pro Music of Charlotte for 15 seasons playing viola da gamba, transverse flute and recorder. She has performed extensively in the southeast and toured London with Carolina Pro Musica in 2005. Before becoming a full time faculty member of Central Piedmont Community College, she taught at Rowan Cabarrus Community College, Queens College and UNC Charlotte.