The Encore Effect

Chuck Jarrell grew up in southern West Virginia and is a 10th generation Virginian-West Virginian. He earned degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Business Administration from West Virginia University and later earned a PhD in Business Administration. Chuck spent much of his career in sales and marketing and worked in varied industries, including the chemical, portrait photography, direct mail and printing, medical, and computer and electronic technology industries. He currently teaches at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix AZ where he is also the Faculty Chair of Marketing.
Chuck helped organize the Encore of Pheonix Chorale in 2024 and serves as Coordinator. He is an Edler at Horizon Church in Phoenix where he has led mission trips to Mexico, Honduras, and Turkey. He is the Stated Clerk for Hope Presbytery, which is made up of 11 churches in Arizona that are affiliated with ECO, a Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterian Churches. In his spare time, Chuck enjoys family history research, astronomy, travel, and sports. He has three adult children and six wonderful grandchildren.

Kathryn Harsha brings extensive experience and passion to her work as Artistic Director and conductor. She earned a Master of Music in Conducting from the Cleveland Institute of Music and a Bachelor of Arts in Piano Performance from Bluffton University. While studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, she served as Assistant Conductor of the Chorale des Étudiants Etrangères and studied conducting at the Messiaen Conservatoire in Saint-Maurice, France. She has conducted performances in France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Ireland, and Scotland, including performances at the Kennedy Center, Severance Hall, and St. Giles’ Cathedral.
In Cleveland, she led the Lakeland Civic Orchestra and served as Music Director of Opera per Tutti (now Cleveland Opera Theater). For 20 years, Kathryn directed the Sing Out! benefit concerts for the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center, with the Visionary Voice award named in her honor in 2018. Kathryn enjoys sharing her love of music with all ages, and spent four seasons with the Peabody Children’s Chorus as Assistant Director, Accompanist, and Chorus Manager and as Executive Director of the Opus Community Music School, overseeing significant organizational growth and expanded musical opportunities.
Kathryn is honored to serve as Artistic Director for Programming at Encore Creativity, and as Artistic Director of the Alexandria Choral Society and Pro Coro Alexandria, where she continues to share her love of music and commitment to artistic excellence.

Dr. Sandra C. Quinn is a distinguished scholar whose mixed methods research has transformed understanding of vaccine acceptance, health communication, and racial disparities in public health outcomes. During her 13 years at UMD's School of Public Health, she served as Professor, Senior Associate Director of the Maryland Center for Health Equity (MCHE), Chair of the Department of Family Science, and Associate Dean for Public Health Initiatives and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.  From 2000-2010, she was Professor in the Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences and Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Education at the Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh.Dr. Quinn's research team raised over well over $12 million in funding and published 129 articles in high-impact journals. She has been the PI on CDC, NIH, FDA and foundation grants focused on trust, vaccine acceptance, vaccine disparities, and communication during routine and emergency situations, and engagement of racial/ethnic minorities in research.  She led the establishment of the University's first Pandemic Preparedness Institute.  As a recognized national leader, she chaired a National Academies of Sciences workshop on building trust in public health emergency response and served as a member of the National Academy’s Committee on Evidence-Based Practice for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response.  In MCHE, she led such grants as Building Trust Between Minorities and Researchers to develop educational curriculum for researchers working with minority communities, and a resource on participation in research for communities.  She was PI on a NIH grant, Supplementing Survey-Based Analyses of Group Vaccination Narratives and Behaviors Using Social Media, one of the first NIH grants to examine the impact of social media on vaccine attitudes and behavior.  The Dr. Sandra C. Quinn Graduate Student Support Fund was established in her honor upon her retirement in 2023.
Dr. Quinn has been singing with Encore since September 2014.  She co-chairs the Arts & Health Research Committee and chaired the Encore COVID Task Force.  She currently sings in Annapolis Rocks and Broadway in DC.

DeDe Pruett was born and raised in Minnesota and attended Catholic schools throughout her education, including grade school, an all-girls high school, and St. Catherine University (formerly the College of St. Catherine), which is now home to the largest women's undergraduate program in the United States. She later attended graduate school at the University of Hawaii. A lifelong learner, DeDe graduated as salutatorian of her high school class and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Mu Epsilon at St. Catherine University, as well as Beta Phi Mu at the University of Hawaii.
After marrying a career Navy officer, DeDe had the opportunity to live in many parts of the country, including Castine, Maine; Monterey, California; Newport, Rhode Island; Oahu, Hawaii; Virginia Beach, Virginia; and Vienna, Virginia, before eventually returning home to Minnesota.
Professionally, DeDe worked as a public librarian for 13 years with the Fairfax County Public Library system in Virginia. Her path to Encore Creativity came through this career in libraries and lifelong learning.
Music has been part of DeDe's life since childhood. She learned piano from a teenage neighbor and studied it throughout high school. While piano recitals were never her favorite activity, she discovered a love for choral singing early on. As a seventh and eighth grader, she sang at daily Latin Masses and often volunteered to sing at weddings and funerals. Looking back, choral singing was the musical activity she enjoyed most. Although she did not sing with an organized choir again for many years, she continued singing at Mass and maintained her lifelong appreciation for music.

Wendy Miller, Ph.D. ATR-BC, LCPAT, REAT, LPC, BCPC is a writer, sculptor, educator, and expressive arts therapist. She taught for over fifteen years in various universities throughout the country, including John F Kennedy University, San Francisco State University, Southwestern College, Lesley College, California Institute of Integral Studies, and The George Washington University. She is a practicing clinician and the co-founder of Create Therapy Institute, which offers clinical services in arts-based psychotherapy and trainings in the expressive arts. She is a founding member, and first elected (past) executive co-chair of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association, where she continues to be on their Advisory Council. Her current work is evolving as she integrates her own work with the legacy of her late husband’s work, pioneer of creative aging, Gene Cohen. 
      Miller’s skills take her into the worlds of fine art, writing, psychology, expressive arts therapy and mind-body medicine.  She has published on medical illness and the arts as complementary medicine, the use of sand tray therapy with internationally adopted children, experiential approaches to supervision in expressive arts therapy, and on the cultural responsibility of the arts in therapy. She continues to research the relationships among the arts, creativity, aging, and health. She has published her book from the writing she and Gene did together, entitled: Sky Above Clouds: Finding our way through creativity, aging and illness, released in March 2016 from Oxford University Press. (www.sky-above-clouds.com). Miller is a speaker available for conference keynotes, conversational readings, and presentations on life-cycle challenges and creative aging.

Mary Ann East has been with Encore Creativity for Older Adults since August 2018 when she began conducting the Encore Chorale at Goodwin House Bailey’s Crossroads. In September of 2019 Mary Ann became the Program Director of Sentimental Journey Singers, Encore’s choral program for singers with early to mid-stage cognitive change and their care partners. On June 1, 2022 Mary Ann became the Director of Arts for Life working to expand Encore’s programing for those with cognitive change.
 
Mary Ann has taught music to ages 3-93. She is a former Fairfax County Public School music teacher where she taught elementary general music through high school choir and former adjunct professor at George Mason University.
Mary Ann is currently the Music Director at Community of Faith UMC in Herndon (VA) and Co-Founder/Artistic Director of Capital Harmonia, a local women’s chorus whose mission is to bring music composed by women and for women’s voices to the DC area through partnerships with local women’s organizations.
Mary Ann holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Music Education from Boston University, a Master of Music in Choral Conducting and Vocal Performance from George Mason University, and a Bachelor of Music Education from Indiana University.

Terry Fulmer, PhD, RN, FAAN, is President Emerita of The John A. Hartford Foundation in New York City, a foundation dedicated to improving the care of older adults. She serves as the chief strategist for the Foundation and her vision for better care of older adults is catalyzing the Age-Friendly Health Systems social movement. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and served on the independent Coronavirus Commission for Safety and Quality in Nursing Homes.
She previously served as Distinguished Professor and Dean of Health Sciences at Northeastern University and Founding Dean of the New York University College of Nursing. Dr. Fulmer is nationally and internationally recognized as a leading expert in geriatrics and is also known for conceptualization and development of the national NICHE program and research on the topic of elder abuse and neglect.
She is the first nurse to have served on the board of the American Geriatrics Society. She is also the first nurse to have served as President of the Gerontological Society of America, which awarded her the 2019 Donald P. Kent Award for exemplifying the highest standards for professional leadership in the field of aging.

Dan Cohen, MSW, founder and CEO of Right to Music, is a passionate advocate for integrating best practice music-based interventions into healthcare, especially long-term care and for all persons with dementia.  In 2010 he founded Music & Memory, a nonprofit organization that promotes the use of personalized music to enhance the well-being of the elderly and infirm. The therapeutic and joyful outcomes of his work are portrayed in the Sundance audience award-winning documentary, "Alive Inside.”
You can watch the documentary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPIORV5NekM
He has presented at numerous healthcare and dementia caregiver conferences in the United States and internationally.  Driven by his vision of widespread adoption of music-based interventions, he is focused on advocating for policy changes, raising public awareness, improving research, and modifying the curriculum for future healthcare professionals. Additionally, he is a co-founder of the International Music and Dementia Advocacy Coalition, which seeks to expand global access to music for people with dementia.

You can find Jamie's Donor Interview in the July 2025 issue of Encore Extra!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ca_Q1UsqveLR8oF1FR6hzWjvuv0FqG-b/view
 
Jamie Wooten is a tenor with both DC Chorale and DC Rocks, and resides in Chevy Chase.  Professionally, he enjoyed a 20 plus year career in Hollywood, writing and producing 400 episodes of television, including many seasons of the classic sitcom "The Golden Girls", spending every day laughing with Bea, Rue, Estelle and the deliciously dirty-minded Betty White.  He won the Writers Guild of America Award working with those wonderful women.  He wrote comedy for many others, including George Burns, Cindy Williams, Barbara Mandrell, Tyne Daly, RuPaul, Debbie Reynolds, Dolly Parton and Little Richard.  Today he is part of the writing trio Jones Hope Wooten, the most-produced playwrighting team in America. https://www.joneshopewooten.com/ He is also a BMI songwriter, with many songs recorded by other artists and many tunes placed in television series and feature films.
In his life, he has delivered singing telegrams, served as a Cruise Director on Princess Cruises, jet-skied around Bora Bora, performed on Broadway, farmed tobacco in rural North Carolina, climbed to the apex of Angkor Wat, comforted veterans on the shores of Guadalcanal, been complimented by Mel Brooks, saved the lives of feral cats on Kauai, made burritos at Del Taco, sung ballads for Michael Feinstein and yodeled for Melissa Etheridge, snorkeled in the Galapagos, served on the sound crew for the Pope's visit to Los Angeles, broken his leg jumping off a stage, been proposed to at the top of the Eiffel Tower and crashed Ann Miller's funeral.
He also has an unnatural affinity for the music of ABBA, and feels Facebook is the worst thing to happen to humanity since the Bubonic Plague, but hey, that's just him...

Anthony (Tony) Tambasco enjoyed a life in academia, highlighted by thirty-five years as a professor of biblical studies and social ethics in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University. He also taught in the University’s evening Graduate Liberal Studies Program for most of those years. His academic duties included two three-year terms as chair of his department and five years as an Associate Dean and Director of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program.
He is author of five books, editor of three, and was a frequent speaker in adult education venues across the area, including at the Smithsonian Institution Associates Program, where he pioneered lectures on biblical topics and ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue.
He moved to Goodwin House Life Plan Community in Bailey’s Crossroads, where Encore Chorale had one of its roots, and has sung with the Chorale there since 2010. He also traveled with the Chorale on its Danube Cruise in 2014 and enjoyed a singing weekend at The Homestead in 2017, followed by a week with Encore Chorale in Chautauqua that same year.
Since retirement, Tony has been a member of his church choir. He is also involved with his wife, Anne Stewart, in other activities at Goodwin House. Among other things, Tony is the only resident on the Goodwin House Board of Directors and also serves with his wife on the Board of Directors of Goodwin House Foundation, the charity-giving arm of Goodwin House.