MACCC23 session Presenters

Dr. Ariel Alexander has gained recognition as a composer, producer educator and entrepreneur. Originally from St Louis, Ariel earned her B.A. at Indiana University and her master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Southern California. At Saddleback College, she runs the Music Production and Commercial Music Performance programs. She also serves as department chair. 

Ariel has worked on performances at two Superbowl Halftime Shows (2021 and 2022), the Grammy Awards (2022), Coachella, the BET Awards, the American Music Awards, and the MTV VMA Awards. She served as the orchestrator for Billie Eilish's 2022 Performance at the Academy Awards. Her TV series credits include "That's My Jam" with Jimmy Fallon (2022 and 2023), "The Four," "The Masked Singer" and BET's "Sunday Best." Ariel owns a Music Production company for children's media and regularly writes for children's animation. Her songs and productions have garnered over 10 million views in the past year.   

Other credits include transcription, arranging, and orchestration Camila Cabello, Stevie Wonder, Eminem, John Legend, Alicia Keys, Steve Miller, John Mayer, Anderson Paak, SZA, Miguel, Ella Mai, Juice WRLD, Bazzi, Nick Jonas, Nas, and many more. 

Steve Horowitz is a composer, producer and bass player perhaps best known for his original score to the Academy Award nominated film “Super-Size Me.” He is also the creative artist behind 31albums of original music. Horowitz writes for classical ensembles, dance, film, television, cartoons and video games. As audio director at Nickelodeon Digital, Steve has worked on hundreds of games and interactive projects, where he garnered Kid Screen, BDA and Webby awards. He was also honored with a Grammy award for his engineering work on the compact disc “True Life Blues: the Songs of Bill Monroe”, winner of best Bluegrass album in 1996. Horowitz is the co-author of “The Essential Guide to Game Audio: The Theory and Practice of Sound for Games” published by Rutledge and has a new book on Game Music coming out in early 2024. 

Steve studied music composition at the California Institute of the Arts with Morton Subotnik and has received performance underwriting and commissions from: Meet the Composer, the Lab SF, The Kitchen NYC, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Music at the Anthology (MATA, executive producer Phillip Glass), The Astoria Symphony, the Flux String Quartet, The Red Desert Ensemble, and The Guerrilla Composers Collective. Currently teaching at San Francisco State University, Steve continues to release strange and beautiful new sounds on an unsuspecting world.

Scott J. Patterson, Ph.D., San Francisco State University, Director, Music Recording Industry Certificate, Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts, College of Liberal & Creative Arts

My broad interests are audio media and interactivity.  I’ve released over 100 recordings of performers ranging from B.B. King to the Tokyo String Quartet to the Seldom Scene to the U.S. Marine Corps Band.  I am writing this semester about how “live” is used as an aesthetic variable in telling stories through the electronic media.  I teach courses in big data methods, sound aesthetics and on-location music recording.  My research is published in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, The Journal of Media Education and Human Communication Research and has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Telecommunication and Information Agency.  I am a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the International Communication Association.  In 2023 I served as an Alex Trebek Legacy Fellow at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Dr. George Gomez-Wheeler created the Music and Integrated Technology program at Rio Hondo College. Prior to that, he served for over a dozen years on the Composition/Theory faculty at the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at CSULB, as well as Cypress College, Orange County High School of the Arts (OCHSA), and as a faculty composer for the Dance Department at CalArts. He received his Ph.D. from UCI in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology (ICIT).

Robert Sinclair is a native to the South Bay Area in California.  He is the Coordinator of Music Theory and Director of Composition and Music for Media at West Valley College in Saratoga, CA.  Robert has completed music studies at the University of British Columbia, McGill University, Central Washington University, Simon Fraser University and UCLA.  His music has been awarded twice with the SOCAN Young Canadian Composer Competition, in Canada.  The commissioned choral work, Grand Chorus, was awarded first prize in the contemporary category at the Kathaumixw International Choral Festival.  Works for piano have been published by Summy-Birchard and premiered at the National Conference of Piano Pedagogy in Chicago, in addition to being required selections for the Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation Competition.  He has received a Canada Council grant for studies with Brian Ferneyhough.  Commissioned music has been performed in North America, for both instrumental and choral. Robert's film music has received numerous awards at film festivals and has been featured on Cartoon Network.

Kris Tiner is a California-based trumpet artist, composer, and educator. His music has been performed on five continents, his 90+ recordings have been enthusiastically reviewed in the international jazz press, and he has performance credits on MTV, NBC, PBS and Comedy Central. Tiner has received awards from ASCAP, the American Composers Forum, Chamber Music America, Montalvo Arts Center, CMEA, and the Kennedy Center. He is a member of the Empty Cage Quartet with recordings on Portugal’s Clean Feed label, and he collaborates with guitarist Mike Baggetta in the duo Tin/Bag. Tiner also performs with the Cathlene Pineda Quartet, Chris Schlarb’s Psychic Temple, the Industrial Jazz Group, and the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra. He is the Director of Jazz Studies at Bakersfield College, and has also taught at CalArts and CSU Bakersfield. Tiner is the founder of Epigraph Records, an independent label dedicated to new creative music recorded in Bakersfield.

Dr. Lee Zarate has a Doctorate in Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California where she also holds minor fields in Music Theory, Jazz Pedagogy, and Music Industry. She also received her Masters degree in Saxophone Performance from USC where she studied with saxophonist, James Rötter. Her Bachelors degree in Saxophone Performance was received from the University of Texas in Austin where she studied with renowned saxophonist, Harvey Pittel. She studied Music Production, Mixing, and Post Production Audio with Jose “Chilitos” Valenzuela at Audiograph International.

An educator as well as a performer, Dr. Zarate has taught both privately and in higher education throughout the greater Los Angeles area. She is the full-time Professor of Commercial Music at East Los Angeles College where she runs the Commercial Music Program. Holding numerous Pro Tools and Sibelius Certifications, she currently teaches Avid Certification courses at East Los Angeles College.

​ Part of Lee’s performing experience also includes being a studio musician. She continues to record for television, films, radio commercials, video games, musicals, music library collections as well as album collaborations. Lee has had the luxury of recording at the famous TODD-AO soundstage, EastWest Studios (formerly Cello Studios) as well as many others in the Los Angeles area. She has expansive doubling skills and also plays the Clarinet, Flute, Armenian Duduk, Armenian Shvi, Chinese Dizi, Indian Bansuri, and the Quena flute, as well as the recorder family. Lee’s versatility includes extensive techniques on these instruments as well as the saxophone family to create unique modern audio effects for visual media recordings.