Leadership

Dr. Giulio M. Ongaro

Dean and Professor, College of Performing Arts

Dr. Giulio M. Ongaro is Dean of the College of Performing Arts at Chapman University. A native of Venice, Italy, Dr. Ongaro holds a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a dissertation on the singing chapel of St. Mark’s Basilica (Venice) in the sixteenth century.

Dr. Ongaro is an active intellectual whose research is centered on questions of the mutual influence of society and the arts, social, and political context for the production and performance of music, business of music, music printing, musical instruments in the sixteenth century, and relationship of words and music. His research has been published in scholarly journals in the United States and Europe, and he is the author and co-author of nine articles in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the standard reference work in music.

Prior to joining Chapman, he worked for the University of the Pacific where he served as Professor of Music and Dean of the Conservatory of Music for five years. He has also taught music history and musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Delaware, and – for 18 years – he was at the University of Southern California, where he served as Chair of the Department of Musicology and later as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at the Thornton School of Music.

Richard T. Bryant

Executive Director, Musco Center for the Arts

Nationally recognized arts leader and former OC arts executive Richard T. Bryant is the new Executive Director of Chapman University’s Marybelle and Sebastian P. Musco Center for the Arts.

Bryant’s Orange County roots run deep. He served for ten years (1987-1996) as director of communications and marketing for Segerstrom Center for the Arts (then known as Orange County Performing Arts Center) and was extremely active in the OC arts community. After that, he served as the first vice president of marketing and public relations for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, NJ.  He was also director of marketing for Washington DC’s Arena Stage for seven years and a founding member and first President of the Helen Hayes Awards. He is currently volunteer chairman of the National Consortium for Creative Placemaking, which focuses on new ways to make communities more livable, equitable, and resilient through arts and culture.

During the past 20 years, Bryant has served an array of clients nationwide through his company, Front of House Services, particularly with start-ups, transitions, and arts-driven economic development. Clients have included New York’s American Ballet Theatre, Dance Theatre Workshop, and Theatre Development Fund; Washington D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center and National Symphony Orchestra; Stanford University’s Bing Concert Hall; Mondavi Center at UC Davis; Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center; San Antonio’s McNay Museum of Art; the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra; and Yale University’s Peabody Museum, among others.