Host and Guests
Formerly Vice President of the Boston Musicians' Association,
Bob Couture has represented musician unions as lead negotiator in collective bargaining for twenty-five years. His work as a labor
organizer has produced numerous first contracts (collective bargaining
agreements.)
As a mediator in the Boston District Courts, he facilitated agreements
in scores of cases. As a community organizer, he helped found a four building Housing Cooperative in Boston's East Fenway Symphony neighborhood.
He received a Bachelor of Music degree in Performance from the
New England Conservatory of Music, was a Berkshire Music Center
Fellow at Tanglewood, and received a Masters of English and a
Graduate Certificate in Dispute Resolution with an award for
Academic Excellence from the the University of Massachusetts at
Boston.
Bob has been a professional orchestral trombone player in
Boston for over 40 years: Principal at Boston Ballet, Boston Lyric
Opera, Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Handel and Haydn Society,
New England Ragtime Ensemble and a member of the Boston
Philharmonic Orchestra, among several other ensembles and
orchestras.
He has recorded with the Boston Ballet, New England Ragtime
Ensemble, Boston Pops, Boston Camerata, Boston Modern Orchestra
Project, Dinosaur Annex, and Handel and Haydn Society to name a
few. One recording with the Handel and Haydn Society, Lamentations and
Praises, by John Tavener, won Grammys in 2003 for best chamber composition and best performance by a chamber orchestra. Another recording with the New England Ragtime Ensemble (Art of the Rag) is featured in the Ken Burns documentary, Jazz, where you can hear Mr. Couture’s trombone solo in Jelly Roll Morton’s Smokehouse Blues.
Bob lives in Boston, where he enjoys walking to the various performance venues in town, trombone strapped to his back.
Bob Couture, Host
Episode VI
Umpire's Call
Matt Couture has umpired for 14 years, working everything from Little League to High School baseball. He's also served as an assigner and umpire-in-chief with the Rhode Island Amateur Umpires Association (RIABUA) and as a rules interpreter with the Southeastern Massachusetts Baseball Umpires Association.
Matt currently is a senior producer at the ABC affiliate, WLNE in Providence for nightside broadcasts, overseeing editorial content for the 6 and 11 p.m. broadcasts. He also works as a freelance sports broadcaster.
He previously served as senior producer for WLNE’s ‘Good Morning Providence’ broadcast, overseeing morning and noon shows and working on special projects including education and election coverage. Matt is a graduate of Emerson College.
November 28, 2023
Matt Couture discusses the techniques of umpiring, timing and positioning, and also the role of the umpire in keeping a game within the lines of social behavior necessary for the game to be played with the kind of integrity which makes the event worthwhile to fans and players, alike. What is sportsmanship and what does that look like in today's world of conflicting expectations and values? What's it like calling balls and strikes in the heat of the moment? How does an umpire help create a perception of fairness on the playing field as teams compete for advantages? Is baseball just a game or is it something more?
As an experienced partitioner, Matt has plenty to say about the conflicts he and his umpire colleagues manage from game to game in the service of preserving the rewards of competition and sportsmanship's social contract with those who play the game as well as those who watch from the stands.
Matt Couture
Baseball Umpire
Episode V
Final Bow for Yellowface
Phil Chan is a co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, and author of Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing between Intention and Impact, and the President of the Gold Standard Arts Foundation. He is a graduate of Carleton College and an alumnus of the Ailey School. He has held fellowships with NYU, the Manhattan School of Music, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and is currently a fellow at Harvard University, Drexel University, and the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art in Paris. As a writer, he served as the Executive Editor for FLATT Magazine and contributed to Dance Europe Magazine, Dance Magazine, Dance Business Weekly, and the Huffington Post, and current serves on the Advisory Board of Dance Magazine. He served multiple years on the National Endowment for the Arts dance panel and the Jadin Wong Award panel presented by the Asian American Arts Alliance. His latest choreography project, the "Ballet des Porcelaines,” premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in December 2021 and will tour throughout 2022. He is a Benedict Distinguished Visiting Professor of Dance at Carleton College in Fall 2022 and was named a Next 50 Arts Leader by the Kennedy Center.
Phil Chan
The Butterfly Process
October 5, 2023
Phil Chan's discussion about racial appropriation and some of the caricatured projections upon Asians that have been an age-old habit in the United States, through the arts and through other cultural instruments, speaks to a world of realities which extend far beyond the theater and the stage.
He was an integral part of Boston Lyric Opera's reimagining of Puccini's Madama Butterfly presented at the Colonial Theater in September, 2023. While Madama Butterfly is loved by audiences and remains an essential part of the traditional repertoire, the opera’s history has reputation for portraying inaccurate, harmful representations of Japanese culture, contributing to stereotypes of Asian and Asian-Americans.
BLO engaged with artists, board members, community leaders, organizations, and preeminent scholars to discuss Madama Butterfly, particularly around the areas of cultural appropriation, race, and gender stereotypes—and the wide-ranging impact of this opera for Asian artists.
Episode IV
Shining Light,
Counsel at the Gate
Jeff Bohn
Executive Director
Program Facilitator
Program Development
Travis Bohn
Jeff Bohn, Dormen Lisby, and Travis Bohn discuss their work inside and outside the prisons where justice, fate, and hope are not just abstract concepts, but rather the daily bread of prison life. What are the purposes of the US prison system where 20% of the global prison population is housed? Where does the practice of punishment give way to means of redemption?
For more than two decades, Shining Light has been providing innovative, evidence-based reentry programming that transforms the lives of participants and prison environments, resulting in lower recidivism, better neighbors, and stronger communities.
By helping individuals in prison to thrive - by giving them the tools, motivation and support that every human being needs to become the most productive, resilient, hopeful version of themselves - we can have a profoundly positive impact on individual lives, families and extended communities.
Shining Light programs motivate and equip people for success in educational, vocational, and relational opportunities, preparing them for their return to society.
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Offering programming in prisons since 1999
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Served +60,000 Incarcerated People in 32 States
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Coordinated +50,000 Volunteer Hours
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Invested $5,500,000 in Program Development and Services since 1999
Shining Light Graduates
Dormen Lisby
Theory of Change
Unlocking the Human Potential in America's Prisons
September 18, 2023
Episode III
In the Middle
Moira Caruso discusses the balance of being between parties, as a mediator, as they work to achieve an agreement. How does a mediator help facilitate the negotiation process? What are the dangers of not being trusted by parties as an honest broker? What conscious decisions does a mediator often contemplate as the process unfolds? Moira shares many insights about her work and the fundamentals of the mediation process itself with much to say about the dynamics of trust and fairness, the impact of emotions and pressurized decision making in arenas of competing interests.
Moira Caruso
Federal Mediator
July 11, 2023
As a Strategy Officer within the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service's Office of National Projects, Moira Caruso works on national projects throughout the United States. Her primary focus is the mediation and facilitation of large- scale public policy negotiations. In addition to her public policy facilitation practice, Moira works with mediators across the country to help them design and deliver specialized conflict management processes to ensure the most effective mediation approach on behalf of FMCS clients. Moira is also a coach and provides service to Federal employees government wide through the Federal Internal Coach Network. Prior to serving as a Strategy Officer, Moira’s New England mediation practice covered multiple sectors and industries: Private, non- profit, public, and federal, including healthcare, higher education, public education, and service industries. Before joining FMCS, Moira was a Labor Relations Specialist with the Department of Navy. She holds a B.A. in Communication from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Episode II
On Consonant Dissonance
Jerome Harris discusses his life as a Jazz artist, a working musician, an activist member of Music Workers Alliance, a Scholar, an American who has traveled the world and found many ways to resolve chords, musical and otherwise.
Since 2020, Jerome Harris has been an active member of Music Workers Alliance, an American advocacy and activism organization dedicated to empowering music performers, creators, DJs and sound engineers. MWA develops and promotes beneficial corporate practices and governmental policies at federal, state and local levels; it seeks to ensure that Americans working in live venues, recorded music settings and the digital domain—including women, people of color, and others underrepresented in the industry—are educated about fair working conditions and benefits, and how to achieve them. Music Workers Alliance informs creators about their right to control and profit from their creations. It conducts survey research about music workers, and mounts campaigns to educate elected officials and the public about the contributions and needs of our sector of America’s performing arts enterprise. Through collective action, Music Workers Alliance strives to foster a culture where music is valued financially and culturally, and where music workers benefit and achieve dignity in our lives.
Jerome Harris
Musician
June 26, 2023
Jerome Harris is widely recognized as a unique musical stylist, garnering international acclaim for his incisive and versatile voice on both guitar and bass guitar.
Jerome’s first major professional work was as bass guitarist for the iconic jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins, starting in 1978; from 1988 to 1994 he was Rollins’ guitarist, and appears on seven of his albums. Harris has also recorded and/or performed live on six continents with Jack DeJohnette, David Krakauer, Amina Claudine Myers, Bill Frisell, Paul Motian, Martha Redbone, Julius Hemphill, Ray Anderson, Leni Stern, David Amram, Don Byron, Bobby Previte, Oliver Lake, Bob Stewart, George Russell, and Roy Nathanson.
Harris’s extensive international travel includes numerous stints in Japan with Sonny Rollins, as well as tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department: to six southeastern African countries with saxophonist Sam Newsome and guitarist Marvin Sewell, to India and southeast Asia with flutist Jamie Baum and guitarist Kenny Wessel, to India and several Middle Eastern countries with vibraphonist Jay Hoggard’s quintet, and to five African nations with saxophonist Oliver Lake’s reggae/jazz/funk band “Jump Up.”
Jerome Harris appears on more than seventy recordings, ranging widely in musical conception while maintaining deep expressive integrity. As bandleader, Rendezvous—the first-ever jazz release by the audio connoisseur magazine Stereophile—captures the drive and grace of his acoustic quintet in gorgeous high-resolution sound. On Hidden in Plain View (New World), Harris’s acoustic bass guitar underpins an all-star group reinterpreting compositions by jazz trailblazer Eric Dolphy. Soma Code, Jerome’s debut as a bandleader, highlights his evocative guitar playing in the context of his inventive compositions for acoustic and electric instruments.
Among Harris’s recordings as featured sideman are Paul Motian Band’s Garden Of Eden (ECM), Abraham Inc.’s Together We Stand (Table Pounding/Label Bleu), Roy Nathanson Sotto Voce’s Complicated Day (Enja), Jack DeJohnette’s Oneness (ECM), Don Byron’s A Fine Line: Arias and Lieder (Blue Note), Marty Ehrlich Large Ensemble’s A Trumpet In The Morning (New World), Ray Anderson Lapis Lazuli Band’s Funkorific (Enja) and Ned Rothenberg Sync’s Inner Diaspora (Tzadik), Harbinger (Animul), and Port of Entry (Intuition). Each showcases Jerome’s expressive range, command of style nuances, and creativity. Harris served as arranger, rhythm guitarist and assistant to musical director Vernon Reid in the 1999 Joni’s Jazz tribute concert staged in New York’s Central Park–with Joni Mitchell herself in attendance–accompanying singers as diverse in style as Chaka Khan, Jane Siberry, Duncan Sheik and P.M. Dawn. Other Harris credits include a Broadway stint as guitarist in the South African R&B/rock musical Kat and the Kings, as well as work on industrial, commercial and film score recording dates.
Jerome Harris has taught at Hampshire College, William Paterson University, Lehman College (City University of New York), and the Alternative Guitar Summit Summer Camp. His published writings include the essays “Considering Jaki Byard” (Sound American SA22, Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc.) and “Jazz on the Global Stage,” in the anthology The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective, edited by Ingrid Monson (Routledge). In this study, he offers an insider’s view of the history, present state and future implications of the spread and flourishing of jazz in locales far from its African-American birthplace.
Harris conceived and organized “Living Time”: George Russell’s Musical Life and Legacy, an in-depth examination of the career of legendary composer/bandleader/theorist/educator George Russell (1923-2009). While Russell’s innovative music, challenging ideas and pivotal position in jazz history have been celebrated around the world, he remains somewhat under-recognized in the United States. This colloquium was a major appraisal of Russell’s multi-faceted work and his critical contributions to African American improvisational art music. Panelists included David Baker, Gary Giddins, Cameron Brown, Joe Hunt, Stanton Davis, Marty Ehrlich, Ken Schaphorst, Ben Schwendener, and Russell biographer Duncan Heining; professors Ingrid Monson of Harvard and John Howland of Rutgers served as panel moderators. This event was presented by the New England Conservatory of Music as part of the 40th anniversary celebration of its jazz studies program, the first fully accredited jazz program at a music conservatory (George Russell taught at NEC from 1969 to 2004).
Raised in Brooklyn, New York, Jerome began his instrument studies on accordion, then played violin in a middle-school orchestra. Initially self-taught on guitar and bass guitar, as a teenager he immersed himself in a broad range of music—rock, pop, blues, country, gospel, folk and R&B—as both fan and player. After earning a B.A. in psychology and social relations at Harvard College in 1973, Harris attended New England Conservatory of Music as a scholarship student in jazz guitar, graduating with honors in 1977.
Episode I
The Voice of Reason
April 27, 2023
Jim talks about his experience managing conflict, creating trust
and finding resolutions in a world not always receptive, a world where the spirit of justice and the prag-matics of achieving justice often exist in tension with each other. We discuss the importance of developing a Voice of Reason in negotiations and some of the behaviors which make that possible.
James B. Haddow
Partner: Petrocelli, Martin and Haddow
Attorney James B. Haddow has over 35 years of experience in civil trials and appeals in state and federal courts across Maine, including work in the fields of professional malpractice, product liability, professional licensing and discipline, employment law, business and commercial law, insurance, condominium law, and municipal land use law.
Jim is the author of The Evolution of the Maine Law of Attachment on Ordinary and Trustee Process, 7 Me. Bar Journal 2 (1992), and Legal Issues in Prenatal Diagnosis in the U.S., Prenatal Diagnosis, The Human Side, 2d ed. 2003, Abramsky and Chapple, and he is the editor and a contributing author for A Practical Guide to Employment Law in Maine. Boston: Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, Inc. (2019). Jim also serves on the Board of Governors of the Maine State Bar Association and is presently its Treasurer.
Awards and Recognition
Best Lawyers in America
LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell, Preeminent AV Rating
New England Super Lawyers
Senior Fellow, Litigation Counsel of America.
Episode VII
The Art of Possibility
(Coming in January)
Benjamin Zander
What's Art Got to Do With It?
Benjamin Zander is one of the world’s most well known classical musicians and is a source of profound inspiration to many people. He is a deeply insightful conductor, a master teacher of music, and an engaging speaker on leadership. Zander’s emotionally rich and insightful performances stem from his endless pursuit towards deeper understanding of the masterworks of classical music. Generations of musicians have been stimulated by his all-encompassing approach, his communicative openness, and his commitment to creating ambassadors for the art form. Zander’s belief that music is a vehicle for enhancing societal connectivity transcends the concert hall. His passion and boundless energy unlock potential within individuals and organizations while enrolling a global community to become lifelong devotees of classical music.
On Collective Bargaining
(Coming Soon)
Prior to being part of the formation of Feinberg, Dumont & Brennan, Gabriel O. Dumont, Jr. (“Gabe”) was the principal of the firm Dumont, Morris and Burke, P.C., which was established by him and his wife Christine E. Morris in 1988. Before establishing the firm of Dumont, Morris and Burke, P.C., Gabe worked for the labor law firms of Grady and MacDonald and Grady, Dumont and Dwyer. He is a graduate of Amherst College (B.A. 1974) and Boston College Law School (J.D., 1977).
Gabe currently serves as Counsel for Teamsters Joint Council 10 New England. He also represents and advises Teamster Local Unions throughout the United States; Theater and Musician Unions in New England; and self-funded health and welfare, pension and welfare benefit funds, including the largest Teamster health and welfare fund in New England.
Gabriel O. Dumont Jr.
Partner, Feinberg, Dumont, and Brennan