The Staff

Board of Directors

Greg White, Chair

Greg White is Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Mathematics at Notre Dame de Namur University (NDNU), where he has served as Department Chair, Director of Institutional Research, Dean of Arts and Sciences, Associate Provost, and Interim Provost. His major responsibilities include accreditation, assessment, and program review. Greg grew up in Berkeley, CA, where he studied horn with Earl Saxton. He earned his BA in Physics and Math at the University of Rochester, where he studied horn with Milan Yancich of the Eastman School of Music. Greg received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from UCLA and served as Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Occidental College.

Greg has played horn in Redwood Symphony since 2000. Previously he played with the Kensington Symphony where he performed solo works including Dukas’ Villanelle and Britten’ Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings. Other groups that he has performed with include the Master Sinfonia Chamber Orchestra, Diablo Light Opera, Berkeley Opera, Prometheus Symphony Orchestra, Caltech-Occidental Symphony Orchestra, UCLA Symphony, and the University of Rochester Symphony.

Greg joined the Redwood Symphony Board of Directors in August 2014. He has served on the California Mathematics Project Advisory Board from 2001 to the present and has been chair since 2005. Previous board experience includes the ASUCLA Board of Directors 1986-88 and the Kensington Symphony Board of Directors 1991–95. He brings considerable expertise on grants, having written successful foundation and federal grant proposals totaling over $8 million to support programs at NDNU.

Greg lives in San Carlos with his wife, Lisa Pokorny, and up to two children, depending on who is currently in/at college.

Alex Groth

Alex Groth is the Co-founder and CEO of Gladly, a company that helps people raise money for nonprofits through their everyday actions. To date, Gladly has raised over $1.5M for non-profits while getting 100,000s of young people started in the social impact journeys.

Musically, Alex plays trumpet in a variety of groups around the Bay Area including the Redwood Symphony. He also enjoys playing tennis, backpacking in the mountains, and cooking. 

Barbara McKee

Barbara McKee is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of White Oak Global Advisors, LLC and is member of the State Bars of California and New York. As a member of the Redwood Symphony, she plays bassoon.

David Meckler

David Meckler is a Professor of Music at Cañada College in Redwood City, and has also taught music, arts and humanities courses at Skyline College in San Bruno, the University of California at San Diego and University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. In addition to teaching, David has composed many significant works. His recent music often features simple, sometimes fragmented, polyrhythms, often in the context of unusual meters; the pitch language is sometimes freely diatonic but rarely with traditional harmonic functionality. Scenes from his Apollo 14, A Space Opera were presented by the New York Opera in 2002.

David studied music composition at the University of California at San Diego (Ph.D.) and at the College Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati (MM). His teachers include Rand Steiger, Roger Reynolds, Frederick Bianchi, Jonathan Kramer and Allen Sapp. David is also interested in science (B.S., Physics, Lafayette College) and in the social dimensions inherent in music.

Born in El Paso, Texas, David and his wife MaryLouise currently live in Redwood City, California.

Stephen Ruppenthal

Composer/performer Stephen Ruppenthal is Co-Principal Trumpet, Contemporary Music Advisor, and former Board President for the Redwood Symphony. A trumpet student of Dwight Cannon and Chris Bogios formerly with the San Francisco Symphony, Stephen graduated with a Performance Degree and a Master of Arts Degree in Contemporary Musicology from San Jose State University, and participated in the Executive Technical Management Program at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

Stephen performs with many major ensembles throughout the Bay Area, and currently with his own Brass Act Quintet (www.brassact.com). He was featured at the 2008 Electronic Music Midwest Festival in Chicago, the SEAMUS 2009 Electro-Acoustic Music Festival at Sweetwater Sound in Indiana, and at the ICMC in New York City, and the KISS Symposium in Vienna, Austria in 2010. He is also a founding member of the new electro-acoustic music group, SoundProof.

Stephen has written on text-sound composition and music for the New Grove Dictionary of American Music. His work “A History of the Development and Techniques of Sound Poetry in the Twentieth Century in Western Culture” constituted the first comprehensive documentation of the genre in English.

In addition to performance and composition, Stephen has taught at San Jose State University and San Francisco State University (Center for Experimental and Interdisciplinary Art, Electronic Music Studio/Composition), and for many years was Technical Publications Senior Director for Fortune 500 companies such as Oracle, Sybase, BEA, and Adobe Systems.

Assistant Conductor

Kyle Baldwin

Kyle Baldwin is a conductor and a percussionist, and is also the music director for the Rainbow Chamber Orchestra, as well as the Assistant to the Director for the Morrison Chamber Music Center. He has also served as the Assistant Conductor for the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony. Kyle is dedicated to building community by recognizing diversity, fostering inclusion and promoting excellence.

Kyle has a diverse background in conducting that includes symphony orchestras, wind ensembles, opera, chamber ensembles, and dance ensembles. Kyle conducted the music of Dennis Tobenski with Tobenski singing, and played percussion in the West coast premiere of Tobenski’s piece Only Air. He was instrumental in preparing the world premieres of Andrew Lippa’s I Am Harvey Milk and June Bonacich’s Concerto for String Trio written for the Little Stars Trio.

Outside of music, Kyle enjoys computer programming. He currently lives in San Francisco.