Speakers and Artists
Summit Day – February 12
KEYNOTE: Tayloe Harding
Tayloe Harding is a composer and music administrator and serves as the Dean of the School of Music at the University of South Carolina. He also holds the Ira McKissick Koger Professor of the Arts and recently served as Interim Provost (2019-20) of the University after acting in interim deanship roles with the university’s #1 nationally-ranked South Carolina Honors College (2010-11) and its College of Social Work (2016-7). A passionate advocate for advancing the impact of higher education music study and experience on American communities and national society, Tayloe Harding is devoted to an array of organizations whose missions are consistent with this advocacy. As President of the College Music Society (CMS) from 2005-2006, he led the creation of the Engagement and Outreach Initiative where the efforts of the music professoriate are articulated with a variety of national constituencies, including other higher education audiences in an effort to meet common musical and civic goals.
He also served as president of that Society’s foundation, The CMS Fund (2009-16), where he led the Fund’s first-ever capital campaign to a successful 2011 completion and served as president of the national music honorary society, Pi Kappa Lambda (PKL) during its 100th anniversary season (2018). From 2015-2020 he was national Secretary of the National Association for Schools of Music (NASM) the accreditation, national policy and research, and professional development association for collegiate music schools, and in 2021 was elected Vice-President (2022-4)/President-elect (2025-7) of that organization.
As Dean at South Carolina he has envisioned and brought a bold idea to fruition beginning in 2007: to prepare tomorrow’s professional musicians more fully by combining conventional professional music study with a systematic curricular and co-curricular exploration of music advocacy, music entrepreneurship, and community engagement by forming SPARK: Carolina’s Leadership Laboratory (formerly the Carolina Institute for Leadership and Engagement in Music). His 2014 TedX talk Music and Hope: Towards a More Musical America, constitutes a public expression of his interests and work at Carolina and beyond. His work with SPARK has also resulted in the USC School of Music hosting and producing two international-renowned summits on the Design of the 21st Century Music School, as well as the hiring of the nation’s first tenured professor of Music Entrepreneurship and the first Professor-of-Practice in Music Leadership and Advocacy, and the launch of a nationally distinctive and inspiring strategic plan entitled Vision2025 where the USC School of Music articulates the aspiration to be the nation’s model public music school.
Tayloe Harding’s interest in the power of music and the arts to transform communities to value the virtues of diversity, equity, and inclusivity and to advance individual’s lives by positively contributing to their health, happiness, safety, fulfillment and hopefulness has been evident in his work with both local and SC state arts education and advocacy organizations as well as national entities. In addition to keynote speeches on this subject at each of the international summits he has produced at Carolina and dozens of others throughout the North American regions of the College Music Society, PKL member institutions, and as private consultant/speaker, he has been a visiting re-accreditation evaluator for the NASM since the 1990s, observing the music functions of over 50 US colleges and universities. He has participated in and led efforts locally and statewide as diverse as invited membership on the SC Arts in Basic Curriculum (ABC) Steering Committee (2006-2018); consultant for the City of Columbia’s One Columbia initiative/office and the Amplify Columbia cultural plan for the city; service on the board and arts granting panels of the Richland/Lexington County Cultural Council (2008-2014); and in his regular engagement with the SC Arts Alliance for Arts Advocacy Week (2007-2015). He teaches a unique course for young musicians, Introduction to Music and Arts Advocacy: Understanding the Power of Your Music to approximately 90 freshman arts majors at USC each year—annual outcomes of this course has been table tents and broader participation at the Arts Advocacy Week luncheon for SC state legislators each February, and the preparations of hundreds of young musicians more fully capable to make a case for the vitality and necessity of music and the arts to all constituencies. These state-wide engagements, as well as his national contributions as music education executive, as well as his work as Dean at South Carolina earned him recognition by the South Carolina Arts Commission as the winner of 2021 Governors’ Award in Arts Education, the state’s highest honor for an arts educator.
As a composer, he has been honored by Phi Beta Kappa (1981), Pi Kappa Lambda (2010), the Diehn Composers’ Room at Old Dominion University (2000), and as a composer-in-residence with the Valdosta Symphony Orchestra (2005-7) and at over 20 US colleges and universities. He remains active earning commissions, performances and recordings for his works around the world.
AGENCY UPDATE: David Platts
David Platts joined the South Carolina Arts Commission team as the executive director in 2019.
For 26 years prior, David worked in South Carolina as an educator, principal and district level administrator. He served as the arts and sciences coordinator for Lancaster County School District, a position he held for 15 years.
In addition to his work as an educator, Platts has served the Lancaster County Council of the Arts as a board member and president. He has statewide experience as a member, president, and treasurer of the Palmetto State Arts Education board and as a past member of the South Carolina Arts Alliance board, where he became active as an arts advocate. On the national level, David served as a member of the Education Advisory Committee for the John F. Kennedy Center’s Partners in Education Program, and he is currently a member of the South Arts board.
David keeps his own artistic expression fresh by serving as a volunteer accompanist for church choral programs.
Sherard “Shakeese” Duvall
Sherard “Shekeese” Duvall is a film producer, media educator and ambassador of South Carolina Hip-Hop culture. A former DJ for Columbia’s BigDM, Hot 103.9FM and several radio stations along the east coast including appearances on BET and MTV. He’s produced commercial and documentary projects for VH1, Oxygen Network, Discovery Health and more. A 2022 SC Arts Commission Fellow, a 2022 Liberty Fellow, a Leo Twiggs Arts Leadership Scholar and one of the founders of Love Peace & Hip-Hop’s World Famous Hip-Hop Family Day. A 2001 University of South Carolina grad and a product of Richland District One schools, he is the President/CEO at OTR Media Group and the proud dad of his son, Cairo.
Pam Breaux
Pam Breaux joined the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA) in 2015. As president and CEO, she works with the association’s board of directors and staff to advance NASAA’s policy and programmatic mission to strengthen America’s state and jurisdictional arts agencies. A native of Lafayette, Louisiana, Pam has held leadership positions at the local, state and national levels. While in Louisiana state government, she was secretary of the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism (CRT), assistant secretary of CRT (overseeing its cultural development portfolio), and executive director of its state arts agency (the Louisiana Division of the Arts). During her time at CRT, Pam developed and led Louisiana’s cultural economy initiative and spearheaded the successful UNESCO inscription of Poverty Point State Historic Site (an ancient Indian site) as a World Heritage site.
Before working in state government, Pam was executive director of the Arts and Humanities Council of Southwest Louisiana and managed southwest Louisiana’s Decentralized Arts Funding Program. She has served on the boards of the U.S. Travel Association, NASAA, South Arts and the Louisiana Board of International Commerce. Pam is currently a member of the U.S. National Commission on UNESCO. She graduated from McNeese State University with a B.A. in English and earned an M.A. in English and folklore from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
State House Day – February 13
Beaufort Middle School Rock Orchestra is a mixed group of Band and Orchestra students of various levels from 6th, 7th and 8th grade. They hail from Beaufort, SC and are led by director Amanda Trimpey. Motivated and Inspired by Rockstar Violinist, Mark Wood, they will rock your socks off with their high energy performance! Watch them perform during the SC Arts Day rally on the State House Steps beginning at 11:30 AM.
HEART Inclusive Arts Community provides visual arts, music, and performing arts mentorships and community engagement for adults with disabilities who want to grow and develop as artists. At HEART, they have created a studio where artists are loved, supported, and celebrated for being their authentic selves. They create together to enrich and transform our community. Catch them on the State House steps during the Arts Day rally beginning at 11:30 AM!
Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia is the world’s oldest and largest secret national fraternal society in music. Sinfonia was born on October 6, 1898, at the New England Conservatory in Boston, when a group of thirteen young men under the guidance of Ossian Everett Mills met “to consider the social life of the young men students of that institution [and] to devise ways and means by which it might be improved.”
For over a century, Sinfonians in nearly every field of study and professional endeavor have transformed music in America. The opportunity of becoming a Sinfonian is offered to as many men as possible who, through a love for music, can assist in the fulfillment of the Fraternity’s Object and ideals either by adopting music as a profession or by working to advance the cause of music in America.
The Delta Sigma Chapter was chartered at the University of South Carolina in 1949
