Mount Vernon Music: Meet Our Board
Mark Miller - President
Mark Miller was a 1995 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Rural Residencies grant, and has been performing and organizing musical events in Mount Vernon and the northeast Texas region for the past ten years. He is concertmaster of the East Texas Symphony Orchestra, and performs with the Fort Worth Symphony and Dallas Opera orchestras. Since 1997 he has produced The Color of Sound, a series of chamber music concerts underwritten by the Music Department of Texas A&M University-Commerce.
Steven Harlos - Vice-President
A professional pianist and composer with a very diverse background, Steven Harlos is equally at home in the classical and popular music field. He has collaborated with numerous artists of international stature as accompanist and as a jazz pianist. Steve currently serves as staff keyboardist for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and is coordinator of piano and collaborative piano at the University of North Texas in Denton.
Carol Harlos - Secretary
In great demand as a freelance cellist, Carol Harlos performs with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and numerous other ensembles in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and maintains a private teaching studio.
Ute Miller - Treasurer
Ute Miller is principal violist of the East Texas Symphony and plays with the Fort Worth and Dallas Symphony Orchestras. She performs with her husband Mark Miller in the violin-viola ensemble Duo Renard, and has been bringing concerts of chamber music to Mount Vernon and the region since 1995, when she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Rural Residencies grant. In addition to playing with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, she served for seven years as assistant principal violist of the Gürzenich Orchester/Cologne Philharmonic, and for eight years as principal violist of the Dallas Opera Orchestra.
Warren Butler - Director
Warren Butler has been a resident of Franklin County since May, 2001. Coindicentally, he was born in Franklin County, Nebraska with a small unicorporated town of Macon just seven miles away. He is a graduate of McLennan Community College in Waco with an A.A. in business administration. Warren has made his homes in Los Angeles, CA doing modeling work, then Kansas City and settling in Dallas in 1984. After working ten years for the U.S. Department of Labor and another ten years managing a doctor's office he is now the owner of The Veranda Bed & Breakfast Restaurant just outside Mt. Vernon. Warren is an avid music and video collector as well with a huge collection of records, CDs, cassettes and reel to reel tapes covering every genre of music.
Alder 'Al' Moore - Director
Alder ‘Al’ Moore was born in the small Arkansas community of Pearson. At the age of 7 his family moved to California, where he received his education and married. He designed and made jewelry in California and Arizona for over 10 years, both full and part time. He also pursued a 20 year career in the computer software industry, holding ownership and/or executive positions in several firms, including three successful startups. He has held full time executive positions in excess of 12 years for non- profit organizations, including intimate involvement in the organization of five – two for the medical profession, 2 for the dental profession and 1 for fine arts. Al resides in Winnsboro, Texas with his wife Georgia Lange Moore, a well known local artist, where both are active sculptors and volunteers for Arts and Music organizations in the area.
Debbie Ragsdale - Director
Debbie Ragsdale is principal flutist in the East Texas Symphony Orchestra and associate professor of flute at Collin County Community College. She is also serving President of the Board of the McKinney Musical Arts Society of McKinney, TX.
Betty Whitlock - Director
Betty Whitlock has served as professor of music at Stephen F. Austin State University, Southwest Texas University, Mokwan University in South Korea, and the Conservatory of Music, University of Southern Chile in Valdivia. Since 1985 she has been adjunct professor of music at Northeast Texas Community College, where she teaches music theory, piano, and classical guitar.
Tom Wilkinson - Director
Tom Wilkinson is Professor Emeritus of Richland College, one of several colleges and universities where he spent his 30-year tenure in higher education. A specialist in humanities, he has devoted much of his life and interests to the study of art history and music. He has resided in Mt. Vernon, Texas, for the past 25 years.