About

Flute Sweets & Tickletoons | Barbara Siesel | Buy CD/Green Golly Blog/Schedule | About | Contact

Keith Torgan

Keith Torgan, singer, songwriter, guitarist, actor and storyteller, is a multi-talented artist with more than twenty years of experience in children’s music who has appeared at hundreds of theaters, cabarets, universities, museums, schools, and libraries throughout the United States. Torgan was composer at the Williamstown Theater Festival, founder and songwriter for “Morgan, Torgan & Teri,” guest performer and writer for BMG’s “Early Ears” series, and composer and lyricist for the Simply Elementary flagship program, There’s Always a Dragon To Slay. He has written a multitude of songs and is the creator of all the Flute Sweet & Tickletoon stories and songs. He received his training at Circle in the Square Theatre School, The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and State University of New York at Albany.

Together, as Flute Sweet & Tickletoon, the husband-and-wife team of Barbara Siesel and Keith Torgan presents more than two hundred performances of music and story-theatre each year in schools, libraries, theaters and other concert venues across the country. Their company, Tugboat Music, was founded because of a concern that children were not experiencing live performance, classical music, and theatre in their daily lives.

Barbara Siesel

Barbara Siesel’s multi-faceted career includes performing, teaching and producing. Audiences around the world have heard her in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Great Hall in St. Petersburg, and Central Conservatory in Beijing, in addition to concert halls in Japan, Korea, Spain and Taiwan. Some of her upcoming activities include curating and co-producing the Diversi T Series in NYC and creating the book version of Green Golly and Her Golden Flute with writer Keith Torgan and illustrator Suzanne Lebeda. Ms. Siesel was recently named an Andreas Eastman Flute Artist. Eastman is the entry-level flute for the prestigious Haynes Flute Company of Boston, MA. Eastman was so inspired by the story of Green Golly that they will be manufacturing the Green Golly Flute, as well as presenting Barbara Siesel in clinics and master classes nationally.

An active educator for all ages, Barbara Siesel’s college positions have included The New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida (high school and college), Colby College in Waterville, Maine, SUNY New Paltz in New York, and The University of Bridgeport, Connecticut. She participated in the Lincoln Center Institute, working with New York City elementary school students. In 1999 she created the Storm King Music Festival, devoted to exploring the intersection of new technology and acoustic performance of new music. She was also named artistic director of Art, Culture & Technology, a company that works with performing arts groups to help them manage and integrate new media into their work. Barbara Siesel presents concert recitals combining multi-disciplinary presentations with traditional repertoire. She received a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Samuel Baron. Additionally, she studied with Julius Baker, Thomas Nyfenger and Gerardo Levy and attended Master Classes with Jean Pierre Rampal and James Galway.