Meet the Faculty
We are pleased to welcome the following faculty members to the 2025 CLEF Summer Program! Our faculty includes highly skilled musicians, ensemble directors, composers, and liturgists who are passionate about helping ensemble musicians improve their skills to lead people to full, conscious, and active participation in the liturgy.
Ensemble Faculty
Katie Barton
Instrumental & Vocal Ensemble
Voice, Keyboard
Katie Barton is the Director of Sacred Music at St. Thomas Parish in Ft. Thomas, Kentucky where she conducts the Adult Choir, Liturgical Ensemble, Resurrection Choir, and Schola. She has previously served as the Director of Music at Holy Spirit Parish in Newport, Kentucky; St. Timothy Parish in Union, Kentucky; and St. Mary Parish – Hyde Park in Cincinnati, Ohio, for a total of 30 years in music ministry.
Katie is also the Director of Choral Activities at Northern Kentucky University where she conducts three choirs and teaches choral music education classes including conducting and ensemble accompanying. She is also professor of applied organ. Her choral composition, “Victimae Paschali Laudes,” a setting of the Easter sequence, is published with GIA publications. She is a member of the American Guild of Organists, American Choral Directors Association, and the National Associate for Music Education. She is thrilled to return to the CLEF Summer Program as faculty for her third year.
Kathleen M. Basi
Instrumental Ensemble
Flute, Obbligato
Author and liturgical composer Kathleen M. Basi is a mother of three boys and one chromosomally-gifted daughter. Her music for Catholic worship is available through GIA and OCP, and her song, “Come, All You Thirsty,” won the Association of Catholic Publishers’ 2022 Song of the Year. She is a published novelist and the founder of Intentional Catholic, a Substack-based and parish-based ministry seeking to connect our Catholic faith to the real, practical situations of daily life.
Anna Betancourt
Vocal Ensemble
Voice
Anna Betancourt is a professional singer, songwriter, music director, and workshop presenter who has worked as music director, choral director, and cantor in various parishes of Southern California. She has more than 35 years of experience working with various choirs including youth, children’s, adult, contemporary, traditional, Spanish, and handbells.
Anna graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where she studied voice and where she also worked as assistant director of liturgy and music. At the archdiocesan level, she has served as a music committee member, a member of the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress Liturgy Committee, and a board member for the National Association of Pastoral Musicians.
Anna’s voice can be heard on more than 50 recordings, including some by Bob Hurd, Tony Alonso, John Angotti, Jaime Cortez, and Marty Haugen. Anna’s personal Spanish collection is published through OCP and presents inspiring songs for liturgy, worship groups, or retreats.
Anna’s passion is for liturgical music and a singing assembly, and she is a national speaker and presenter at various conferences and workshops on music and liturgy.
Anna is married to Mike, her husband of 26 years, and lives in Ft. Worth, Texas. Together they have two boys, Matthew and Samuel.
Jaime Cortez
Instrumental Ensemble
Guitar, Keyboard
Jaime Cortez is a talented and popular composer, arranger, and performer. Born in New York and raised in El Salvador, Jaime has dedicated a portion of his ministry to promoting better Hispanic liturgies and bringing cultures together for worship. His main instrument is guitar, though he is proficient in piano and other string instruments, such as charango, vihuela, and bass guitar.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in music composition from Arizona State University. He was named Pastoral Musician of the Year in 2016 by the National Association of Pastoral Musicians (NPM).
Some of Jaime’s best-known songs are “Rain Down,” “Somos el Cuerpo de Cristo/We Are the Body of Christ” (with Bob Hurd) and “Take Up Your Cross.” He has released six solo collections with OCP, and collaborative projects include Gracia y Amor/Grace and Love, a collection with Bob Hurd and Eleazar Cortés and Our Common Home, a project inspired by Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si’, featuring his song “Let Us Sing as We Go.”
Jaime is currently director of liturgy and music at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Scottsdale, Arizona. He lives in Mesa with his wife Kari. They have three sons who are also very talented musically.
Lynné Gray
Instrumental & Vocal Ensemble
Voice, Keyboard
Lynné is a respected liturgist, arranger, director, and composer. She holds a bachelor’s degree and Master of Music degree in Piano Performance from the Catholic University of America, with additional voice and organ training. A respected vocal coach and accompanist, she shares her love of voice in ministry throughout the United States. As a liturgist and worship leader, she has served on the Archdiocese of Washington Liturgical Music Committee and given numerous workshops. She is currently the Director of the Archdiocesan Gospel Mass Choir. Lynné was blessed in 2008 to direct the Gospel Mass Choir during the Mass for Pope Benedict XVI.
Frank Jansen
Instrumental Ensemble
Keyboard
Frank Jansen has been a professional musician for 40 years and has served in parish ministry for over 25 years.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in music composition from California State University at San Bernardino and a master’s degree in liturgical music with an emphasis on composition from Santa Clara Univeristy. He writes in a wide variety of styles including sacred, gospel, rock, country, jazz, and classical. These works include choral music, piano music, string quartets, woodwind quintets, and a symphony. In addition, he composed a musical entitled, “Somebody.”
He has been an educator for over 20 years at Columbia Middle School in El Monte, California. He directs the performing arts department and teaches band, choir, piano, and theatre.
Frank tours extensively as an accompanist for his wife, ValLimar Jansen, and the pair have released multiple CDs. He had the privilege of performing for the Pope and over 400,00 people in Loreto, Italy in the summer of 2007. During the summer of 2016, he and ValLimar performed at World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland.
Frank has performed with Jaime Cortez, Tom Booth, Sarah Hart, Tom Kendzia, Marty Haugen, Bob Hurd, and many other well-known Catholic composers.
Brian Malone
Instrumental Ensemble
Percussion
Brian is one of the most in-demand percussionists and educators in the Midwest. He has been at All Saints Catholic Church for over 17 years. He is a regular performer at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, with the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, and has performed from New York to the Kennedy Center to South America.
Jeff "Mac" McLemore
Instrumental Ensemble
Bass Guitar
Most musicians in the Cincinnati area know “Mac” as the “first call” for bass guitar, a veritable driving force for both onstage and studio performance. After the release of his first solo guitar studio album, Jazz with Friends, Mac put himself in a league of his own.
Spirituality & Liturgy Faculty
Fr. Roc O’Connor, SJ
Spirituality
Fr. Roc O’Connor, SJ has served as a staff member at the Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House in Barrington, Illinois since October 2021. In addition to serving the women and men who attend retreats, he also leads a children’s weekday Mass choir. One of the founding members of the St. Louis Jesuits, Fr. O’Connor is a published composer and published author. He has submitted two books to a publisher and continues to work on music for Catholic liturgical praying.
Mary Dumm, D. Min
Liturgy
CLEF Director
Dr. Mary Dumm, D.Min. is the pastoral associate at St. Blase Church in Sterling Heights, Michigan. Additionally, she teaches at Siena Heights University and SS Cyril and Methodius Seminary. Her areas of study include scripture, liturgy, and sacrament. Also, Mary has enjoyed participating in ventures with LTP, NPM, and other organizations that serve the people of God and their worship. When she’s not locked to her computer or in pre-Covid life running around the country giving workshops, she can be found with a book in her hand, cross-stitch in her lap, or diligently (albeit unsuccessfully) learning chord shapes.
Additional Faculty
Bobby Fisher
Clinic Day & Private Coaching Faculty
Guitar, Keyboard, Mandolin, Ukulele
Summer Program Director, CLEF Director
Bobby Fisher is a world-renowned musician, music producer, recording artist, composer, and clinician. He has served a number of years as program director for the NPM Guitar Schools, Guitar and Ensemble Institutes, the Bobby Fisher Ensemble Formation Program (BFEFP), and the CLEF Summer Program. He recently retired after 25 years as the music director of St. Agnes Parish in Ft. Wright, KY.
For the past five years, he has been the music director of the Share the Journey (A Concert for Compassion) series (https://shareinthehope.com). Bobby has recorded and produced a number of his own recordings and has worked as producer and guest musician on countless others. With his daughter, Serenity, and her husband, Michael G. Ronstadt, he currently records and performs with Serenity Fisher and the Cardboard Hearts.
Bobby has recorded and published a number of music collections for OCP, GIA, Franciscan Media, and Heart to Heart Ministries and is the author of “The Pastoral Guitarist,” a guitar instructional book, and “The Liturgical Guitarist,” an instructional video. As a children’s recording artist, Bobby is best known for “Hymns and Hers for Happy Hearts,” a collection of fun and creative music for young and old children. His best-selling collections include Play Before God, Guitar Prayer, Catholic Classics Vol. III, If We Dare to Hope, and Go Out and Tell. Bobby lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his wife and family.
Ken Gilman, PhD
Clinic Day & Private Coaching Faculty
Obbligato, Mandolin, Violin & More
CLEF Director
Ken served for 17 years as music director at St. Michael & All Angels in Albuquerque. He continues to play in his preferred spot on the back row at St. Michael and at St. Charles Borromeo, usually as an obbligato person on mandolin, octave viola, tenor, or bass mandolin. Irish banjo may even have snuck in a time or two. In Albuquerque the past 20 years, he previously worked and played in Celtic bands in both New England (Maine) and Europe (Belgium).
His special passion is creating balance in the ensemble for instruments and voices. In music selection and arrangement, he loves to explore, in addition to lyric content, how the timbre, rhythmic, and melodic characteristics of the music support the flow of the liturgy. Another area of interest for Ken is how we inhabit the continuum of the political to the pastoral, and how the interplay of beliefs and personality combine with the practice of authority and leadership to affect ensemble formation at all levels of the community, from staff to choir/ensemble to assembly. As a semi-retired psychologist and mediator, he does supervision and training work primarily with first responders around teamwork, communication, burnout, and self-care.
Steve Petrunak
Clinic Day & Private Coaching Faculty
Guitar
CLEF Director
Steve Petrunak is the Director of Music at St. Blase Parish in Sterling Heights, Michigan, where he has served in music ministry for more than 43 years. He is a composer, recording artist, author, editor, and clinician. Steve was the President/CEO of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians for nearly four years and served two terms as a member of the NPM Board of Directors. He has recorded and produced multiple recordings. He has written the book with his pastor Fr. Randy Phillips entitled “Managing Music Ministry” and a three-volume liturgical guitar methodology entitled “Beyond Strumming,” all with GIA Publications. Steve has also recorded more than 1,000 guitar-based instrumental recordings distributed across multiple streaming and download platforms (including Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, and Apple Music). Steve lives in Washington, Michigan, with his wife, Ruth.
Special Guest
Sarah Hart
Special Guest & Clinic Day Faculty
Sarah Hart is one of the leading figures in contemporary Catholic music today, her songs of faith having touched the lives of thousands. Originally from Lancaster, Ohio, she holds a degree in music from The Ohio State University. Now based in Nashville, Tennessee she spends much of her time on the road – juggling a busy songwriting, recording, concert and event schedule. She is also an avid writer, having published multiple retreat books, along with a musical based on the life of Saint Bernadette. She currently lives in Nashville with her husband and two daughters.
Sarah will be with us Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday.
Ready to be inspired by these faculty members and instructors? Register now to join us for the CLEF Summer Program, July 13-18, 2025 in Milford, Ohio.