Staff

Paul Kozel is the founding director of the Sonic Arts Center and the guiding force behind its curriculum, facilities design, and overall operations. Paul’s professional work includes audio post production dialog editing, sound design, and mixing, location music recording, underscore recording, and music recording and mixing. Paul’s work in production and post production audio has been screened at over one hundred film festivals world wide, winning numerous awards, and covered by news organizations including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, BBC, NPR, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, and the International Herald Tribune. His projects have included working with Grammy award winners Vince Giordano, the Manhattan Transfer, and Arturo O’Farrill, various ensembles from the New York Philharmonic and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, as well as Oscar winning actor Melissa Leo, and Oscar nominated actors David Strathairn and Ruby Dee.

Jonathan Perl is a producer, engineer, songwriter, keyboardist, and sound designer. He is the music production and synthesis coordinator at the Center. Recently, Jonathan has been busy writing, recording, and producing his original songs for his Darklight Songs project. He worked as co-producer, mix engineer and sound designer for the electronic rock duo Cyborg Asylum’s recent album Never Finished, Almost Abandoned. He served as the audio and MIDI consultant with composer Joe Bertolozzi on his Tower Music album, converting over 10,000 audio samples from the Eiffel Tower into sampled instruments to realize the score. From 2011-2013, Jonathan worked in collaboration with climate scientist Marco Tedesco for his project Polarseeds to create dozens of music and sound design pieces based entirely on 54 years of actual climate data. This work has been exhibited around the country through the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. Regarded as one of the premier experts on the use of Apple’s Logic Pro DAW, Jonathan founded the New York Logic Pro Users Group and Mac Audio Trainers in 2005, and has authored a number of training videos for Logic Pro, as well as various other music software applications.

Paul Special is an award winning audio engineer/producer, studio designer and teacher whose expertise extends into virtually every aspect of the professional audio industry. Equally at home engineering music projects, concert DVD’s, live TV broadcasts, or national television and radio spots, Paul has worked with clients including: Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Stone Temple Pilots, Incubus, Robert Palmer, Carrie Underwood, Nike, Volkswagen, ABC, CBS, NBC, Disney, USA Networks, MTV, VH-1, BET, and ESPN. With his company SAS Corp./Special Audio Services, Paul has conceived the architectural, acoustical and wiring system designs for over fifty recording studios and broadcast facilities around the world, including the initial design for the Sonic Arts Center. In addition to his professional work, Special has lectured and taught a variety of pro audio subjects for the Audio Engineering Society, the Manhattan Producer’s Alliance, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and William Paterson University in NJ.

Ben LeHouillier is a 2017 graduate of the Center and is now a busy professional in the audio production and post-production industries. As a production sound mixer, he has worked extensively in branded content, commercial work, as well as the political world, particularly leading up to the 2020 presidential election. He co-owns  Seer Audio Productions with SAC alum Marcus DiLaurio. Ben has sound designed and mixed several documentaries, narrative short and feature films, as well as numerous commercials including ones for Nike and Levis. His production and post-production work can also be found on various platforms including AMC, VH1, Amazon Prime, and the Spirit Network.

David Cieri is a musician and composer who has created music for film, concert, and album release. David works with prominent filmmakers including Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, The Ewers Brothers, Barak Goodman, and George Lucas. He has recorded nineteen albums under his own name, the last ten of which were released by  Ropeadope Records. He has collaborated with the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage on a major live documentary project and has made two records with the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa. Additionally, David wrote and performed the live scores for the first two seasons of The Paris Review podcast and an audio book by Annaka Harris entitled Lights On. 

Winy Taveras, aka Wiinzta, is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, and engineer from the Dominican Republic and a 2016 graduate of the music and audio technology program. Winy serves as a Technical Associate, photographer, and video editor for the Sonic Arts Center and the music department. She has worked as an assistant engineer for a wide range of projects including Epic Drums vs Beatbox Battle and a rescoring of the experimental film director Hans Richter’s film “Everyday” for chamber orchestra. Winy’s a DIY enthusiast that builds custom, guitar pedals, effects, and synths.