Lydia Megale, co-music director of the Schola Phoenix Singers, attained a bachelor and master’s degree from New Jersey University and is presently in her 26th year teaching for the Bayonne Board of Education. She has directed the BHS Concert Choir, Men’s Chorus, Show Choir, Honors Choir, Jazz Choir and Girl’s Glee Club. Her students have been selected for the NJ All State Mixed Chorus, Women’s Chorus, All Eastern Chorus and All State Jazz Choir.

Under her direction, the BHS students have performed at Carnegie Hall, the Governor’s Mansion, the State Assembly, Channel 5 news and Channel 12 "New Jersey’s Talking." They have brought honor and pride to their school and community with superior ratings in music festivals all over the East Coast and Toronto, Canada.

Megale is the worship team leader at the Christian Church of Bayonne and works as a freelance accompanist in the Tri State Area. She is also a piano instructor in Bayonne and has successfully shared her passion for music with many of her students who have gone on to make music their career. She is married to Gabriel Megale and is the proud mother of three children.

Co-music director of the Schola Phoenix Singers, Vasyl Hrechynsky was born in Ukraine. There he studied at the M. Lysenko Conservatory in Lviv where he received a Masters Degree in Conducting and completed advanced studies in the field of Conducting at the P. Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.

He then continued his studies in the US at Westminster Choir College of Rider University earning a Master of Music degree. While teaching and lecturing at the Lviv Conservatory, he led several choruses and was Choirmaster at the Lviv Theater of Opera and Ballet.

Since arriving in the states in 1991, Hrechynsky has led the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York as its artistic director and conductor. Dumka has performed concerts at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Newark Symphony Hall, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the United Nations, as well as in other venues.

From 2001 to 2012 he was Assistant Choral Director at Bayonne High School. In 2002, he developed a vocal ensemble Sweet Harmony that performed at various community events and received first place awards at various competitions.

A proud native of Upstate New York, Ensemble Manager Ryan LaBoy is enjoying his third season singing with Schola Cantorum on Hudson. He serves as bass section leader and is the 2012-2013 Schola Conducting Scholar.

Currently teaching middle school vocal music and guitar in Orange, NJ, LaBoy graduated summa cum laude from the prestigious Westminster Choir College of Rider University where he served two consecutive terms as the President of Westminster’s Student Government Association. Named among Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and having received Rider University’s President’s Award in 2010, LaBoy also served as the founding artistic director of Joyful Noise—a Christian men's vocal ensemble at the Albert C. Wagner Youth Correctional Facility.

Fully committed to the ideals of community service, outreach and engagement, LaBoy has recently accepted an invitation to coordinate the sixteenth annual Orange All-City Arts Festival in Spring 2013. He is an active member of the American Choral Directors Association, New Jersey Educators Association, The Sound Tree Institute, and WNYC.

Wayne Eastwood is Schola’s new Webmaster. How this can be when he is acknowledge nationally as being chronically, persistently, and recurrently without a mastery of any kind is a secret lost in the mists of choral lore. There are, however, apocryphal and anecdotal rumors that suggest he was once cornered while looking for the men’s room at one of the Schola venues and got himself imbroglioed.

Having grown up around computers and having successfully petitioned his PhD committee to allow computer programming to count toward his language requirement, he brags that he was the country’s first bi-illiterate. He did, by chance, go to work for Commodore Business Machines just as they were coming out with the Commodore 64. Convinced he could program their sound chip, Commodore turned him loose with an expense account and a secretary named Fifi. He did manage to get one of his commercials aired nationally, but that check has long been spent.

Eastwood is also the Creative Consultant of the New Music Initiative for Project : Encore, a title long on adjectives and short on salary. And, during the two hours each day he is not nodding off, he is restoring an 1890 Victorian in Ohio.