Guitar Faculty

Alan Arthur Aurelia
Alan Arthur Aurelia Associate Faculty of Guitar and Bass Guitar
Alan-Arthur Aurelia has spent his life in the arts.

He is the son of Maestro Alan Aurelia, creator of the Riverside Opera Company in (1996) and Richmond County Orchestra (1998.) While Alan-Arthur was a child he greatly enjoyed behind-the-scenes work and doing set-ups for productions, and was creating promotional materials and writing grants for the organizations by the age of fifteen!

It wasn’t until some friends prodded him to play bass in their band when he was sixteen that he began to love music as a player and performer.

Alan Arthur got his first electric bass when he graduated high school and his first double bass when he was eighteen. He attended the College of Staten Island (CSI,) where he received a B.A. in Music with a concentration in double bass performance. During his tenure at CSI he created The Rock Club, a performance-based group where students learned covers and performed them publicly at campus events. The club became a fixture on campus, leading to Alan Arthur’s own original project Not From Concentrate (NFC.) NFC has performed all over New York City, including Arlene’s Grocery, Bowery Electric and The Bitter End. Not From Concentrate has also toured the East Coast and Midwest with reggae legend King Django, and has recorded over fifty songs with Grammy-Award winning sound engineer Dan Grigsby. NFC is still active, having performed regularly and released records in 2018 and 2019.

As a double bassist he’s performed with King Django, the New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra, New York Session Symphony, the Drs. Orchestral Society of N.Y., the Riverside Opera Company and the Richmond County Orchestra. Mr. Aurelia has studied double bass with some of the finest players in NYC including the Staten Island Conservatory’s own Kazuo Nakamura, classical and jazz great and recent Grammy winner Gregg August, Broadway and National Tour staple Bradley Lovelace, and the New York Philharmonic’s own David Grossman.

Erick Cholico
Erick Cholico Associate Faculty of Mandolin, Guitar and Ukulele
Erick Cholico holds a B.A. in music from Wagner College, where he played both mandolin and guitar as a music major.

Erick's exposure to traditional Italian music began at age nine working for maestro Umberto Cardone. In 1988, Erick was selected to play in “New York in Messina” performed in Messina, Italy, with a twenty-five piece music and dance ensemble. The program was produced by Eddy Davis, music director for Woody Allen, and also included the members of Woody Allen’s band.

Erick has over 30 years experience as an accomplished professional musician, and has performed on major concert stages, including the New Jersey Performing Arts Center where he played mandolin, jazz and flamenco guitar, and harmonica for “Los Tres Reyes” from 1999 to 2002. He has also performed classical symphonic music with the New York Mandolin Orchestra. He has received several grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Council on the Arts of Staten Island in support of performances such as an Italian music concert featuring mandolin and a jazz orchestra concert.

Always active on the performance scene, Erick has played at such diverse locations and events such as the Italian Cultural Institute of St. John's University, the wedding of Ron Basile (producer of the Grammy and Emmy awards,) Italian-themed events at the invitation of the Columbian Lawyers Association, and local television shows. He has played music for events at the Hilton, Colonia Country Club, North Hills Country Club, and the DaVinci Society, as well as playing jazz banjo for New York theatrical events and the traditional jazz circuit.

Erick teaches guitar, mandolin and ukulele.