Founder

Chris “Ifatoye” Theberge

Chris is a musician/entrepreneur with decades of experience in international performance, music production, marketing/tech joint ventures, cultural/event curation, and recording studio ownership and management.  

He is a founding member of the internationally renowned, Grammy-nominated jazz group Groove Collective, slated to perform at Cuba’s 39th annual 2024 Havana Jazz Plaza Festival in January.

Chris currently serves as Director of The Bowery Jazz Messengers. This NYC-based non-profit helps high-school jazz musicians develop their craft while serving the homeless community at NYC’s Bowery Mission. 

In 2018, Music Works production/label, in partnership with Sendero Music in Matanzas, won Cuba’s prestigious national music award for Ilú Keké: Transmisión en la Erita Meta. The project is the historical recorded musical account of one of the oldest sets of Bata drums on the island and the African descendants & culture surrounding it.  

He is producing projects in Cuba and Nigeria and curates “House of Drums,” an ongoing live event series celebrating Afro-descendant music & culture in New York City.  He also serves as an adviser to the Harlem Film House, producers of the annual, worldwide HipHop Film Festival. 

Engineer, Artist, Producer, DJ Nina Creese

Nina Creese is a multi-talented force of nature, an artist, engineer, and DJ who sings, composes, produces & performs, and is a pioneer in Virtual Reality Music and gaming.  

She joined forces with Music Works founder Chris Theberge in 2013, engineering, hosting workshops, producer showcases, and creative events and helping to build Music Works Studios on Manhattan’s Upper West Side into a community of 400+ artists & producers. 

She has engineered for Netflix, Q-Tip (Tribe Called Quest), Sony ATV, The X-Files, Danny Glover, Abercrombie & Fitch/Bustle, CNN’s Great Big Story, CBS’s Madam Secretary Danny Brown. She has worked on various NYC recording studio construction projects with studio designer/builder Christos Tsantilis. 

As an artist, Nina has released music with Music Works, placing music on Showtime’s “The Chi” and VR Software company Groove Gunner. She performs in NYC and internationally with NYC’s Groove Collective.

In 2022, Nina founded the MusicXGaming Castle VR Studio in the Metaverse, where creatives and gamers unite through VR/XR experiences for music production & gaming. She hosts VR music production/collaboration sessions and workshops in the VR studio she designed in the Metaverse and DJ’s IRL (in real life) for the Hip-Hop Film Festival/Harlem Film House and select NYC events.

Nina also serves as a speaker at industry events colleges and has been featured at Harlem's Apollo Theatre's Education program.

info@musicworksnyc.com