Flipping through the curriculum vitae of the Goizueta Business School's Pat Noonan reveals what appear to be some very intriguing contradictions.

I'm probably the only person to have been on the faculty of the Harvard Business School and also worked for Greenpeace," he said, joking.

Sure enough, under "Academic Positions," from 1992 to 1993, is a stint as a lecturer in business administration at Harvard. On page 5, under "Other Professional Experience," Noonan lists his two years as president of Greenpeace New England.

But more about that later.

Another activity that may seem out of place for the associate professor in decision & information analysis falls among the bullets of "Personal Information": music recordings released.

In April of this year, Noonan wrapped up two years of work and released Scott's Red Star, a collaboration with his younger brother, Peter. The CD is Noonan's fifth release; his first dates back to 1975, when he was part of a trio called Noonan, Levi & Houshmand - John Houshmand and Jonathan Levi were fellow undergrads with Noonan at Yale.

The trio was part of what Noonan called the "new acoustic movement" in the northeast (one of its most well known graduates was banjo-player Bela Fleck, who sat in with the band many times). A 180-degree turn from the synthesized disco and bombastic progressive rock that ruled the day, new acoustic music was instrument based, intricate and often improvisational.

An early review of the band's work described it as "rule-breaking" and "category-denying." To this day, Noonan said those compound adjectives are the best way to characterize his music, which even he has a problem pinning down into one genre.

"People call it jazz, and it's hard to shake off a compliment like that, because that's the pinnacle of popular music," he said.

Noonan eventually settled on New Age as perhaps the best way to describe his sound. It's instrument based - Noonan's guitar weaves seamlessly with his brother's piano on all 16 tracks. Middle brother Chris plays drums, and Noonan's old collaborator Levi is featured on violin. Also playing a big role is Paul Lieberman, who contributes expertise on a variety of woodwinds (flute, sax and piccolo, to name three).

The CD's title honors the Noonans' cousin, Scott McKinley, who was killed at the age of 41 in a car accident one month before work began on the recording. A graphic artist and painter, McKinley's art decorates the front cover, and the Noonans' June 23 concert in St. Louis (Peter's hometown) also featured a showing of McKinley's work.

Prior to Scott's Red Star, the brothers had released seven albums between them but had never worked together. Part of the reason was a five-year difference in their ages. When Pat, now 44, was playing guitar in high school garage bands, Peter played piano in middle and elementary school. And from the time Pat entered Yale in the 1970s, the two never lived in the same city.

But in the spring of 1998, Peter contacted his brother about collaborating on a new record.

"We had no idea whether it would work," Noonan said. "We just didn't have any sense whether our instrumental styles and our writing style would [mesh]."

They did. Quickly. By the end of the second day they had most of the material, and they only needed to figure out how they'd record it.

It wasn't an easy process since the Noonans were so scattered (Chris lives in Springfield, Ill., where the brothers grew up). Scott's Red Star was recorded in four different studios, and many of the tracks were completed at different times. However, Noonan said that didn't make his job as producer difficult.

"You've got these intense sessions where you really focus for days at a time on the recording, but then you have time to step back and evaluate what you're doing and listen to where it's going," he said.

Noonan's musical background stretches beyond performing and producing. In 1998 he helped found the Atlanta-based "Museum of Music Inc." The so-far largely theoretical creation of Noonan and James Oliverio, a composer and director of AudioLab at Georgia Tech, will eventually grow into a celebration of the art of music rather than a shrine to celebrity musicians, Noonan said.

His passion for the project is easily evident when he described it: "It's a very ecumenical place for us to celebrate how closely music is tied into every person, every culture, every point in history," he said. "It's interwoven not just with business but craft and technology and with worship. It's tied in with all our activities and pastimes. Music is really one of the greatest inventions of humankind."

Noonan said he hopes the museum will reach full fruition by 2005, complete with a location in downtown Atlanta. His vision is that the museum will encompass a musical and virtual environment that hooks visitors into live performances throughout the world and offers them looks into galleries, workshops and classrooms all devoted to the art of making music. The project remains in its infancy for one main reason: Noonan hasn't had the time.

Since 1993, he has served on the business school faculty, the last four of those as assistant dean for full-time MBA programs, a title he relinquished earlier this month. His devotion to that position as well as his regular professorial work (tying in nicely to his musical leanings, Noonan specializes in the effect of new technology on the media and entertainment industry) severely cut into his extracurricular activities. Scott's Red Star was recorded primarily on weekends and vacations.

But a career in academia wasn't exactly what Noonan had envisioned after graduating from Yale. He lived the musician's life throughout much of the 1970s and early '80s and loved it. "It was a great life," he said. "It was all about making music, [but] I had to screw it up and think about my responsibilities to others," he said.

So Noonan walked into the offices of Greenpeace in Boston to volunteer. He went to work in environmental education, and soon became the president of the organization's New England region.

It was Noonan's work at Greenpeace that led to his return to graduate school. "That's where I learned that I had a real knack for management, although I was largely ignorant about how to do it," he said.

He earned his MBA at Yale in 1984 and eased into management consulting, even founding his own firm in 1990. He also started a family with his wife, Jo; they have two sons Paul, 12, and Will, 10. Noonan completed his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1993. Something had to give, and it was music.

But with the release of Scott's Red Star and a moderately extensive tour to go with it (June dates in the Midwest will be joined by others in the Southeast later this summer, including a soon-to-be-scheduled performance at Variety Playhouse in Little Five Points), Noonan gets to feed his passion again.

And perhaps add another bullet to his resume.

Power to the people:

Wild Orchard Records is owned by Peter Noonan. By selling the CD online directly to consumers (and offering free MP3 downloads of songs), Pat Noonan gets to test several of his academic theories about technology's effect on the entertainment industry. "We get a chance to try out some of our ideas about how technology democratizes the media business. It doesn't mean that everybody makes money, but it means that everybody's got access."