THE COMET/POPPEA

Adam Young is a versatile performer specializing in the cello and viola da gamba. While majoring in viola da gamba at The Juilliard School under Sarah Cunningham, he performed principal roles in several opera productions, including Dido and Aeneas with Avi Stein—featured on a European tour with performances at London’s Opera in the Park and the Palace of Versailles—and Hippolyte et Aricie under the direction of Stephen Stubbs.

This year, Adam has performed with several distinguished ensembles, including Abendmusik, Academy of Sacred Drama, American Baroque, Canterbury Choral Society, Christopher Street Collective, House of Time, and Salon Sanctuary. Recent opera credits include Agrippina at Brooklyn College and Blood Moon at Baruch College. In addition to his work as a string player, Adam also serves as a pianist for New York City Ballet. 

Alexander Gedeon is a multidisciplinary artist and director of opera, concert-theater and music video. Over the past seven years Alexander has worked at the cutting edge of new American opera and theater alongside multiple Pulitzer Prize, MacArthur Fellow and Grammy award-winning artists. Career highlights include: ‘Everything Rises’ at the BAM Next Wave Festival (a New York Times Critic’s Pick); ‘Sanctuaries’ a ceremonial opera for Black neighborhoods lost to gentrification, staged at Portland’s Memorial Coliseum; Anna Deavere Smith’s new work on the juvenile justice system ‘This Ghost of Slavery’ at National Sawdust this fall, to be co-directed with Yuval Sharon. Last year Alexander premiered two music videos for Prince protégé Judith Hill — ‘Black Widow’ and ‘Dame de la Lumière’ — exclusively on Rolling Stone.

Other highlights include co-directing ‘Der Kaiser von Atlantis’ with Yuval Sharon at Miami New World Symphony; pantomiming alongside composer Daniel Corral in Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage at REDCAT; and re-imagining Peter Brook & Georges Bizet’s ‘La tragèdie de Carmen’ at San Diego Opera. He associate directed for Sharon at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Detroit Opera and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

As a bandleader and composer, Alexander led the New York power-trio Trick & the Heartstrings, creating a live show London’s New Music Express acclaimed as “a supertight howl of righteous rhythm and blues with jaw-dropping pop twists,” working with legendary pop music producer Paul Epworth (Adele, Florence + the Machine). The band released music through 679 Records, a Warner Brothers subsidiary in the UK, and will issue a new recording on Oro Records in 2026.

Alexander has guest directed at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, New York University and guest lectured at the University of Southern California and Harvard. These projects have included interdisciplinary explorations of the music of Julius Eastman and the writings of Igor Stravinsky. He graduated summa cum laude from New York University’s Experimental Theatre Wing and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.

Heralded for her “superb vocal and dramatic chops” by Opera News, with “stunning vocal beauty and absolute sincerity of expression” in Chicago Classical Review, mezzo-soprano Amanda Lynn Bottoms will begin her 2023-24 season performing concerts with the Moab Music Festival, followed by a brief residency at Skidmore College during which time she will sing Richard Danielpour’s song cycle The Unhealed Wound alongside Eric Owens. Other recent highlights include her mainstage debut at LA Opera as the Mother in Omar and Paquette in Candide with Philadelphia Orchestra and maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin. 

Bottoms is an alumna of the Cafritz Young Artist Program at the Washington National Opera, and has received recognition and awards from prestigious international competitions including the George London Foundation, the Gerda Lissner Foundation, and the Metropolitan Opera National Council Regionals. Bottoms holds a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School and a Certificate of Professional Studies in Opera from the Curtis Institute of Music.

Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo began performing professionally at the age of 11 and has since appeared in opera, concert, recital, film, and on Broadway. In June 2024, he began his tenure as the General Director and President of Opera Philadelphia. He has appeared with many of the world’s leading opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Opera National de Paris, English National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Los Angeles Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Glyndebourne Opera Festival, Dallas Opera, Teatro Real Madrid, Spoleto Festival USA, Glimmerglass Festival (where he served as the 2023 Artist in Residence), and Finnish National Opera.

In concert he has sung with the New York Philharmonic (where he was named The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence for the 2021-22 season), The Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Met Orchestra Chamber Ensemble, Boston Baroque, Berlin Philharmonic, NDR at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, and the London Symphony Orchestra, among others. He has also been presented in recital in Vancouver, Princeton University Concerts, Duke Performances, and at the Morgan Library in New York. He has performed at a wide-ranging variety of venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Versailles, The Kennedy Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jordan Hall in Boston, Wigmore Hall in London, National Sawdust, Minamiza Kyoto, Joe’s Pub, The Guggenheim, The Park Avenue Armory, and Madison Square Garden.

A champion of new work, Mr. Costanzo created roles in the world premieres of John Corigliano’s The Lord of Cries and Gregory Spears’ The Righteous at the Santa Fe Opera, Jimmy Lopez’s Bel Canto at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and Jake Heggie’s Great Scott at the Dallas Opera. He has also premiered works written for him by Joel Thompson, Matthew Aucoin, Paola Prestini, Gregory Spears, Viet Cuong, Carlos Simon, Suzanne Farrin, Bernard Rands, Scott Wheeler, Mohammed Fairouz, Steve Mackey, and Nico Muhly.

Mr. Costanzo works as a producer and curator in addition to his singing, creating shows for The BBC Proms, The New York Philharmonic, Opera Philadelphia, National Sawdust, the Philharmonia Baroque, The Barnes Foundation, St. John The Divine, Princeton University, WQXR, The State Theater in Salzburg, Master Voices and Kabuki-Za Tokyo. During the 2020-21 season, he created and produced the New York Philharmonic’s Bandwagon initiative, the orchestra’s innovative response to the pandemic. It began with 81 impromptu concerts in all five boroughs of New York City, where Mr. Costanzo, musicians from the orchestra, and other special guests performed a wide range of repertoire, including world-premiere commissions. It evolved into a series of festivals created with partner organizations throughout the city, which utilize the resources of the Philharmonic to center and amplify the voices of the community.

Originally from Manchester, England and now a resident of California, Cath’s recent and up-coming productions include Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (dir. Christopher Alden); Messiaen’s Des Canyons aux étoiles (w Deborah O’Grady) Glass Handel (2018 & 2019, BBC Proms 2022); Bandwagon (New York Philharmonic); Amadigi de Gaula (dir. Louisa Muller); 2018/19 and 19/20 Soundbox Season; San Francisco Symphony; Orphic Moments (dir. Zack Winokur); Perle Noir (Tyshawn Sorey & Julia Bullock); Arkhipov (composer Peter Knell); Birds in the Moon (Mark Grey, Elkhanah Pulitzer); …Ihpigenia (Wayne Shorter & Esperanza Spalding); The Hunting Gun (dir. François Girard); No One is Forgotten (Prestini / Shirey);  Only an Octave Apart (dir. Zack Winokur); UnRavelled (dir. James Bonas), American Patriots (Yaniv Segal / Samantha Williams); In a Grove (Christopher Cerrone, Stephanie Fleischmann dir. Mary Birnbaum); Number our Days (Luna Pearl Wolff, David van Taylor); The Secret Sharer (DNAWORKS);  We TheMessiah (Darian Dauchan, Daniel Banks) Kronos Quartet Triptych Project (25/26) and The Known Lost (Allado- McDowell, Skye, Fleischmann). Between 2018 and 2022 Cath was the producer for AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company). 

Cellist and performer Coleman Itzkoff stands at the intersection of baroque/classical/new music, contemporary dance, and experimental theater. Whether premiering works by living composers and performing baroque music on historical instruments in the same concert, delivering enigmatic monologues in a piece of avant-garde dance theater, composing, arranging, and recording music for the Amazon film Le Bal des Folles, or simply playing solo Bach for hospital patients in the time of COVID, Coleman continues to push the boundaries of what it means to be a musician of the 21st century.  

As a soloist, he has been featured soloist with many great orchestras, including recent appearances with the Houston, San Diego, and Cincinnati Symphonies. He is a dedicated member of the early music ensembles Ruckus and Twelfth Night, and is a founding member of AMOC. Coleman holds a Bachelors in Music from Rice University, a Masters in Music from USC, and an Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School.

Heralded as a “singer of immense power and fervor” and “[one] of the most powerful voices of our time” by The Los Angeles Times, the “immensely gifted American bass-baritone Davóne Tines has won acclaim, and advanced the field of classical music” (The New York Times) through his work that blends opera, art song, contemporary classical, spirituals, gospel, and songs of protest, as a means to tell a deeply personal story of perseverance that connects to all of humanity. Called a “next generation leader” by Time Magazine and recently named Musical America’s 2022 Vocalist of the Year, Mr. Tines is a path-breaking artist at the intersection of many histories, cultures, and aesthetics.

Doug Balliett is a composer, instrumentalist, and poet based in New York City. The New York Times described his compositions as “brainily bubble gum and lovable shaggy,” his poetry as “brilliant and witty,” and his bass playing as “elegant.” Doug is a professor of baroque bass and violone at The Juilliard School, and he leads the Theotokos ensemble every Sunday at St. Mary’s Church. He plays regularly with Les Arts Florissants, Jupiter Ensemble, ACRONYM, Ruckus, BEMF, Alarm Will Sound, and other ensembles. In 2021, five of his Ovid Cantatas were filmed for Qwest TV with William Christie, Lea Desandre, and Nick Scott. 

For three years he and his twin brother hosted a weekly show dedicated to living composers on WQXR’s new music channel Q2. Upcoming performances of his work include Beast Fights at Tanglewood with the Boston Symphony bass section, and the annual New Year’s Eve performance of his opera Gawain and the Green Knight.

Poet, interdisciplinary writer, and performer Douglas Kearney grew up in Altadena, CA. He earned his BA from Howard University, his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, and is a graduate and fellow of Cave Canem. Kearney’s full-length poetry collections include Fear, Some (2006), The Black Automaton (2009), which was chosen by Catherine Wagner for the National Poetry Series, and Patter (2014). He has also published many chapbooks. His poetry has appeared in several anthologies, including The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007), Spoken Word Revolution Redux (2007), Dark Matter: Reading the Bones (2005), and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Art & Literature (2002). Kearney’s honors include a Whiting Writers Award, a Pushcart nomination, and commissions for new work from Minneapolis’s Weisman Art Museum and New York’s Studio Museum. In 2007, he was named a Notable New American Poet by the Poetry Society of America. Kearney has also received fellowships and scholarships from the Idyllwild Summer Arts Poetry Workshop, Cave Canem, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshops, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He is the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Cy Twombly Award. He teaches at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Elliot Figg is a keyboardist, conductor and composer who lives in New York. He is a graduate of the Historical Performance Program at The Juilliard School where he studied harpsichord with Kenneth Weiss. He also studied with Arthur Haas at the Yale School of Music. Elliot is an active member of ACRONYM, Ruckus, and House of Time. Previous engagements include: Five Boroughs Music Festival, Through the Warping Lens, a concert featuring his own music; Conductor and harpsichordist for Haydn’s Jupiter’s Journey to Earth, Monteverdi’s Combattimento, Hasse’s Piramo e Tisbe, and St.-Georges’ L’Amant Anonyme, all with Little Opera Theatre of New York; Conductor and harpsichordist for Death of Classical’s productions of Dido and Aeneas and Hot Dogs, Hooch, & Handel in and around the catacombs of Green-Wood Cemetery; Deputy Music Director and harpsichordist for Farinelli and the King on Broadway.

A 2023 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Emi Ferguson can be heard live in concerts and festivals with groups including AMOC*, Ruckus, the Handel and Haydn Society, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Manhattan Chamber Players, and as the music director of Camerata Pacifica Baroque. Her recordings celebrate her fascination with reinvigorating music and instruments of the past for the present. Her debut album, Amour Cruel, an indie-pop song cycle inspired by the music of the 17th-century French court, was released by Arezzo Music in September 2017, spending four weeks on the classical, classical crossover, and world music Billboard charts. Her 2019 album Fly the Coop: Bach Sonatas and Preludes, a collaboration with continuo band Ruckus, debuted at #1 on the iTunes classical charts and #2 on the Billboard classical charts, and was called “blindingly impressive … a fizzing, daring display of personality and imagination” by The New York Times.

Emi has been a featured performer at the Marlboro, Lucerne, Ojai, Lake Champlain, Bach Virtuosi, and June in Buffalo festivals, often premiering new works by composers of our time. Emi was a featured performer alongside Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Simon, and James Taylor at the 10th Anniversary Memorial Ceremony of 9/11 at Ground Zero, where her performance of Amazing Grace was televised worldwide. Her performance that day is now part of the permanent collection at the 911 Museum. Emi has spoken and performed at several TEDx events and has been featured on media outlets including the Discovery Channel, Amazon Prime, WQXR, and Vox talking about how music relates to our world today. As a radio host and programmer, Emi first started working with New York’s WQXR as a member of their Artist Propulsion Lab where she developed the podcast series “This Composer Is Sick” with Max Fine, exploring the impact of Syphilis on composers Franz Schubert, Bedřich Smetana, and Scott Joplin. She one of four new hosts for WQXR’s Young Artists Showcase and the host of Once Upon A Composer, sharing musical stories with the youngest radio listeners. Her book Iconic Composers, co-written with Nicholas Csicsko alongside illustrations by David Lee Csicsko, introduces music lovers of all ages to 50 incredible Western Classical composers from the past 1000 years. Born in Japan and raised in London and Boston, she now resides in New York.

American Bass-Baritone Evan Hughes has been praised for his “appealing clarity and emotional heft” (New York Times) and his “burnished tone” (Opera News). 

This season Mr. Hughes makes his debut as Idreno in Haydn’s Armida with the Kammer Akademie Potsdam.  He will sing the bass solo in Mozart and Ullmann’s Kaiser Requiem with the Orchestre de Paris and Omer Meir Wellber and the world premiere of Nante’s Anahata at the Elbphilharmonie with Kent Nagano.  With AMOC in New York City, he will perform in Lewis/Monteverdi’s The Comet/Poppea and Matthew Aucoin’s Music for New Bodies.  Future engagements include debuts at La Fenice, Venice, the Opéra-Comique, Paris and the Opéra de Montpellier, all in leading roles.Last season Evan Hughes made his debut with the Theater an der Wien as Valens in a new Stefan Herheim production of Handel’s Theodora conducted by Bejun Mehta.  He then returned to the Opernhaus Zürich for Jupiter in a new Jetske Mijnssen production of Rameau’s Platée conducted by Emmanuelle Haïm.  Mr. Hughes also returned to the Boston Lyric Opera for Ophémon in Joseph Bologne’s Anonymous Lover.  In concert Mr. Hughes reprised his acclaimed portrayal of the Protector in George Benjamin’sWritten on Skin with the Orchestre National de Lille and Alexander Bloch.

George Lewis is an American composer, musicologist, computer installation artist, and trombonist. At Columbia University, he is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music and serves as Area Chair in Composition and Faculty in Historical Musicology and Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble. Lewis is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the British Academy, is a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin, and was honored as a 2002 MacArthur Fellow. Lewis has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971. He is widely considered a pioneer of interactive computer music, developing programs that improvise together with human musicians. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh, New College of Florida, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania, among other academic institutions. His opera The Comet was a 2025 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music.

World-renowned American soprano Joelle Lamarre is an in-demand performer of new works by today’s living composers. Notable performances include those in George Lewis’s Afterword: The AACM (as) Opera and his new work The Comet / Poppea; the Chicago premiere of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking; Sean Griffin in Charles Gaines’s experimental forms Manifestos 2; the South Shore Opera of Chicago production of Nkeiru Okoye’s Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed that Line to Freedom; the Lyric Opera Unlimited new comedic opera, Factotum, by Liverman DJ Rico & Maharaj; the Lyric Opera of Chicago performance of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones & Champion; Chicago Opera Theater’s world premiere of Elizabeth Alumond’s, Quamino’s Map; and Long Beach Opera’s production of Anthony Davis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Central Park Five.

John Torres is a New York-based lighting designer working in theatre, motion, print, exhibitions, and live music. John has designed for such artists as director Robert Wilson, photographer Steven Klein, choreographers Lucinda Childs, Bobbi Jene Smith and Trisha Brown, and musicians such as Drake and Solange Knowles. Upcoming engagements include Tristan and Isolde (Met Opera)  dir. Yuval Sharon and Satyagraha (Paris Opera) dir Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber and Drake’s European arena tour Anita Max Win.  NY credits include Danny and the Deep Blue Sea starring Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott (Off Broadway); and The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window (BAM and Broadway).

Jonny Allen is a Grammy-nominated percussionist whose contagious passion for music has been described as “a demonstration of raw power, virtuosity and feeling” by The New York Times. Jonny has won prizes at both the International Chamber Music Competition and the International Marimba Competition in Salzburg, giving respective performances at Carnegie Hall and Schloss Hoch in Flachau, Austria. He has also performed as a drum set soloist with Ghana’s National Symphony Orchestra at the National Theatre in Accra. Jonny performs regularly with his percussion quartet, Sandbox, and is a founding Core Member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC). He is also a committed educator on percussion faculty at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, The New School in Manhattan, and the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Jonny holds a Bachelor’s degree and Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music, as well as a Masters degree and Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music.

Kearstin Piper Brown, praised for her “thrilling singing” (Opera Now), has emerged as one of the most sought-after lyric sopranos in the United States.

In 2025, she returns to the Lyric Opera of Chicago to cover Mimì and to the Metropolitan Opera to cover Bess. She also makes her role debut as Alice Ford with Portland Opera and performs Wendy Torrance in Paul Moravec’s The Shining with Utah Opera. On the concert stage, she appears with the Mahogany Chamber Series in Memphis, the Rochester Philharmonic, and the Tulsa Symphony.

In 2024, Ms. Brown made notable company debuts with Florida Grand Opera as Nedda and with the Metropolitan Opera as Evelyn in Fire Shut Up in My Bones. She also premiered Two Corners with Finger Lakes Opera, sang Anne Trulove in The Rake’s Progress with the Lakes Area Music Festival, and debuted as Mimì with Opera San José.

Her acclaimed performance as Esther in Ricky Ian Gordon’s Intimate Apparel with Lincoln Center Theater—part of the Metropolitan Opera’s New Works Program—earned her multiple awards and is featured on PBS’s Great Performances.

She has performed leading roles with numerous companies, including Atlanta Opera, Indianapolis Opera, New Orleans Opera, Santa Fe Opera, San Francisco Opera, Utah Festival Opera, Dayton Opera, and Virginia Opera, among others.

Keir GoGwilt is a violinist, composer, and musicologist who was born in Edinburgh and grew up in New York City. His work combines historical research and collaborative experimentation across a range of musical styles and genres. He has soloed with groups including the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Chinese National Symphony, Orquesta Filarmonica de Santiago, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. This year he is creating and performing a new stage role for Marie & Pierre by Bobbi Jene Smith and Celeste Oram with the Basel Sinfonieorchester and Ballet, composing for the JACK Quartet as artist-in-residence, performing his speculative-historical project Zarabanda Variations with AMOC, and publishing an article for the Bach Journal. 

GoGwilt earned his PhD in Music from UC San Diego in 2022 and was awarded the Chancellor’s Dissertation Medal. As an undergraduate at Harvard he studied Literature, and was awarded the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts. 

American soprano Kiera Duffy is recognized for both her gleaming high soprano and insightful musicianship in repertoire that encompasses Handel, Bach, and Mozart to the modern sounds of Berg, Glass, and Zorn.

Highlights of Kiera’s 23/24 season include a return to Opera Philadelphia for the world premiere of Rene Orth’s 10 Days in a Madhouse and The Comet / Poppea, which debuts at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Los Angeles. Recent engagements include a residency at the University of Iowa in collaboration with Miró String; Pierre Lunaire with Long Beach Opera; a debut with The Cleveland Orchestra in Mozart’s Exsultate; jubilate conducted by Harry Bicket; the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Knussen’s O Hototogisu!; fragment of a Japonisme conducted by Daniela Harding; the Berlin Philharmonic as Le Feu/Princesse in L’enfant et les sortilèges; Lembit Beecher’s world premiere opera Sophia’s Forest in Philadelphia; and a solo recital at the Midland Center for the Arts in Michigan. 

Marc is the founding Music Director of The Industry, Los Angeles’ groundbreaking and widely acclaimed experimental opera company. He was Music Director for the premiere of The Comet / Poppea in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, and for the Sci-Fi opera Star Choir in the Mt. Wilson Observatory. He was music Director for Sweet Land, the Industry’s production about Indigenous erasure which the New Yorker fairly accurately called ‘chaotic, conflicted, and implacably honest.’ With the Industry and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Marc conducted the premiere of his and Yuval Sharon’s new performing edition of Lou Harrison’s Young Caesar, and he was Music Advisor to the LAPhil/Industry co-production of Cage’s EUROPERAS. Also with the Industry, he has conducted LeBaron’s Crescent City, Cerrone’s Invisible Cities, three iterations of the opera workshops First Take and the workshop production of Akiho’s Galileo. He has been the Industry’s Music Director for In C by Terry Riley and also for the wild ride that was Hopscotch.

Outside of the Industry, Marc has been Music Director for several opera premieres including King’s Dice Thrown, LeBarron’s SUCKTION, Ivanova’s The Double, and the American premieres of Aperghis’ L’Origine des Espèces, Krausas’ The Immortal Thoughts of Lady MacBeth, Oliver’s Peach Blossom Fan, and Schaeffer’s Loving. With the LA Philharmonic New Music Group, he lead the premiere of Hermann’s The Call, and assisted on Hearne’s PLACE and Norman’s Trip to the Moon. With Beth Morrison Productions he co-conducted the premiere of Danielle Birrittella’s Magdalene. He conducted on New York City Opera’s Vox opera workshop program for four years. As a tenor, Marc sang about twenty five opera roles including Madeline X in the premiere of Foreman/Gordon’s What to Wear and sang on the Ojai festival and on the Monday Evening Concert series..

Marc composes music infused with a searching sense of narrative and mysticism. He was recently the Sound Investment Composer for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra who commissioned his HaZ’man HaZeh. Focusing on larger scale works, he was one of the principal composers of Hopscotch, writing scenes for limousine interiors, an outdoor park, and an abandoned theater. He has written long form pieces based on concepts of Jewish and Buddhist meditations including this for Jodie Landau and wildUp, T’shuvah for improvising Bassoon and string quartet, Every Day for chorus, Small Differences for eight voices, and a ‘Cello concerto, T’filat ha-Derech. He has written an opera based on the movie The Fisher King, and a family opera called Little Bear. He has been called “a terrific singer” (LA Times), an “assured conductor” (New York Times) and “raptly lyrical” (New Yorker). 

Marc has taught at the California Institute of the Arts for almost thirty years, and teaches courses centered around a humanistic approach to Music Theory and composition. He has a CalArts Coursera Class called ‘Approaching Music Theory’ and loves talking about Music Theory and the fact that it doesn’t really exist. He loves playing klezmer clarinet.

Mark Grey made his Metropolitan Opera debut with Doctor Atomic in 2008, returning there for L’Amour de Loin, The Merry Widow, Iolanta, Bluebeard’s Castle, El Niño, The Death of Klinghoffer, Nixon in China and Ainadamar, as well as Antony and Cleopatra spring 2025. As a composer, his opera Frankenstein premiered at Brussel’s La Monnaie in 2019, and his opera Birds in the Moon premiered with the New York Philharmonic in 2021. He has had several commissions from the Atlanta Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and several other orchestras and ensembles. He is an Emmy Award–winning sound designer whose work appears at leading concert halls, theaters, and opera houses, and in 2002, he became the first sound designer for the New York Philharmonic. He is the resident sound designer for the Ojai Music Festival and Park Avenue Armory.

Mila Henry is a music director and pianist who maintains an active and versatile career leading works that defy genre, from rock musicals to folk operas to reimagined classics. She has worked with Lileana Blain-Cruz, Heather Christian, Bill T. Jones, George Lewis, Missy Mazzoli, Wayne Shorter, and esperanza spalding. 

Hailed “a stalwart contributor to the contemporary opera scene” (Opera Ithaca), Mila frequently collaborates with Beth Morrison Projects and PROTOTYPE. She was Conductor for Magdalene; Music Director/Pianist for Eat the Document; Pianist for Thumbprint; and Répétiteur for Pulitzer Prize-winners Angel’s Bone and p r i s m. With BMP and VisionIntoArt, she was Conductor for The Old Man and the Sea and Répétiteur for Sensorium Ex. Other collaborations include Conductor for Letters That You Will Not Get (American Opera Projects); Music Director for The Hunt (Miller Theatre); Pianist for We Shall Not Be Moved (Opera Philadelphia, The Apollo, Dutch National Opera); and Répétiteur for Iphigenia (Octopus Theatricals).

Mila’s musical theater work includes Vocal Director for The World is Round (Ripe Time, Obie-winner); Music Director for Early Decision (McCarter Theatre); and Assistant Music Director for The Night Falls (BalletCollective). She has led workshops with Circle in the Square, Pittsburgh CLO, HERE, and Page 73; performed at Joe’s Pub and 54 Below; and supported thesis projects at BerkleeNYC, Columbia University, and NYU Tisch.

Mila is an active Maestra member, serving as Co-Program Head for First Takes, and participating in their mentorship program. She has participated on grant panels for New Music USA and OPERA America, and is a member of Brooklyn Art Song Society’s New Music Advisory Board. 

Mila is based in New York and plays multiple tiny instruments with the alt-country band The Opera Cowgirls. Manhattan School of Music (M.M.); Elizabethtown College (B.A). milahenry.com

Mimi Lien is a designer of sets/environments for theater, dance, and opera, and a MacArthur Fellow – the first stage designer to achieve this distinction. Select work: Antony & Cleopatra (San Francisco Opera & The Metropolitan Opera), Parsifal (Bayreuth Festival), The Righteous (Santa Fe Opera), Grounded (Washington National Opera & The Metropolitan Opera),Intelligence (Houston Grand Opera), Die Zauberflöte (Staatsoper Berlin), Taylor Mac’s A 24 Decade History of Popular Music (St. Ann’s Warehouse & international tour), The Oldest Boy (Lincoln Center Theater), Sweeney Todd (Broadway), Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway / Tony Award). Mimi’s large-scale public artworks include PARADE, a conveyor-belt installation at The Bentway in Toronto (2022), and The GREEN, which transformed the plaza at Lincoln Center into a grass-covered public space in Summer 2021. Her designs for dance have been seen at Perm Opera Ballet Theatre (Russia), Intradans (Netherlands), National Theatre (Taiwan). She is a co-founder of the Brooklyn performance space JACK.

A highly-acclaimed soloist and collaborator, violinist/violist Miranda Cuckson delights audiences with her performances of music ranging from older eras to the most current creations. She performs at venues ranging from Suntory Hall to the Berlin Philharmonie to the Teatro Colón and Cleveland Museum, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music, and the Ojai, Wien Modern, Grafenegg, Time Spans, Marlboro, Bard, West Cork, Portland, LeGuessWho, and SinusTon festivals. Miranda made her Carnegie Hall debut playing Piston’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the American Symphony Orchestra, and just recently made her debut at the Vienna Musiverein with the Haas Violin Concerto No. 2. 

She has released ten lauded albums, including Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura, named a Best Recording of the Year by the New York Times. Miranda is a member of AMOC* and founder/director of Nunc. She studied at Juilliard and teaches at Mannes School of Music.

Oana Botez is a Romanian American costume designer for theater, opera, film and dance. She is a Henry Hewes Award recipient, Princess Grace Award recipient, NEA/TCG Career Development Program recipient, Barrymore Award recipient, Henry Hewes Design Award and Lucille Lortel Award winner.

New York: BAM Next Wave, Bard SummerScape/Richard B.Fisher Center, Public Theater, Signature Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Baryshnikov Arts Center, The David H. Koch Theater/Lincoln Center, Big Apple Circus/Lincoln Center, Classic Stage Company, Soho Rep, PS122, The Kitchen.

Regional: Ain’t Misbehavin (Barrington Stage Company); Macbeth (Old Globe); Angels in America (Wilma); Man in a Case (Hartford). 

Opera: The Comet /Poppea (The Industry LA, Curtis Institute, Philadelphia); Song of Ambassadors (Alice Tully Hall/ Lincoln Center); Carmen (Minneapolis Opera, Glimmerglass Festival, Portland Opera); In a Grove (Pittsburgh Opera & Prototype NY); Persona ( National Sawdust, REDCAT); A House in Bali (BAM), Don Giovanni (Wolf Trap Opera), Cosi (Opera Saratoga Summer Festival), Guy &Dolls (Opera Saratoga Summer Festival), Émigré (NY Philharmonic), Dido and Aeneas (Château de Versailles)

Internationally: Bucharest National Theater (Romania), Théâtre National de Chaillot, Les Subsistances, The Old Vic, Budapest National Theater, Cluj Hungarian National Theater (Romania), Le Quartz (Brest, France), La Filature (Mulhousse, France), Exit Festival /Maison des Arts Creteil, Tanz im August Festival Hebbel am Ufer – HAU1(Berlin, Germany), Edinburgh International Festival, Singapore Arts Festival.

She is teaching at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale in the Design Department.

Paul Holmes Morton is native to the state of Pennsylvania, where he had his first music lessons on his father’s banjo. His studies with the virtuoso classical guitarist Ernesto Tamayo gifted him a technical tour through musical theories and history. Later Morton picked up the lute, and found it lying at the crossroads between the classics and the living folk traditions. His explorations of performance practice carry him to Handel operas, old time tunes, new compositions, and all there is between.

Perpetually inspired by music as a vehicle to transport oneself across time and culture, Paul Holmes can be found in a variety of venues from cathedrals and concert halls to smoky bars and country barns, anywhere that allows performance to lend harmony to the present noise.

As a lutenist, guitarist, banjo player, composer, and arranger Morton performs across North America and beyond with Ruckus, The Chivalrous Crickets, and the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado. An active recording artist, his musicianship can be found on albums by The Chivalrous Crickets, Makaris, Emi Ferguson, Tiny Glass Tavern, and Paul Simon.

Described as “a keyboard superstar” (The New Yorker), and a “spellbinding,” “vigorously virtuosic,” “all around go-to new music specialist” (LA Times), richard valitutto is a GRAMMY-nominated piano soloist, chamber musician, and vocal accompanist. They have collaborated and performed with the Martha Graham Dance Company, Tiny Desk Concerts, PBS Great Performances, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, and the American Academy in Rome, among many others.

valitutto is a founding member of the ensemble Wild Up, most notably as “pianist, and resident [Julius] Eastman scholar” (Vogue), contributing their piano artistry, incisive writing, and tenacious research efforts to the ensemble’s ongoing Julius Eastman Anthology, dedicated to the late composer’s music. Released annually on New Amsterdam to wide-spread acclaim, both Volumes 2 and 3 were Grammy-nominated for Best Classical Compendium. Volume 4 will come out this June, featuring valitutto’s deeply personal, virtuosic rendition of Eastman’s only surviving piano composition, Piano 2.

valitutto is currently ABD in Cornell University’s Keyboard Studies DMA program with a dissertation project on Julius Eastman, his life and music. They hold additional degrees from the California Institute of the Arts (MFA) and the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music (BM, summa cum laude). 

Robert Gooding-Williams teaches at Yale University in the Philosophy Department as Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Philosophy. Over the course of his career, he has taught at Simmons College, Amherst College, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and Columbia University. Gooding-Williams is the author of Zarathustra’s Dionysian Modernism (Stanford, 2001), Look, A Negro!: Philosophical Essays on Race, Culture, and Politics (Routledge, 2005), and In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America (Harvard, 2009). His Leonard Hastings Schoff Memorial Lectures, Democracy and Beauty: The Political Aesthetics of W.E.B. Du Bois, will be published by Columbia University Press in the spring of 2025. Gooding-Williams was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018 and in 2020 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2023, the Yale GSAS Alumni Association awarded him the Wilbur Cross Medal, the highest honor that GSAS bestows on alumni. Gooding-Williams received both his BA (1975) and his PhD (1982) from Yale. He is also the organizer of the Philosophy Department’s Spring 2025 Political Philosophy and Race Speaker Series.

Wendy Heller, Scheide Professor of Music History, is Chair of the Department of Music at Princeton University and also serves as Director of the Program in Italian Studies. Recognized as one of the leading scholars in the field of Baroque music, Heller has specialized in the study of 17th- and 18th-century opera from interdisciplinary perspectives, with special emphasis on gender and sexuality, art history, Italian literature, dance history, and the classical tradition. Author of the award-winning Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice(Berkeley, 2003), Heller has published numerous essays on the music of Monteverdi, Strozzi, Cavalli, Purcell, and Handel, and is currently completing a book entitled Animating Ovid: Opera and the Metamorphoses of Antiquity in Early Modern Italy.

Having trained as a singer at New England Conservatory before receiving her PhD in musicology from Brandeis University, Heller maintains a strong interest in performance, promoting collaborations between scholars and performers. She has been a driving force in the performance of baroque operas at Princeton, and served as dramaturg for Princeton University Opera Theater’s 2014 production Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea. Heller is also a member of the editorial board for Francesco Cavalli’s Opere (Bärenreiter); her edition of Cavalli’s Veremonda L’Amazzone di Aragona (1652), to be published in 2018, was produced at the 2016 Schwetzingen Festival, for which she also served as a consultant. She is also completing a edition of Handel’s Admeto for Bärenreiter.

Winner of the Rome Prize, Heller has also been a been a Mellon Fellow at the Society of Fellows at Columbia University, an appointee at the Villa I Tatti Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies (as winner of the Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars), and was also the Sylvan C. and Pamela Coleman Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She spent the 2014-15 academic year as an Old Dominion Fellow with the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University, and was recently named the Scheide Professor of Music History. She serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Musicology, Cambridge Opera Journal, Journal of Music Pedagogy, The Operas of Cavalli (Bärenreiter), the Board of the American Handel Society, and is a member of the Venetian Advisory Board for the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

Grammy-nominated rising star Whitney Morrison has earned praise for her “big, gleaming soprano” (Chicago Classical Review) and “vocally sumptuous” performances (Chicago Tribune). Morrison received a 2023 Grammy nomination for Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s recording of X: The life and Times of Malcolm X, in which she sang the role of Louise/Betty, a role she also sang with Michigan Opera Theatre and Opera Omaha. This season she returns to the Lyric Opera of Chicago to sing the role of Emelda Griffith in Champion, and returns to the Metropolitan Opera to cover the role of Billie in Fire Shut up in My Bones and Louise/Betty in The Life and Times of Malcolm X. 

Recent engagements include Mimi in La Boheme with Berkshire Opera Festival, Yasmine Miller in the world premiere production of Proximity with Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Lady Billows in Albert Herring with Chicago Opera Theatre. Morrison is an alum of the Ryan Opera Center.

Yuval Sharon is the founder and Co-Artistic Director of The Industry in Los Angeles and the Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director of Detroit Opera. In 2023, he was named the Director of the Year by Musical America, and in 2017, he was honored with a MacArthur Fellowship and a Foundation for Contemporary Art grant for theater. He was the first American invited to direct at Bayreuth, and is the recipient of the 2014 Götz Friedrich Prize in Germany for his production of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic. With The Industry, Sharon has directed and produced new operas in moving vehicles, operating train stations, Hollywood sound stages, and various “non-spaces” such as warehouses, parking lots, and escalator corridors. Between 2016 and 2019, Sharon was the first Artist-Collaborator at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, creating nine projects that included newly commissioned works, site-specific installations, and performances outside the hall.