Cello

Titilayo Ayangade has spent more than two decades behind the instrument, enjoying performances in orchestras and chamber ensembles, commissioning new music, and more recently beginning to compose to create evocative multimedia performances. As a member of the ensembles duo kayo and Thalea String Quartet, Titilayo has been a top prize winner at both the Fischoff and Chamber Music Yellow Spring competitions, held residences at Britten Pears and Avaloch Farm, as well as crafted programs of marginalized music for the Caramoor Center for the Arts, Chamber Music Tulsa, Chamber Music Society of Cincinnati and the Boulanger Initiative. Titilayo has worked closely with musicians such as Yo-Yo Ma, Michelle Cann, Anththony R. Green, Alarm Will Sound, St. Lawrence String Quartet, Robert DeMaine, Lawrence Power and many others. Holding degrees in performance from University of Cincinnati-CCM and University of Texas at Austin, she has also worked closely with members of the Artemis Quartet at Queen Elisabeth Chapel in Belgium. Titilayo currently resides in New York City and is a D.M.A. candidate at the University of Maryland. One of the recipients of the 2021 Ann Divine Educator Award from the Fischoff Chamber Music, Titilayo is passionate about equity in education and has crafted education seminars on nonverbal communication, literacy and storytelling. Titilayo thrives in the chamber music setting making appearances at the Classical Music Institute in San Antonio as a mentor, helping to foster the love of collaboration in up and coming musicians hearts. Titilayo is also chamber music coach for the New York Youth Symphony, as well as a mentor for the Fortissima Program at the Colburn School. titilayoandco.com and duokayo.com

Lights

Reza Behjat is a lighting designer originally from Iran. Besides more than 30 productions that he designed in his home country, his works have been shown Off-Broadway and at regional theaters across the United States such as Atlantic Theater, Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theater, The Guthrie Theater, Actors Theater of Louisville, Alabama Shakespeare, etc. As a theater maker, Reza has found great joy in working on new productions or new adaptations of classics especially when he gets involved from the early stages of development until the full production. In this long-term engagement, he loves to collaborate not only as a designer but also as a dramaturg and a visual thinker to help the playwright and the director to create the visual world of the play as they move forward in the rehearsal process. Reza is currently designing for multiple world premiere productions that will be shown at Audible Theatre, MCC Theater, Flea Theater and many more for the upcoming season. He is the winner of the prestigious Knight of Illumination for Nina Simone: Four Women in 2019 and also was nominated for a Drama Desk Award (English) and two Henry Hewes Design awards (Henry VI, Hamlet).

Social Impact Director

“Visionary Instigator” of Street Dance Activism and Global Dance Meditation for Black Liberation, Dr. Shamell Bell is a mother, community organizer, dancer/choreographer, and documentary filmmaker. Some of her coolest, original titles include: Visionary Escalator of the Debt Collective and Radical Joy Advisor for Contra Tiempo Activist Dance Theater. Formerly a visiting lecturer of African and African American Studies and Theater at Dartmouth College, Dr. Bell is currently a Lecturer of Somatic Practices and Global Performance at Harvard University and across California State University East Bay and Los Angeles campuses, teaching in Ethnic Studies as well as Women Gender and Sexuality Studies. An original member of the #blacklivesmatter movement, beginning as a core organizer with Justice 4 Trayvon Martin Los Angeles (J4TMLA)/Black Lives Matter Los Angeles to what she now describes as an Arts & Culture liaison between several social justice organizations. She also consults for social justice impact in the tv, film, theater and music industry. Featured in the NYTimes: THE NEW BLACK JOY, a Virtual Event Celebrating Juneteenth. As well as provided background vocals and insight for Esperanza Spalding’s Grammy award winning “Songwrights Apothecary Lab”, Formwela 8 project. Fall 2021, Dr. Bell along with 5 other artivists were featured in the Lavazza “Change The World” Calendar where she activates, “As we dance our lives together, we are lifting frequencies and lifting vibrations that, with action, will create a shift in the world.” streetdanceactivism.com

Composer

Thrice commissioned by The National Endowment for the Arts, Berger has also received major commissions from The Mellon and Rockefeller Foundations, Chamber Music America, and numerous chamber music societies and ensembles. Recent commissions include his operas, My Lai (commissioned by The National Endowment, the Gerbode Foundation, and Harris Theatre), and Leonardo (commissioned by the 92nd Street Y for baritone Tyler Duncan), and his song cycle, Rime Sparse (commissioned by the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society and premiered in New York and Chicago, with soprano Julia Bullock, and members of Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society). Berger’s most recent recording is Smithsonian-Folkways’ recording of My Lai with the Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, and Van Anh Vo. A 2017 Guggenheim Fellow and the 2016 Elliot Carter Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, Berger is the Denning Family Provostial Professor in Music at Stanford University.

Costumes

Gabriel Berry arrived in New York City early in 1979. Within a few months she met Ellen Stewart, made her New York debut designing costumes for Charles Ludlam's The Enchanted Pig, and became the costume designer in residence at La MaMa E.T.C. Specializing in the creation of new work, she has designed premieres of the works of artists including John Adams, Samuel Beckett, Charles Ludlam, Caryl Churchill, Lucinda Childs, Christopher Durang, Ethyl Eichelberger, Richard Foreman, The Five Lesbian Brothers, Maria Irene Fornes, John Guare, Lameece Isaaq, Nick Jones, Craig Lukas, Mabou Mines, Naomi Wallace, Kia Corthron, Will Power, Marcus Gardley, Scott Z. Burns, Meredith Monk, Chuck Mee, Tony Kushner, Peter Sellars, Phillip Glass, Harold Pinter, Reinaldo Povod, Mabou Mines, Tennessee Williams, Brandon Jacob Jenkins and Taylor Mac.

Soprano, Co-Choreographer

Canadian soprano Neema Bickersteth was born and raised in Alberta to parents from Sierra Leone. She is known for her skills as a singer, an actor and a maker of multi-disciplinary performance. She has performed operatic roles in both Canada and Europe, and in recent years, she has specialized in contemporary projects in opera, music theater and experimental theater, including Century Song, a work she co-created and has toured in Canada, Europe and East Africa to critical acclaim. NOW Magazine (Toronto) has named her as one of the top ten theater artists in the city. She has won once and been nominated three times for Outstanding Performance at Toronto’s Dora Mavor Moore awards. In addition, Neema has been honored to perform for the XIVth Dalai Lama, Shirin Ebadi and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu. She is a co-founder of and artistic producer for the experimental collective Moveable Beast. Upcoming: singing the title role in Volcano’s and Moveable Beast’s Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha, a reworking of ragtime giant Scott Joplin’s visionary 1911 blues/rag/gospel opera.

Co-Social Impact Director

As the matriarch of one of Staten Island’s largest African-American families, Gwendolyn Garner has earned nationwide recognition lately as the mother of Eric Garner, a man murdered by the New York Police Department in July of 2014. Caught on camera, his death played an integral role in the ongoing conversation about police brutality in the United States, but her story begins in South Brooklyn, where she lived most of her life. A longtime employee of both the post office and New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Mrs. Garner is now taking the city in which she raised her family to task, advocating for a full serving of justice, not only for her own, but for families of police brutality at the hands of the NYPD. With 3 children, 15 grandchildren, and 6 great-grandchildren, her voice is that of several generations, all of whom have suffered greatly at the loss of their beloved Eric and who grieve for the mothers of victims who have not received extensive media coverage.

Piano

Pianist Mikael Darmanie has performed throughout the world in solo appearances at The Weill Institute at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Rachmaninov Hall at The Moscow Conservatory, The Bang on a Can Marathon, Close Encounters With Music in the Berkshires, Cape Cod Symphony's Nth Degree Series, Portland Bach Virtuosi, Mainly Mozart Festival, The Rising Star Piano Series in Southampton, Royal Northern College of Music, and The Emerald City Music Festival. Mikael is the keyboardist and DJ, and a composer and arranger for the band Warp Trio as, described as "A talented group that exemplifies the genre-obliterating direction of contemporary classical music” (Columbia Free Times). The Trio performs throughout the world in genres ranging from jazz to hip-hop, rock, contemporary classical, bluegrass, fusion, and electronic dance music, most recently in Spain at the International Experimental Music Meeting, and at the Marché des Arts du Spectacle d'Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. He is also a frequent performer in New York City's new music scene in places such as Times Square, National Sawdust, Roulette, Le Poisson Rouge, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Natural History Museum, Trinity Wall Street, Joe's Pub, and The Cell Theatre. Mikael also has recently conducted new music groups such as Contemporaneous and Stony Brook University's Contemporary Chamber Players.

Librettist

Poet, Vievee Francis was born in San Angelo, Texas in 1963. She is currently the author of four books of poetry Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University Press, 2006), Horse in the Dark (winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Poetry Prize for a second collection, Northwestern University Press, 2016) Forest Primeval (winner of the Hurston Wright Legacy Award and the 2017 Kingsley-Tufts) and The Shared World (forthcoming, Northwestern University Press, 2022). She most recently received the 2021 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, textbooks, and anthologies, including Poetry, Best American Poetry (2010, 2014, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2022), spin.com, and the landmark anthology, Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. A Cave Canem participant and Callaloo Fellow, she has served as an Associate Editor for Callaloo, and is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.

Production Manager

Brian Freeland is a production manager, producer, and experimental theater maker. Credits include works with Beth Morrison Projects, PROTOTYPE opera-theater festival, Curious Theatre Company, HERE Arts Center, The Brick, Mind The Art Entertainment, Ping Chong & Co., Universes, The Public Theater, The LIDA Project, Countdown to Zero, THEATREWORKS, About Face, Catamounts, Town Hall, Lone Tree Arts Center, The Aurora Fox, Paragon Theatre, Su Teatro, and Shadow Theatre Company.

Conductor

Kamna Gupta is an American Prize-winning conductor experienced in operatic, orchestral and choral repertoires. During the 2021–2022 season, Ms. Gupta will conduct the world premiere of In Our Daughter’s Eyes (Du Yun/McQuilken) featuring Nathan Gunn at L.A. Opera Off-Grand, Zolle/Cockroach (Du Yun) with International Contemporary Ensemble, and The Jungle Book (Sankaram/ O’Rourke) at the Glimmerglass Festival. She recently conducted Sandbox Figaro, a 90-minute reduction of Mozart’s famous work at Mannes Opera. She will also serve as an associate conductor at the Spoleto Festival in spring 2022. In spring 2021, Ms. Gupta had her company debut with Beth Morrison Projects as the co-conductor of their Next Generation Competition, served as associate conductor for the workshop of Arkhipov (Knell/Fleischmann) at Seattle Opera, and returned to The Glimmerglass Festival to work on Il trovatore and the world premiere of The Knock (Vrebalov/Brevoort). Recent company credits include the Royal Opera in Versailles, LA Opera, the Glimmerglass Festival, Beth Morrison Projects, Spoleto Festival, Sarasota Opera, Opera Saratoga, Trinity Church Wall Street and the American Lyric Theater.

Violin

Fung Chern Hwei is the current member of Sirius Quartet, a string quartet that focuses on performing self composed music and improvisation, and Seven)Suns, which performs extreme music rooted in the language of avant-metal and hardcore rock music. He has worked with Hiromi, Tyshawn Sorey, Richie Beirach, Linda May Han Oh, Uri Caine, Stanley Clarke, and The Dillinger Escape Plan, just to name a few. He has been touring extensively, which brought him to four continents—North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Chern Hwei is currently working on his next film score for director Badrul Hisham Ismail’s debut feature, and is workshopping an avant-jazz-metal opera, La Suspendida, composed by Kilter.

Stage Manager

Jason Kaiser's stage management credits include: Only An Octave Apart (St. Ann's Warehouse, NY Philharmonic); Kiki and Herb SLEIGH (BAM); Social! the social distance dance club, and Party in the Bardo (both at the Park Avenue Armory); the Tony Award-winning revival of Oklahoma! (Broadway, St. Ann’s Warehouse); A 24-Decade History of Popular Music with Taylor Mac (St. Ann’s Warehouse, tour); Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce; Available Light with Lucinda Childs Dance Company; the opera premieres of Book of Mountains and Seas, Acquanetta, The Source, anatomy theater, and love fail (all produced by Beth Morrison Projects); the world tour of the Olivier Award-winning revival of Einstein on the Beach; Nonesuch Records at BAM with Steve Reich and Philip Glass; three world-premiere plays by Athol Fugard; two European tours of Jesus Christ Superstar directed and choreographed by Baayork Lee; and 13 world premieres with Jennifer Muller/The Works dance company.

Scenery & Projection

Peter Nigrini has been a pioneer in the integration of projection technology and live theater. He has won the inaugural Lortel Award for Projection Design, a Drama Desk, an Obie, and been nominated for three Tony Awards. His Broadway designs include MJ: The Musical, Ain’t Too Proud, Beetlejuice, The Spongebob Squarepants Musical, Dear Evan Hansen, A Doll’s House Part 2, and Fela!. Projects of note in other venues include Here Lies Love by David Byrne, Grounded directed by Julie Taymor for the Public Theater, Lucia Di Lammermoor and Don Giovanni at Santa Fe Opera, and a series of adaptations with Robert Woodruff: Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground, Bergman’s Autumn Sonata, and Fassbinder’s In A Year Of Thirteen Moons. He also designs in other contexts, including Deep Blue Sea, for Bill T. Jones at the Park Avenue Armory, the Grace Jones Hurricane Tour, and Hans Zimmer Live. Additionally, he was a founding member of the New York troupe, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, for which he designed every aspect of their productions including No Dice, Romeo and Juliet, and the multi-part work Life & Times. He is currently designing KPOP for Broadway, Plays for the Plague Year for the Public, and Tommy for the Goodman Theater.

Dancer, Co-Choreographer

Trebien Pollard is an assistant professor of Dance + Choreography. He received training at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, Florida A&M University, Florida State University, Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, and from a number of gifted teachers and choreographers. Pollard has performed with many dance companies, including RIOULT, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, Bebe Miller Company, Urban Bush Women and Pilobolus. As a choreographer, Pollard has choreographed and toured with RASA recording artist “Nomad” and choreographed for director William “Electric” Black’s “The Hamlet Project,” “The Damned: A Rock Musical” and “Frankenstein: The Rock Musical.” He has appeared in the feature film “Ghostlight,” starring Richard Move as “Martha Graham.” Pollard has been on faculty at the American Dance Festival, Queens College, Adelphi University, the University of Southern Mississippi, Goucher College, Middlebury College, Montclair State University, Marymount Manhattan College and the University at Buffalo, as well as a licensed certified GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® trainer. He earned his MFA in dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and his BS in mathematics education from Florida A&M University.

Visual Artist

Enrico Riley is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a Rome Prize in Visual Arts, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize in painting, and a Jacobus Family Fellowship through Dartmouth College. Exhibitions include the American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, VA, The Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA, The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX, The American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH, The Museum for the National Center of Afro-American Arts in Roxbury, MA, Academia di Belle Arti di Roma, Rome, Italy, Rhode Island School of Design. Riley is Professor of Studio Art at Dartmouth College.

Lead Chorister

Isaiah Robinson, tenor, is a Grammy nominated multi-talented musician who was born in Chicago into a musical family of singing parents. As an actor he was featured in Steven Spielberg’s 1991 film Hook, playing the role of Pockets. He has also appeared in several radio and television commercials as a child; most notably, “That’s My Baby” for Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, a Polaroid commercial featuring the comedian Sinbad as well as advertisements for Kraft, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, JC Penny, Sears and for Eagle Foods. As a vocalist he was primarily trained singing in church by his parents and his siblings which lead to his performing on several jingles and voiceovers for various products and companies. He has performed with numerous musical artists including The Barrett Sisters, Darius Brooks, Aretha Franklin, Patti Labelle, Rascal Flatts, Joan Collaso, Mavis Staples, Janis Siegel, Chaka Khan, Yo-Yo Ma, Chance The Rapper, Queen Latifah, Ted Hearne and a year long tour with Room Full of Teeth vocal ensemble. Isaiah and Ted Hearne have a long-standing a musical relationship, and friendship going all the way back to some years together in the Chicago Children’s Choir. He has been privileged to work with Ted on a number of projects including Katrina Ballads, and The Source and many other works that predate his professional career as a composer. Isaiah is humbled that Ted has faith in him and feels he has been made a better musician because of their collaborations. He was the featured vocalist at the inauguration of Rahm Emanuel as mayor of Chicago He performs with and facilitates workshops for the Chicago Children’s Choir, and is on staff as a musician/organist and choirmaster at the Life Center C.O.G.I.C in Chicago, where he has served for more than 20 years

Theater Director

Arden: But, Not Without You (The Flea), The Hang (HERE Arts Center), The Fre (The Flea), Southern Promises (The Flea), How To Catch Creation (The Goodman), Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce (Town Hall, World Tour), Scraps (The Flea), Father Comes Home From The Wars… (The Goodman), Flea Fridays (The Flea), Syncing Ink (The Alley, The Flea), A 24 Decade History of Popular Music… (Pomegranate Arts, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Melbourne Festival, et al. - Kennedy Prize & Pulitzer Prize finalist), Take Care (The Flea), Hir (Magic Theatre, Mixed Blood and Playwrights Horizons), Dream State of Affairs (The Invisible Dog), Marisol (Luna Stage), The Perils of Obedience (Abrons Arts Center), Seed (Classical Theatre of Harlem and Hip Hop Theatre Festival), Neighbors (The Public Theater), Limbs: A Pageant (HERE Arts Center), Rainy Days and Mondays (FringeNYC), Maud - The Madness (Phoenix Theatre Ensemble), We Declare You A Terrorist (Summer Play Festival). His participatory walks and performances have been produced by Abrons Arts Center, American Realness, The Brooklyn Museum, Dartmouth College, Elastic City, Jack, The New Museum, Prelude Festival, PS 122, the Van Alen Institute and Visual AIDS. A Bessie Award winning director, he is the Artistic Director of The Flea Theater in lower Manhattan; board member of A.R.T./New York; and ringleader of Willing Participant—an artistic activist organization that whips up urgent poetic responses to crazy shit that happens. niegelsmith.com

Projection Associate

Camilla Tassi is a projection/video designer, producer, and musician from Florence, Italy. Design credits include Golijov’s Falling Out of Time (Carnegie Hall), Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (Apollo’s Fire), Pollock’s Stinney: An American Execution (PROTOTYPE, NYC), Deavere-Smith’s Fires in the Mirror (Baltimore Center Stage), Mozart’s Magic Flute (Berlin Opera Academy), Talbot’s Path of Miracles (Conspirare, TX), Carissimi’s Jepthe (Hopkins Center for the Arts), and Handel’s Alcina (Yale Opera). Tassi enjoys bringing theatrical design to traditionally unstaged compositions, recontextualizing the repertoire with today’s audiences. For video, she has directed and edited for the Washington Chorus, Les Délices Early Music, Princeton Festival, and Chicago Ear Taxi Festival. She sang with the Schola Cantorum at Yale and has created Italian translations for groups including L’Arpeggiata. Camilla holds degrees in Computer Science & Music from the University of Notre Dame, Digital Musics from Dartmouth, and an MFA in Projection Design from Yale. camillatassi.com

Saxaphonist

Greg Ward is a saxophonist and composer that was born in Peoria, Illinois. Currently based in Chicago, Ward has performed and recorded with a varied group of artists like Prefuse 73, Lupe Fiasco, Tortoise, William Parker, Makaya McCraven, Linda Oh and Mike Reed. As a bandleader, Ward has produced five recordings including Fitted Shards: South Side Story, Phonic Juggernaut, Touch My Beloved's Thought, Rogue Parade: Stomping Off From Greenwood and Fitted Shards: High Alert. As a composer, he has also received commissions from the Jazz Gallery in NYC, the Chicago Jazz Institute, the City of Chicago's Made In Chicago: World Class Jazz Series, Peoria Ballet Company, the Jazz Coalition and the B'Town Jazz Festival. He has also been awarded the New Music USA Van Lier Fellowship in 2012and DCASE IAP grants in 2017 and 2018. Ward maintains an active international touring schedule with various ensembles and has recently been appointed to the faculty of the Jacob School of Music at Indiana University as Assistant Professor of Jazz Saxophone.

Creative Producer

Kim Whitener is an independent creative producer, working in the contemporary opera-theatre, music-theatre and other multi-genre landscapes through her company, KiWi Productions. From early 2007 to late 2018, she was the Producing/Executive Director at HERE in NYC, and was a founding co-director of the PROTOTYPE opera-theatre festival, along with partners at Beth Morrison Project, collectively directing eight festivals through January 2020. Prior to joining HERE, Ms. Whitener spent six years as an independent producer with KiWi Productions, working with a range of US artists in the contemporary theatre, opera- & music-theatre, dance-theatre and multi-media worlds, including The Builders Association, Big Dance Theater, Toni Dove, Martha Clarke, Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater, 33 Fainting Spells, among others. She was Managing Director of The Wooster Group for four years, and held other theatre management and producing positions in New York, Boston and Philadelphia with a specialty in new music-theatre. She has served on many grant panels and taught seminars nationally and internationally on production, management and development of projects for touring. kiwi-productions.com

Percussion

Bonnie Whiting performs and composes experimental music, seeking projects that involve the speaking percussionist, improvisation, and non-traditional notation. Recent work includes an evening-length song cycle for speaking percussionist composed by Eliza Brown and 10 musicians incarcerated at the Indiana Women’s Prison, performances on the original Harry Partch instrumentarium, collaborations with Torch Collective, and concerti with the National Orchestra of Turkmenistan. Her debut album, featuring a solo-simultaneous realization of John Cage's "45' for a speaker" and "27'10.554" for a percussionist" was released by Mode Records in 2017, and her second album, Perishable Structures, launched on the New Focus Recordings label in 2020. Whiting has performed with the country's leading new music groups: Ensemble Dal Niente, International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Seattle Modern Orchestra, and red fish blue fish percussion group. She is Chair of Percussion Studies and the Ruth Sutton Waters Associate Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Co-Choreographer

In 1984, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar founded Urban Bush Women (UBW) to explore the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change. The company has toured five continents and has performed at venues including Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and The Kennedy Center. Using Jawole’s unique approach to the arts and activism, UBW’s acclaimed Summer Leadership Institute supports artists’ role in cultural organizing and civic engagement. In 2010, UBW was selected as one of three U.S. dance companies to inaugurate a cultural diplomacy program for the U.S. Department of State. Jawole is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, the 2015 Dance Magazine Award, the 2016 Dance/USA Honor Award and the 2017 Bessies Lifetime Achievement Award. Jawole is currently the Nancy Smith Fichter Professor of Dance and Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University.