Additional Bios

David LaMarche has been working as a conductor in the dance field for over forty years.  He served as Music Director for the Dance Theatre of Harlem from 1993 to 1998.  As a guest, he has conducted for New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, The Joffrey Ballet, Houston Ballet, L’Opera di Roma, and Het National Ballet.    The orchestras he has directed include the Houston Symphony, the Lyric Opera Orchestra of Chicago, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, The Paris Opera Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Moscow Radio Orchestra, and the Orchestre Lamoreux.

Mr. LaMarche is currently in his twenty-sixth  year as a conductor on the staff of American Ballet Theatre.  He is the Music Director of the Paul Taylor Dance Company and an Adjunct Faculty member of collaborative piano at the Juilliard School.   Mr. LaMarche is a graduate of Boston University and resides in New York City.

Tara Simoncic is thrilled to be the new Principal Guest Conductor for the Paul Taylor Dance Company.  Ms. Simoncic was the first woman to conduct with the American Ballet Theatre where she is a frequent guest conductor.  She has worked extensively with the New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Ballet Estable at Teatro Colón, Compañía Nacional de Danza, Cincinnati Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, and Ballet West where she served as Music Director from 2015-2018. Last season, she made her debut with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, Joffrey Ballet, Orquestra Jovem do Sãu Paulo, and the Houston Ballet.  Ms. Simoncic’s love of opera has led her to work with the Piccolo Opera Festival in Italy and the SNG Opera Ballet Theatre in Maribor, Slovenia. She has been serving as Music Director of the Louisville Ballet since 2018 and the Flexible Orchestra since 2001.

John Adams is a composer, conductor, and creative thinker, who occupies a unique position in the world of classical music. His works—both operatic and symphonic—stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes.

Over the past 25 years, Adams’s music has played a decisive role in turning the tide of contemporary musical aesthetics away from academic modernism and toward a more expansive, expressive language, entirely characteristic of his New World surroundings. He began composing at age ten and heard his first orchestral piece performed while still a teenager.

After earning two degrees from Harvard, he moved to Northern California in 1971 and has since lived in the San Francisco Bay area. In 1985, Adams began a collaboration with the poet Alice Goodman and stage director Peter Sellars that resulted in two groundbreaking operas: Nixon in China (1984-87) and The Death of Klinghoffer (1990-91). Produced worldwide, these works are among the most-performed operas of the last three decades.

Other Adams works include: Dharma at Big Sur (2003), for electric violin and orchestra, inspired by literary impressions of the Californian landscape by such writers as Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Henry Miller; the Doctor Atomic Symphony (2005), drawn from opera; and Flowering Tree, written for the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth and premiere in Vienna in 2006.

Adams’s works are among the very few written in our own time that have achieved repertory status, appearing regularly on programs by orchestras internationally. Nonesuch Records has released first recordings of all of his works, both symphonic and theatrical, since 1985.

John Adams is an active conductor, appearing with the world’s greatest orchestras and with programs that combine his own works with a wide variety of repertoire from all time periods. Adams’s 2009-2010 season included appearances as Artist in Residence at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, a residency with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, two Carnegie Hall appearances with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and ensemble ACJW, an engagement with the London Sinfonietta, a two-week residency with the London Symphony Orchestra in Paris, and a two week residency with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.

In 2003, Lincoln Center presented a festival titled “John Adams: An American Master,” the most extensive festival that the venue has ever devoted to a living composer. He became the Creative Chair for the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2008, and was the artistic mind behind that orchestra’s 2009 “West Coast/Left Coast” festival.

Hallelujah Junction, John Adams’s autobiography, was named by the New York Times as one of the “most notable books of 2008.” The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer, edited by Thomas May and published by Amadeus Press, is a 400-page summary of writings about Adams and his music and is the first in-depth anthology of texts dealing with more than 30 years of the composer’s creative life.

Adams has received countless awards and honorary degrees, including the National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honors Award and an induction into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.

Shelia Chandra was born in South London to a South Indian immigrant family. Chandra discovered her voice at the age of twelve and whilst at Theatre Arts school. From this moment her chosen path was to be a singer.

Lacking any real contacts or access to the music business, she nevertheless honed her vocal skills as a labour of love, spending up to two hours a night throwing her voice into the tall, draughty and uncarpeted stairwell of the family home: “I didn’t know how to manufacture an opportunity, but I was determined that when a chance came my way I would be ready.”

A chance did come her way, perhaps drawn by the weight of such unshakable belief. Steve Coe, a writer and record producer, was about to form a band, Monsoon, as an outlet for his increasingly Indian influenced material. He came across Chandra’s voice on an old audition tape, lying in a box at Hansa Records and knew that he had found his singer: “The richness, fluidity and quality of her voice struck me immediately. And then when I requested a photo from the file and found that Sheila was Asian, everything else seemed to fall into place.”

Monsoon put out an EP on Steve Coe’s newly formed Indipop label and were signed by the far sighted Dave Bates at Phonogram. The band’s first single ‘Ever So Lonely’ took a song written around a raga and, utilising the new production techniques available, came up with an irresistible but radical modern pop fusion sound. It was a top ten hit and notched up a quarter of a million sales worldwide.

Following singles did not manage to dent the top twenty and six months later Chandra walked away from it all, frustrated by the increasing lack of communication between Phonogram and Monsoon over artistic direction. She went back to the Indipop label to learn her craft as a writer and musician. Free from business constraints and in complete control of her creative life, there followed a remarkable and prolific two-year period. Her first four solo albums for the label chronicle a profound transformation in the quality and depth of her work, both as a singer and increasingly as a writer, in her then chosen field of Asian fusion— learning from the very structures she had ignored throughout her childhood.

Her new found ability to cross continents in a single vocal line and weave seamlessly the vocal styles of the Arab world, Andalucia, Ireland, Scotland, India and more ancient structures such as that of Gregorian plainsong made for a true fusion within one mind and one voice. Weaving My Ancestor’s Voices established Chandra as a spiritual heir to a ‘whole world’ vocal tradition, whilst Coe’s sensitive and painstaking production enhanced this further and acted as an integral part of the recording, particularly on the virtuoso vocal percussion pieces ‘Speaking In Tongues’ I and II. The album spent several weeks in the Billboard World Music Top 10 and outsold everything else on the label in the USA.

After touring the USA with Peter Gabriel’s 1993 WOMAD tour, there followed The Zen Kiss and ABoneCroneDrone. The latter was a daring minimalist strategy to lure the listener out of long accustomed passivity to hear, as Chandra does, the living symphony of harmonics within the simplest of drones.

In 2001, Sheila released a one-off collaboration album with The Ganges Orchestra called This Sentence is True (The Previous Sentence Is False)on the tiny Indipop Records; a project she said helped her break out of her voice and drone box. In the meantime, Sheila’s transcendent vocals from the Real World trilogy had became a staple ingredient of unauthorised dance remixes, and were even copied by session singer Shahin Badar for the infamous single ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ by The Prodigy, in 1997.

Fiercely protective of her musical vision, she’s always received numerous requests to allow samples and remixes of her work, and almost always refuses. However, in 2002, fresh from their success with ‘American Dream’, Jakatta used Sheila’s 1982 Top Ten hit ‘Ever So Lonely’ vocals and completely reconstructed the track underneath. The resulting single reached no 8 in the UK charts and Sheila appeared on Top Of The Pops for the second time. She was also one of four soloists on the second Lord Of The Rings film soundtrack, The Two Towers in 2002 (with a piece written especially for her called ‘Breath Of Life’) which went platinum.

Following voice problems, Sheila returned to live performances for a short while in 2007, after a gap of 14 years, giving concerts around the world with WOMAD and other festivals. She also featured on the first Imagined Village album in that year, and toured the UK with them. In 2010 she signed her first book to Vermilion (Random House) entitled Banish Clutter Forever— How the toothbrush principle will change your life.

Unfortunately this innovative artist’s voice has continued to deteriorate. In 2010 Sheila developed Burnt Mouth Syndrome (for which there is no known cause or cure) and now experiences long-lasting neurological pain triggered by speaking. Singing is completely out of the question. She is effectively mute, and communicates in person largely through handwritten notes and very basic sign language. She says she considers the trilogy she made for Real World to be the best work of her musical career.

Eric Ewazen was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and is the recipient of numerous composition awards and prizes, including the BMI Award (1973), Louis Lane Prize (1974), Bernard Rodgers Award (1975), Howard Hanson Prize (1976), George Gershwin Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1977), Peter David Faith Prize (1978), Rodgers and Hammerstein Scholarship (1979), and the Marion Freschl Award (1980). He received a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Festival and studied with Gunther Schuller. His works have been performed by the Juilliard Symphony, various chamber ensembles at Juilliard and the Eastman School of Music. Recent premieres of his orchestral and wind ensemble works have been given by the Charleston Symphony, West Virginia Symphony, Orquesta Sinfonica de Tenerife in Spain, Orquesta Sinfonica Carlos Chavez in Mexico City, Orchestre de la Garde Republicaine in Paris, the Jeju Music Festival Wind Ensemble in Korea, and the Moment Musicale Orchestra of Taiwan. He has been a member of the board of directors of the International Society of Contemporary Music, United States section, N.Y.U., since 1983. He holds a BM from the Eastman School of Music, and MM and DMA degrees from Juilliard. He has been on the Juilliard faculty since 1982 and on the school’s Pre-College faculty since 1980.

Matthew Patton is a graduate of Music Composition from the Manhattan School of Music. Patton’s mentors have included composers James Tenney and John Corigliano. He has collaborated with such internationally renowned artists as choreographer Paul Taylor, dancer and actor Mikhail Baryshnikov, and most recently with film director Guy Maddin, for whom he wrote and recorded new music for the 2015 Criterion DVD release of My Winnipeg.

Speaking in Tongues, the acclaimed (and Emmy Award-winning) dance piece by Paul Taylor for which Patton scored the music, was called “a masterpiece for our time” by the New York Times, and has been mounted at the Paris Opera House, La Scala in Milan, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and Lincoln Center in New York.

Patton is curator of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra New Music Festival, where he has mounted new work by Jim Jarmusch, Phil Kline, Glenn Branca, Lee Ranaldo , members of Sigur Ros, Valgeir Sigurdsson, Johann Johannsson, the Quay Brothers, Mychael Danna, Venetian Snares, Tim Hecker, Owen Pallett, Lubomyr Melnyk, and many others. He teaches new music at the University of Manitoba and is a guest lecturer on contemporary Icelandic music and culture. Patton also has a small acting part in Ge9n (A9ainst), the recent film from Iceland about the Reykjavik Nine who temporarily overtook the Icelandic parliament.

The Infected Mass, Patton’s debut recording as Those Who Walk Way, is a haunted and profoundly emotive requiem of minimalist composition that combines ghostly strings and choral voices with musique concrète; melodic passages rise and fall amidst rumbling and sibilant drones sourced from humming and whispering voices and the sound of human blood flow, punctuated by cockpit voice recordings of airplanes in distress. Patton obsessively sculpts the recordings with erasure techniques, seeking liminal and transcendent horizons of sonic materiality through absence, subtraction, silence and collapsing structure. Co-produced with Paul Corley (Sigur Ros, Bjork) at The Greenhouse in Reykjavik and Andy Rudolph at Private Ear in Winnipeg, The Infected Mass will be released by Montréal-based label Constellation in March 2017, including a deluxe audiophile vinyl edition with extensive artwork commissioned from Royal Art Lodge of Winnipeg alumni Neil Farber and Michael Dumontier.

Max Richter stands as one of the most prodigious figures on the contemporary music scene, with ground-breaking work as a composer, pianist, producer, and collaborator. From synthesizers and computers to a full symphony orchestra, Richter’s innovative work encompasses solo albums, ballets, concert hall performances, film and television series, video art installations and theatre works.  He is Classically trained, studying at Edinburgh University, the Royal Academy of Music, London, and completing his studies with composer Luciano Berio in Florence,

Memoryhouse, Richter’s 2002 debut, has been described by The Independent and Pitchfork Magazine as a “landmark”, while his 2004 album The Blue Notebooks was chosen by The Guardian< as one of the best Classical works of the century. SLEEP, his eight-and-a-half-hour concert work, has been broadcast and performed worldwide, including at the Sydney Opera House, Berlin’s Kraftwerk, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Philharmonie de Paris, and at the Barbican, London. In 2012 Richter “Recomposed” the infamous Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, winning him the prestigious ECHO Classic Award, and an established place in the classical charts.

In recent years Richter’s music has become a mainstay for many of the world’s leading ballet companies, including The Mariinski Ballet, La Scala Milan, The Joffrey Ballet, New York City Ballet, The Paris Opera Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Semper Oper, and NDT, while his collaborations with Wayne McGregor for The Royal Ballet have been widely acclaimed.

Richter has written prolifically for film and television, with recent projects including Hostiles, Black Mirror, Taboo – which gained him an Emmy nomination, HBO series The Leftovers and My Brilliant Friend and, most recently, White Boy Rick, Mary Queen of Scots and the sci-fi drama Ad Astra starring Brad Pitt. His music is also featured in Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir, and in the Oscar-winning Arrival by Denis Villeneuve.

Richter’s most recent commissions are from the city of Bonn to mark the Beethoven 250th year anniversary, and a further collaboration between Richter, Margaret Atwood and Wayne McGregor, based on Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy of novels.

Jennifer Tipton is well known for her lighting for theater, opera, and dance. Her recent work in theater includes To Kill A Mockingbird for Broadway, Beckett’s First Love for Zoom and all of Richard Nelson’s Rhinebeck plays. Her recent work in opera includes Ricky Ian Gordon’s Intimate Apparel with libretto by Lynn Nottage, based on her play by the same name, at the Lincoln Center Mitzi Newhouse Theater; her recent work in dance includes Lauren Lovette’s Pentimento for the Paul Taylor Company and Balanchine’s Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Paris Opera Ballet. Among many awards she has received the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 2001, the Jerome Robbins Prize in 2003, and in 2008 she was awarded the USA “Gracie” Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship. She has lit for the Paul Taylor Dance Company since her beginnings.

James F. Ingallshas designed the lighting for Paul Taylor’s Brief Encounters, To Make Crops Grow, Perpetual Dawn, Marathon Cadenzas, Sea Lark, Death and the Damsel, Sullivaniana, Dilly Dilly, Ports of Call, The Open Door, and Concertiana. For PTAMD he has designed Doug Elkin’s The Weight of Smoke and Lila York’s Continuum. Recent designs for dance include Giselle for the Finnish National Ballet, The Nutcracker for Miami City Ballet and Twyla Tharp’s 50th Anniversary Tour. His work for Mark Morris Dance Group includes Layla and Majnun, The Hard Nut, Mozart Dances, Dido and Aeneas, and L’Allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato. His designs for opera include the world premieres of John Adams’s Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, El Niño, Doctor Atomic, A Flowering Tree, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, and the world premieres of Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin, Adriana Mater, La Passion de Simone, and Only the Sound Remains. For the Druid company in Galway he has designed Sive, King of the Castle, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Waiting For Godot and DruidShakespeare, all directed by Garry Hyndes. He often collaborates with the Wooden Floor Dancers in Santa Ana, California.

Santo Loquasto is known as a designer for theater, film, dance, and opera. His work in New York theater won him Tony and Drama Desk Awards for his set design of Café Crown in 1989, and his costume design for The Cherry Orchard in 1977 and Grand Hotel in 1990, and an additional 15 Tony nominations. He has collaborated with Woody Allen on 30 films. He received Academy Award nominations for production design for Radio Days and Bullets Over Broadway and for costume design for Zelig. Mr. Loquasto has worked with most major international dance companies and has collaborated with Mark Morris, Jerome Robbins, Glen Tetley, Helgi Thomasson, Agnes de Mille, James Kudelka, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Dana Reitz, Lila York, Alexei Ratmansky and Twyla Tharp. For the Taylor Company, he has designed costumes and/or sets for 52 of Mr. Taylor’s works. Recent New York designs include Fences, The Assembled Parties, Bullets Over Broadway, A Delicate Balance, and Shuffle Along. He received the Merritt Award for Excellence in Design and Collaboration in 2002, was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2004, and received the Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for the Arts in 2006, the Robert L.B. Tobin Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2007, and the Breukelein Institute Gaudium Awards 2013.

Alex Katz was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Queens, and studied at Cooper Union and The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In the early 1960s, influenced by films, television, and billboard advertising, he began painting large-scale works, often with dramatically cropped faces. In the years following, he began alternating these with large-scale environmental landscapes. His paintings have been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions, including museum exhibitions in New York, London, Paris, Vienna, Seoul, and Madrid.

Katz began designing sets and costumes for choreographer Paul Taylor in the early 1960’s, and has collaborated on the productions of Meridian; Scudorama; Private Domain; Sunset; Lost, Found and Lost; and Last Look, among others.

William Ivey Long For Paul Taylor, William has designed Concertiana, The Open Door, Equinox, Byzantium, Roses, Kith and Kin, and Danbury Mix.  William is currently represented on Broadway, on tour, and internationally by Chicago (now in its 29th year!) and Beetlejuice: The Musical. In addition to his countless design credits for opera, ballet, modern dance, theatre, television, and film, he has been nominated for 18 Tony Awards, winning 6 times.  He was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2005. www.williamiveylong.com

Brandon Stirling Baker is a Tony Award-nominated lighting designer working internationally. His work can be seen on stages throughout the United States and abroad including Broadway, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, Walt Disney Concert Hall, New York City Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Australian Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet, American Ballet Theater, Park Avenue Armory, Opera Philadelphia, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Miami City Ballet, Boston Ballet, Washington Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Houston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Dance Theater of Harlem, Philadelphia Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, Semperoper Dresden, Staatsballett Berlin, Finnish National Ballet, and many others.

Baker is best known for his extensive collaborations with director and choreographer Justin Peck where they have collaborated on over 30 premieres worldwide since 2010. Recent collaborations include new works by Savion Glover, William Forsythe, Sufjan Stevens, Jamar Roberts, Michelle Dorrance, Pam Tanowitz, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Lauren Lovette, Tiler Peck, Shepard Fairey, Daniel Buren, Eva LeWitt, and Benjamin Millepied.

Baker received a Tony Award Nomination for his design of ILLINOISE on Broadway. He was appointed Resident Lighting Designer of the Boston Ballet in 2018 and is the recipient of the Knight of Illumination Award and Lotos Foundation Prize.

Al Crawford is a NYC based lighting artist working globally. He recently served as the General Manager of City Theatrical, Inc the world’s prominent manufacturer of bespoke lighting products and accessories.

Al was the Lighting Director of the world renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for 25 years. While with the Company he produced the lighting for Ailey in virtually every major theater, performing arts center and opera house on the planet having toured to 48 states and over 60 countries including historically significant performances in Russia, China and South Africa.

Al has had the opportunity to work directly with many important choreographers in the dance world including Judith Jamison, Robert Battle, Garth Fagan, Matthew Rushing, Ron Brown, George Faison, Mark Dendy, Trey McIntyre, Christopher Huggins, Hope Boykin, Osnel Delgado, Jeanguy Saintus and many others. He has designed 18 new works for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and 12 for Ailey II. Additionally, he has been responsible for maintaining the lighting for the significant Ailey repertory designed by many of the top lighting designers in the industry.

A huge believer in cross genre design, Al founded Arc3design, a lighting design group dedicated to merging his theatrical aesthetic into all areas of art, architecture, dance, live music, theater, broadcast, and live event production. Arc3design employees a team of talented designers and technical artists that support the creation and implementation of new projects worldwide.

Arc3design creates the lighting for over 100 projects annually. Recent and current projects include:

• Architectural installations at New York Central Synagogue, Barbizon Lighting World Headquarters, World Trade Center NYC, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Mohegan Sun Casino, The Orpheum Theater and Madison Avenue Baptist Church.
• Theatrical Consultation for Madison Square Garden, World Trade Center Oculus Transit Center, World Trade Center 1 (Freedom Tower), Capital One Hall, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Glasshouses, Javitz Center Ballrooms, and SummerStage Central Park NYC.
• Dance design for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, BAM’s Dance Africa, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Martha Graham Dance Company, Limon Dance Company, Philidanco, Haiti’s Ayikodans, Cuba’s Malpaso Dance Company, Trinity Irish Dance Company and HopeBoykinDance.
• Social political projects for The White House (7 Presidential State Dinners), Inauguration Events, Holiday Events and Broadcasts.
• Sports Entertainment including 6 seasons as Lighting Directors for Madison Square Garden Arena Sports Entertainment (NY Knicks, NY Rangers, NY Liberty) and NYC Ultimate Tennis Showdown.
• Life Event design (Weddings, Birthdays, Memorials, Celebrations) for many of the top designers and producers in the industry including David Monn, Brian Rafanelli, Bronson Van Wyck and David Stark. Projects span the globe from NYC to West Palm Beach to Mumbai.
• Brand Events for Spotify, Google, Samsung, Intel, Dom Perignon, Lexus and Lamborghini.
• National corporate conferences for ACLU, IAAPA, Market America and Target.
• Cruise Ship Entertainment design for Holland America, Celebrity, Azamara and MSC Lines.
• Themed Entertainment design for Universal Studios Florida, Sea World, Holiday World, Carowinds, Tivoli Gardens, Hershey Park, Cedar Point and Pip’s Island.

Al has served on the Board of Directors of the Gilbert Hemsley Lighting Programs and the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Al currently serves on the advisory board of the Studio School of Design. He has had the opportunity to speak to students at universities around the country, at the United States Institute for Theater Technology Conference (USITT), Live Design International (LDI), the Stagecraft Institute of Las Vegas and was a keynote speaker at the Electronic Theater Controls CUE conference in Madison, WI.

Al has been awarded the Knight of Illumination Award, considered globally to be one of the top achievements in Lighting Design. He has been named one of the Global Top 1000 event professionals by BizBash Magazine. Additionally, he received the Telly Award for Broadcast Lighting achievement and is a Doris Duke Foundation Arts and Technology fellow.

Al is a member of United Scenic Artists (USA-829) and the International Alliance for Theatrical Stage Employees (Local 635). He is a graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

www.arc3design.com

Mark Eric is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area and now resides in New York City, where he designs costumes and made-to-order creations. He trained as a fashion designer at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where he was recognized as the Critics’ Choice among his graduating class. After years of designing in the New York City fashion industry, he discovered his passion for costuming and started his eponymous studio MARK ERIC design in 2017, where he focuses on designing and styling for the stage.

Mark Eric has designed costumes for a diverse roster of choreographers including: Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Amy Hall Garner, Sidra Bell, Darrell Grand Moultrie, Gustavo Remírez Sansano, Lauren Lovette, Andrew McNicol, Jamar Roberts, Robert Battle, Rennie Harris and Marguerite Donlon to name a few. He has costumed works for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theater, Houston Ballet, Paul Taylor Dance Company, BalletX, Ballet Hispánico, Ailey II, and the ABT Studio Company, among others.

Mark Eric’s designs have been seen on stages around the world including the Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, New York City Center, Sadler’s Wells, Tivoli Concert Hall, Auditorium Theater, Jubilee Auditorium, Zellerbach Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Mahalia Jackson Theater, Joyce Theater, Jacobs Pillow Dance, Vail Dance Festival, Wilma Theater, and New York Live Arts, among others.

David Ferri has worked with prominent choreographers such as Pina Bausch, Shen Wei, Doug Varone, Jane Comfort, Eiko and Koma, David Rousseve, and Ballet Preljocaj. He has been the Production Manager for the prestigious American Dance Festival since 1996 training upcoming designers in America. Recipient of the 1987–1988 Bessie Award for his design of Doug Varone’s “Straits,” and the 2000–2001 Bessie Award for Sustained Achievement in Lighting Design, Mr. Ferri was also resident lighting designer and technical director at PS 122 in NYC from 1985–1991. Mr. Ferri lives in New York between his travels and projects.

Burke Wilmore is a member of United Scenic Artists Local 829 and an honors graduate of Wesleyan University. He has designed or adapted seven works for BODYTRAFFIC and has also lit the work of Camille A. Brown (Black Girl: Linguistic Play, Mr. Tol E. Rance, City of Rain). He was the resident designer for Battleworks (2001–2010) and to date has lit five of Robert Battle’s works for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. For American Repertory Ballet, he lit Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet. He frequently collaborates with Broadway star André de Shields, for whom he lit the Louis Armstrong musical Ambassador Satch, and designed scenery and lighting for de Shields’ production of Ain’t Misbehavin’. Mr. Wilmore designed scenery and lighting for Apollo Club Harlem, and Ellington at Christmas, both at the Apollo Theater.

Devon Gutherie (Soprano) Grammy-nominated soprano Devon Guthrie made an acclaimed debut as Susanna in a new production of Le Nozze di Figaro at English National Opera when she was still a student at the Juilliard School. Lauded for her “honeyed tones and silver-tipped high notes” (broadwayworld.com) and by The New York Times for her “opulent but weightless tone”, she has been enjoying an international performance career. Highlights include creating the role of Mary Johnson in the world premiere Cincinnati Opera production of Greg Spears’ Fellow Travelers, a role which she also took to Chicago Lyric Opera and The Prototype Festival in New York. Other notable roles include multiple seasons with Santa Fe Opera both as an apprentice and principle with the roles of Marzelline in Beethoven’s Fidelio and Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus; Sandman/Dewfairy in Hansel and Gretel at San Diego Opera; the role of Susanna in a touring production of Le Nozze di Figaro in Japan with Seiji Ozawa’s Saito Kinen Festival; a second season at English National Opera singing Pamina in The Magic Flute; and many seasons with The Paul Taylor Dance Company as the soprano soloist for Beloved Renegade at Lincoln Center.  She has won several awards and prizes in competitions such as the Gerda Lissner Competition, Houston Grand Opera Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers, Licia Albanese Competition, and Liederkranz. A dedicated recitalist and contemporary music interpreter, she has worked directly with many of the prominent composers of our time including Jake Heggie, Ricky Ian Gordon, Libby Larsen, Sheila Silver, John Harbison, and Huang Ruo. Her work on composer Luna Pearl Woolf’s album Fire and Flood earned her a Grammy nomination in 2020.

www.devonguthrie.com | Instagram: @devon_guthrie

St. George’s Choral Society With a focus on the education of our members and outreach to the New York City community, we have been sharing performances of great works of music, old and new, for chorus and orchestra since 1817. We are a diverse community of amateur and professional singers, committed to continuing and expanding our legacy of artistic excellence in choral music for years to come.

The Choral Society, led by artistic director and conductor Dr. Matthew Lewis, is no longer religiously affiliated. We perform fall and spring concerts and a summer choral festival accompanied by a professional chamber ensemble or orchestra. St. George’s Choral Society is committed to ensuring access to cultural programming for people with disabilities.

Krista Bennion Feeney has enjoyed an unusually varied career much in demand as a soloist, chamber musician, music director, and concertmaster. Krista has been a member of the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble (serving for eight years as director of chamber music) and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s since 1983, where she performs frequently in the roles of concertmaster and violin soloist. She is currently involved in rediscovering and reviving a musical sound world from the past as the founding first violinist of the Serenade Orchestra and Quartet, playing music of the late-18th and early-19th centuries on historic instruments with original instrumental configurations. From 1999-2006, she was the music director of the unconducted New Century Chamber Orchestra based in San Francisco.

She has made several solo appearances with the San Francisco Symphony (making her debut in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in e minor at age 15), with the St. Louis Symphony, the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra in the world premiere of SolTierraLuna (a concerto written for her by Terry Riley), the Mostly Mozart Festival, and the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and at the Kennedy Center, in addition to several historic instrument ensembles.

Highlights of the 2016-2017 season included performances of Lou Harrison’s Suite for Violin and American Gamelan, in which The New York Times review stated “…the violinist Krista Bennion Feeney spun out beguiling figurations and subtle melodic twists…” and Nardini’s e minor violin concerto and Paganini’s La Campanella on historic violin with the American Classical Orchestra. Of her performance in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, she was described by The Times as “…the superb violin soloist…”

She is the founding first violinist of the DNA Quintet, Loma Mar Quartet, and Ridge String Quartet (1979-1991), which, along with pianist Rudolf Firkusny, won the Diapason d’Or and a Grammy Award nomination in 1992 for its RCA recording of Dvorak’s Piano Quintets. The DNA Quintet, comprised of the Loma Mar Quartet with the addition of bassist John Feeney, has released world-premiere recordings of string quartets and quintets of Domenico Dragonetti on historic instruments to critical and popular acclaim, bringing this uniquely beautiful music to light after being hidden for more than 165 years in the British Library. The Loma Mar Quartet has also recorded original works written for the ensemble by Paul McCartney for EMI, and its members were recently featured as soloists in Arnold Schoenberg’s Concerto for Quartet and Orchestra with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, and with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s for Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance performances. Krista studied violin with Anthony Doheny, then Isadore Tinkleman and Stuart Canin at the San Francisco Conservatory, working later at the Curtis Institute with Jaime Laredo, Felix Galimer and Mischa Schneider.

In May 2014, The Times praised Krista’s playing of a violin sonata by Jean-Marie Leclair saying: “Her deep notes were rich and melancholy … there was a tender exuberance in both tumbles of notes and sustained phrases … a dramatic interplay of ferocity and light slyness.”

A native of San Diego, violinist Alex U Fortes is recognized for his versatility and warmth. Recent orchestral and chamber music performances have included concerts throughout Europe, Indonesia, South America, and North America with groups such as the Henschel, Dalí, Amphion, Attacca, Argus, Franklin, and Momenta Quartets; Toomai String Quintet, the Knights, A Far Cry, Quodlibet Ensemble, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. His playing is featured on A Far Cry’s 2014 and 2018 Grammy-nominated albums, as well as on Law of Mosaics, which The New Yorker’s Alex Ross hailed as one of the top ten albums of 2014. Fortes has performed frequently with OSL since 2010.

Pianist Margaret Kampmeier enjoys a varied career as soloist, collaborative artist,and educator. Equally fluent in classical and contemporary repertoire, she has concertized and recorded extensively. She has performed with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic Ensembles, Kronos Quartet, Saratoga Chamber Players, Richardson Chamber Players, and Mirror Visions Ensemble. She co-founded New Millennium Ensemble, winner of the Naumburg chamber music award. As orchestral keyboardist, she performs with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center. For many years, Ms. Kampmeier has taught piano and chamber music at both Princeton University and the Manhattan School of Music. She earned degrees from the Eastman School of Music and SUNY Stony Brook, and is deeply grateful for the shared wisdom of hermentors, Barry Snyder, Jan Degaetani, Julius Levine, and Gilbert Kalish. A native of Rochester, NY, Ms. Kampmeier resides in New York City.