Matthew Aucoin (b. 1990) is an American composer, conductor, writer, and pianist. In the 2014-15 season, Aucoin conducted the premieres of two of his operas: Crossing, at Boston’s American Repertory Theater (directed by Diane Paulus); and Second Nature, a chamber opera for the young, at Lyric Opera of Chicago. Aucoin wrote the libretti for both works. He is currently at work on a new opera for the Metropolitan Opera / Lincoln Center Theater’s New Works program.

In the coming season, Aucoin conducts the premiere of his new orchestral work, commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. His new song cycle, set to texts by James Merrill and co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, New York, and Wigmore Hall, London, will be premiered by tenor Paul Appleby and pianist Ken Noda at recitals in New York, Boston, Chicago, Notre Dame, and Miami. Violinist Jennifer Koh will premiere Aucoin’s new solo violin work at the NY PHIL BIENNAL and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Aucoin is also at work on a piano concerto commissioned by The Gilmore for pianist Charlie Albright.

This season, Aucoin makes conducting debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; Music Academy of the West (Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, as well as his own chamber opera Second Nature); the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, Italy (Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro); and he returns to the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. In recent seasons, he has appeared as a conductor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Rome Opera Orchestra, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago (a special event featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma) and Juilliard Opera (Eugene Onegin).

Aucoin’s orchestral, instrumental, and vocal music has recently been performed by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and bassist Alexander Hanna; Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra; members of the Chicago Symphony; Boston’s A Far Cry; countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo; violinist Keir GoGwilt; the Gramercy Trio; and San Antonio’s SOLI Chamber Ensemble. His music has been heard at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival; the Curtis Institute of Music (the Three Études, commissioned for pianist George Fu); the conservatories of Tianjin and Shenyang, China (recitals by violinist Rachel Lee Priday); New York’s MATA Festival at SubCulture (Ms. Priday and pianist David Kaplan); the Sarasota Opera House; Italy’s Spoleto Festival; the Canadian Opera Company’s Bradshaw Amphitheatre; and the Peabody Essex Museum, where he is Composer-in-Residence.

Aucoin is a 2012 graduate of Harvard College (summa cum laude), where he studied with the poet Jorie Graham; and a 2013 recipient of a graduate diploma in composition from The Juilliard School, where he studied with composer Robert Beaser. Shortly before he graduated from Harvard, Aucoin was hired as the youngest Assistant Conductor in the history of the Metropolitan Opera, where he worked with Thomas Adès, James Levine, and Valery Gergiev. From 2013 to 2015, Aucoin was the Solti Conducting Apprentice at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where he studied with Riccardo Muti and, in 2014, made his CSO debut subbing for an indisposed Pierre Boulez. Aucoin remains an active pianist: with his regular collaborator, violinist Keir GoGwilt, he has recently given recitals in New York, Boston, Edinburgh, Spoleto (Italy) and Toronto. Aucoin regularly performs with many of the world’s leading opera singers, including Paulo Szot, Rod Gilfry, Jennifer Rowley, and Anthony Roth Costanzo. Aucoin has also performed as a pianist in several Chicago Symphony Orchestra chamber concerts.

An accomplished writer, Aucoin’s essays and poetry have appeared in The Yale Review, The Colorado Review, The Boston Globe, and The Harvard Advocate. He has served as guest lecturer for the New York Shakespeare Society and a guest host for New York’s WQXR. Aucoin has been the subject of major profiles in The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and The Chicago Tribune. His music has been featured on radio programs including This American Life, From the Top, and Studio 360.

Visual artist, designer, and director Doug Fitch’s Giants Are Small productions for Alan Gilbert and New York Philharmonic include Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre (cited as the top opera of 2010 by The New York Times, New York Magazine, and Time Out New York), Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen (2011, New York Magazine’s “Best Classical Event of the Year”), A Dancer’s Dream: Two Works by Stravinsky (2013, later screened in movie theaters worldwide); and HK Gruber’s Gloria – A Pig Tale (2014, with forces from The Juilliard School as part of the NY PHIL BIENNAL). This fall Mr. Fitch was the inaugural WBFO visiting artist at SUNY, where he created an opera of images, How Did We…? In 2013 he directed and performed in the premiere of Matthew Suttor’s musical setting of Blaise Cendrar’s poem La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France with the Taos Chamber Music Group. He has created productions for Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Santa Fe Opera, and directed projects for Canada’s National Arts Centre, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and Tanglewood (Elliot Carter’s What Next?,screened at The Museum of Modern Art).

Doug Fitch’s creative life began with his family’s touring puppet theater. While studying visual arts at Harvard University, he collaborated with director Peter Sellars, including on Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. He also studied cooking at Paris’s La Varenne and design at the Institut d’Architecture et d’Etudes Urbaines in Strasbourg, France. He emerged as an architectural designer in the 1980s, and collaborated with Mimi Oka on edible art installations called Orphic Feasts, leading to their book, Orphic Fodder. Other projects have included Robert Wilson’s Civil Wars (at the American Repertory Theatre) and Jim Henson of The Muppets (in England). In co-production with Universal Music and Deutsche Grammophon, Mr. Fitch, Edouard Getaz, and Frederic Gumy are developing Peter+Wolf in Hollywood for an iPad app, CD, digital album, and live show.

Director, choreographer, dancer, Zack Winokur, born in Boston, MA is a graduate of The Juilliard School and Concord Academy. His recent work has been seen in productions for the Festival d’Aix-en- Provence (Svadba- European Premiere), Opera Omaha (A Flowering Tree), Juilliard Opera (Le Nozze di Figaro, Il Turco in Italia), Cincinnati Opera (La Calisto), Skylight Music Theater (Hydrogen Jukebox), Festival Aix-en- Provence, La Monnaie, Aldeburgh Music (Les Mamelles de Tirésias), London Philharmonic (Die Dreigroschenoper), Central City Opera (Der Kaiser von Atlantis), the Royal Opera House (Most of the Boys – World Premiere), International Contemporary Ensemble (Mesh- World Premiere), and the Museum of Arts and Design (Triptych- World Premiere) as well as re-staging Episode 31 by Alexander Ekman for the Joffrey Ballet. He also co-directed, with Mary Birnbaum, a special performance in the Supreme Court for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 82nd birthday conducted by Matthew Aucoin. Upcoming projects include, Cavalli’s La Calisto at Juilliard, Les Mamelles des Tirésias at the Dutch National Opera and various reprisals of his production of Svadba in Paris, Nantes, Angers, Vilnius, Brussels, Luxembourg, and Sarajevo.

He has choreographed for film with Academy Award nominated director Mike Figgis, collaborating on Burlington Project, a commission from the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and Dancing on Glass with pianist Rosey Chan and fashion house Boudicca that has been exhibited in Paris, London, Beijing, Tokyo and Barcelona. His choreography has also been seen at David Lynch’s Club Silencio and the Centre Pompidou for the opening of the ASVOFF festival and as choreographic installations that took over the entire Royal Opera House for three days. As a dancer, Mr. Winokur has performed in the companies of Morphoses, Armitage Gone! Dance, David Parker and The Bang Group, and Moving Theater and as a soloist in work by Bronislava Nijinska, José Limón, Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor, Luca Veggetti, Alexander Ekman and Nacho Duato as well as on international television as part of an advertisement for Coca-Cola.

Pix Talarico is a New York based Argentine director, photographer, and cinematographer. In 2014, his film Leveza appeared at the Cannes Film Festival. He has shot over 200 music videos and has worked with some of the most recognized Latin artists known to date. Artists as widely popular as Juanes and Julio Iglesias and trailblazing talent like Nellie Furtado and Julieta Venegas. He has been nominated for two Latin Grammy Awards and for multiple MTV awards worldwide. For the past sixteen years he has paired up with multi Academy Award-winner Gustavo Santaolalla to produce visually striking music clips and live performances.

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 the 2015/16 season, Costanzo sings the title role in a new production of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten at the English National Opera, and makes his debuts at Chicago Lyric Opera in the world premiere of Bel Canto, and at the Dallas Opera in the world premiere of Jake Heggie’s Great Scott. He premieres a monodrama at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and reprises Great Scott at San Diego Opera. He also continues his collaboration with Peter Sellars at the Ojai Festival, sings in the world premieres of two operas in the Ouroboros Trilogy in Boston, produced by Beth Morrison, and joins Trinity Wall Street as a soloist in The Messiah.

Recently, Costanzo has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera as both Ferdinand and Prospero in the world premiere of The Enchanted Island, as well as Prince Orlofsky in a new production of Die Fledermaus. He made his debut at the Met as Unulfo in Rodelinda. Last season, he debuted at San Francisco Opera in Partenope, at the English National Opera in Peter Sellar’s Indian Queen, at Glyndebourne in Rinaldo, and at Madrid’s Teatro Real in Death in Venice. He has appeared in recent seasons with The Glimmerglass Festival, Canadian Opera Company, Opera Company of Philadelphia, New York City Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Michigan Opera Theater, Palm Beach Opera, North Carolina Opera, and as a guest with Juilliard Opera.

In other recent appearances, Costanzo played Prince Go-Go in the New York Philharmonic’s acclaimed production of Le Grand Macabre and sang in concert with Jordi Savall at Versailles and the Philharmonie de Paris. He also performed with flutist Claire Chase at SubCulture and with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival in the premiere of a new work. He has performed The Messiah with the Cleveland Orchestra and at Carnegie Hall and has been a featured soloist with the orchestras of Indianapolis, Alabama, Detroit, Denver, Seattle, Trinity Wall Street, and with the National Symphony Orchestra. He has sung in recital at Princeton University, Duke University, the Miller Theater at Columbia University, the Morgan Library, and at the Teatro Real jointly with Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake.

In 2012, Costanzo won first place in Plácido Domingo’s international competition Operalia. He is also a 2009 Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. He won a George London Award, received a career grant from the Richard Tucker Foundation, and became the first countertenor to win First Place in the Houston Grand Opera Eleanor McCullom competition, where he also won the audience choice prize. He received a Sullivan Foundation Award, and won First Place in the Opera Index Competition, the National Opera Association Vocal Competition, and the Jensen Foundation Competition.

Costanzo is passionate about interdisciplinary collaboration, and created a pasticcio about castrati in collaboration with choreographer Karole Armitage and filmmaker James Ivory. Documentarian Gerardo Puglia chronicled the process, and the subsequent film was selected for the Cannes Film Festival, qualified for an Academy Award, and aired on PBS affiliates. Costanzo played Francis in the Merchant Ivory film, A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, and Simon in Brice Cauvin’s De particulier à particulier. Working with composers, choreographers, directors and performance artists, he has appeared in New York venues such as Le Poisson Rouge, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Joe’s Pub, The Park Avenue Armory, the Guggenheim Museum, and Merkin Concert Hall. As a child, he performed on Broadway and in Broadway National Tours including A Christmas Carol, The Sound of Music, and Falsettos. He began his operatic career playing Miles in The Turn of the Screw, and with an appearance alongside Luciano Pavarotti.

Mr. Costanzo graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University where he was awarded the Lewis Sudler Prize for extraordinary achievement in the arts and where he has returned to teach both a course and master classes. He received his Masters of Music at Manhattan School of Music where he won the Hugh Ross Award for a singer of unusual promise.

American soprano Kiera Duffy is recognized both for her gleaming high soprano and insightful musicianship in a diverse repertoire ranging from Bach, Handel, and Mozart to the modern sounds of Carter, Feldman, and Zorn.

A prolific concert artist, Ms. Duffy has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, London Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk Orchester, Atlanta Symphony, National Symphony, Simón Bolívar Orchestra and Detroit Symphony. She has collaborated with many of the celebrated conductors of today, including Pierre Boulez, Gustavo Dudamel, Alan Gilbert, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kristjan Järvi, James Levine, Donald Runnicles, Leonard Slatkin, and Robert Spano.

In 2013 Ms. Duffy made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera as the First Flowermaiden in Parsifal under Daniele Gatti, and with the Lyric Opera of Chicago as Stella in Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire. She has also appeared on the operatic stage at the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Central City Opera, and Wexford Opera. At the Tanglewood Music Festival she performed Elliot Carter’s only opera, What Next?, Così fan tutte, and Don Carlo, all under the baton of James Levine.

An active chamber musician, Duffy has been featured at the Marlboro Music Festival, Bard SummerScape Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival and the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago. She has sung recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall, New York City’s Rockefeller University, and at St. Louis’ Washington University.

Duffy’s interpretations of modern and contemporary repertoire have garnered wide acclaim. She has performed often with the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series in works of Schoenberg, Berio, Ligeti and Unsuk Chin; with the New York Philharmonic in compositions of Ligeti and Boulez; with the Metropolis Ensemble in works of Esa-Pekka Salonen, as well as in reinterpretations of Berlioz by young composers Vivian Fung, Brad Balliett, Ryan Francis, Sayo Kosugi, Nicholas Britell and Caroline Shaw. As part of the 2012 American Mavericks series she toured David del Tredici’s Syzygy with members of the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas. She also collaborated on the vocal music of Derek Bermel with Alarm Will Sound, with whom she will perform the U.S. premiere of Richard Ayres’ In the Alps at Carnegie Hall next spring.

Duffy’s growing discography includes Richard Strauss’ Lieder, Volume 4 with pianist Roger Vignoles for Hyperion; Carmina Burana with Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk Orchester and Kristjan Järvi for Sony; a DVD of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Simón Bolívar Orchestras under Gustavo Dudamel for Deutsche Grammophon; and famed filmmaker Susan Froemke’s documentary, The Audition, for Decca, which chronicles the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions of 2007.

Duffy was a Grand Finalist in the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, a first-place winner of the Marian Anderson Competition in Philadelphia, and has also been recognized by the Young Concert Artists International Competition and the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Greenberg Competition. She was an accomplished pianist before pursuing degrees in vocal performance and pedagogy from Westminster Choir College. Duffy serves as an ambassador for the charity Sing With Haiti, which seeks to rebuild and support the Holy Trinity Music School in Port-au-Prince, Haiti after it was destroyed in the earthquake of 2010.

Keir GoGwilt was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and grew up in New York City. As a soloist he has performed with Tan Dun, the Chinese National Symphony and the Orquesta Filarmonica de Santiago. Recently, GoGwilt stepped in to workshop a new violin concerto by Anna Clyne with the Chicago Civic Orchestra. He has also performed concerti with the Bowdoin International Music Festival Orchestra, the Western Michigan University Symphony, and the Bach Society Orchestra of Harvard. As a recitalist and chamber musician he has played at the Spoleto Festival in Italy, the Miller Theatre at Columbia University, the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre in Toronto, and the Shalin Liu Center at Rockport.

GoGwilt’s collaborations with composer Matthew Aucoin are rooted in a mutual interest in words and music. Several violin pieces have emerged from their collaborations, including Poem, Celan Fragments, and This Same Light, which GoGwilt and Aucoin performed on the same program as the Berg Violin Concerto. Recently, GoGwilt performed Orphic Moment with Aucoin and Anthony Roth Costanzo at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival. Together they have given lecture-recitals on poetry and music at Fordham University and the Scottish Poetry Library, and continue collaborations as members of the Encounters Ensemble at the Peabody Essex Museum.

GoGwilt has performed with Robert Levin on the world premiere of Levin’s completion of a Mozart piano trio at the Sarasota Opera House, served as acting associate concert master of the Canadian Opera Company, principal second of the Gotham Chamber Orchestra, and recorded Tobias Picker’s violin and chamber music for Tzadik records.

GoGwilt graduated from Harvard University with high honors in 2013 and was awarded the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts. In addition to performing, he is committed to writing about musical performance as it relates to theories of interpretation and technique. His essays can be read on the arts blog, Soonest Mended.

He has performed at music festivals including Yellow Barn, Taos, and Sarasota, and has studied with Lewis Kaplan, Christian Tetzlaff, Ute Hasenauer, Benjamín Ramírez, Helen Vendler, Jorie Graham, Chris Hasty, and John Hamilton among others.

Tim McLoraine creates video art and projections for concert, opera, and theater. Videos he has created for opera includes Janácek’s Cunning Little Vixen for the New York Philharmonic/Giants Are Small production, Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio performed at the Teatro del Lago in Chile, and Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny for the Tanglewood Music Center.

His concert based video works include Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and Persephone as part of the Bard College Summer Music Festival, and Britten’s Les Illuminations, Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin and John Adams’ Harmonielehre with the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra. In addition to his work for live performance, his video art has been shown in galleries, and for the citywide event Art All Night DC, his video piece sit stand lie, Bayonne was selected as the featured public art installation for the Dupont Circle neighborhood. Tim is currently an artist-in-residence at Red Dirt Studio in Mount Rainier, Maryland.

Cori Ellison, a leading creative figure in the opera world, is staff Dramaturg at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, as well as a member of the Vocal Arts faculty at The Juilliard School, where she teaches History of Singing. She served as staff Dramaturg at New York City Opera from 1997-2010, and has also served as dramaturg for Francesca Zambello’s production of the Ring Cycle at Washington National Opera, Opera Boston’s production of Shostakovich’s The Nose, and in 2006, was dramaturg for a triple bill of Offenbach operettas at the Bard Summerscape Festival. This spring, she curated a four-concert avant-garde vocal series at the New Museum. In 2005, she co-curated and narrated soprano Elizabeth Futral’s program “Handel at Home”, the closing event of the annual Chicago Humanities Festival, and she curated the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s opening concert, an all-Beethoven gala.

Pursuing her interest in nurturing young American singers, Ms. Ellison is a core faculty member at American Lyric Theater since its founding, and has recently served on the faculties of the Ravinia Steans Music Institute Program for Singers and the Crested Butte Festival Young Artist Program, and has taught master classes for young singers at venues including Glyndebourne, Mannes College The New School of Music, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Martina Arroyo’s Prelude to Performance program, Boston University, Boston Conservatory, Vassar College, DePaul University, Underworld Productions Opera, Phoenicia Festival of the Voice, and Opera Singers Initiative. She has also led seminars for the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artists Program, has served as judge for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and coaches singers privately. At New York University, she has co-taught seminars on Madama Butterfly, Don Giovanni, and Giulio Cesare.

Ms. Ellison’s English singing translation of Hansel and Gretel, commissioned and premiered by New York City Opera, has also been performed (in a general-use adaptation recently published by Schott) by companies including Houston Grand Opera, Atlanta Opera, Austin Lyric Opera, Kentucky Opera, Berkshire Opera, Opera Roanoke, and Indiana University Opera Theater. Her singing translation of Shostakovich’s musical comedy Cheryomushki (Cherry Tree Towers) premiered at the Bard Summerscape Festival in August 2004, and her singing translation of Spontini’s La vestale, commissioned by English National Opera, premiered there in April 2002.

Ms. Ellison has presented talks and served on and moderated panels and symposia for Glyndebourne, New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Cincinnati Opera, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, the San Francisco Opera Guild, American Lyric Theater, Carnegie Hall, Seattle Opera, Dallas Opera, Opera Southwest, Opera Boston, Glimmerglass Opera, Tulsa Opera, Bard Summerscape Festival, Opera Orchestra of New York, Opera Quarterly, Great Performers at Lincoln Center, Mostly Mozart Festival, Berkshire Choral Festival, American Opera Projects, Center For Contemporary Opera, Schomburg Center for Black Culture, Paley Center for Media, Harvard’s American Repertory Theatre, Indiana University, the New School, Opera Index, the Guggenheim Museum’s Works and Process series, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Japan Societies of New York and Boston, the Wagner Societies of New York, Chicago, Washington, and Northern California, and the American Institute for Verdi Studies, as well as at The Royal Opera House/Covent Garden, the Covent Garden Festival, the Newbury Festival, Ireland’s Wexford Festival, and Switzerland’s Verbier Festival, She has been guest lecturer for Celebrity Cruises, under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, and on Cunard’s Queen Mary II, under the auspices of Oxford University. She has also served on the faculty of The Juilliard School’s Evening Division, was Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at New York University’s School of Continuing Education, and has often taught for the Explore New York Elderhostel program.

Ms. Ellison regularly appears as a commentator and Opera Quiz panelist on the Metropolitan Opera’s radio broadcasts, and has been guest commentator on WNYC’s “Soundcheck” and “The Tristan Mysteries”, WQXR’s “First Hearing”, and other radio programs. She has contributed articles to publications including the New York Times, The Guardian, Opera News, Gramophone, BBC Music, and Ms, and to books including The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, The Compleat Mozart, and the Metropolitan Opera Guide to Opera on Video. She has also been a contributing writer for PBS’s “Metropolitan Opera Presents” TV series.

Irina Kruzhilina is a New York-based costume designer for the performing arts.  Her work has been shown all over the world, from the Brooklyn Academy of Music to the National Theatre in Prague, and from Avery Fisher Hall to the Barbican Center in London. Ms. Kruzhilina designed costumes for dozens of theatre, dance, opera, and puppetry performances, including with Doug Fitch, Lars Jan, Mabou Mines, David Chambers, Ruth Margraff, Else-Marie Lauvik, DNA works, and SCRAP performance group. Her work has appeared at the Philadelphia Live Arts, Spoleto Fringe and Toronto Nuit Blanche festivals. Recent productions include the under water performance Holoscenes for Early Morning Opera at Art Basel and a new nighttime spectacular at the Disney Animal Kingdom. A native of Moscow, Russia, Ms. Kruzhilina is dedicated to connecting Western and Eastern European theatre through international collaborations. As an educator, Ms. Kruzhilina developed the “inside-out” design method that she teaches at institutions throughout the world. She is a member of the International Theatre Institute and a Chashama resident.