The music of American composer Mark Grey has been commissioned or premiered by such organizations as The Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, The New York Philharmonic, The National Opera of Belgium La Monnaie | de Munt Opera, Carnegie Hall, CalPerformances, The Los Angeles Master Chorale, Kronos Quartet, Berkeley Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Green Bay Symphony, California Symphony, The Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, and several others along with festivals at Ravinia, Cabrillo, OtherMinds, Perth International, and Spoleto. Grey was commissioned by La Monnaie | de Munt to write an evening-length grand opera FRANKENSTEIN which premiered in Brussels during the spring of 2019. In January 2020 his work Rainbow Bridge for 100 electric guitars premiered outdoors on the grounds of Circus Maximus as part of the Rome Festival. Grey is also an Emmy Award winning sound designer having premiered major opera and concert works worldwide over the past 30 years.
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Known for her bold, nuanced, and innovative stage direction, Elkhanah Pulitzer is an esteemed director of opera and theater. A passionate storyteller, she has directed operas nationally and internationally including performances with the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, LA Philharmonic, LA Opera, Washing- ton National Opera, SF Symphony, Boston Lyric Opera, West Edge Opera, and Canadian Opera Company, among others. Additionally, she served as Artistic Curator of SF Opera Lab, an experimental chamber opera program at SF Op- era, where she developed the mission, brand, and programming for the first two seasons. Born in Boston and raised in St. Louis and Marin, Pulitzer is also board vice president of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, which supports experimentation in art installations and live programming.
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Chad Owens is a multidisciplinary maker/artist with a broad background in custom wood and metal fabrication, fabric work, painting, drawing, site-specific in- stallation, and technical production. He has created original staged designs for more than 100 productions, for companies including Washington National Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, West Edge Opera, Cal Performances, RAWdance, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, West Edge Opera and many others. Set Design and Art Direction for major motion pictures include Blue Jasmine, Milk (Oscar and Art Director’s Guild nominations for best production design), Chasing Mavericks, Haywire, Contagion, The Pursuit of Happyness (sic), Haiku Tunnel, and Woman on Top, and others, and for television “The OA,” “13 Reasons Why,” “Trauma,” and others. He has worked extensively as an Associate Designer on Broadway, including Wonderful Town, Dinner at Eight, 42nd Street, and Into the Woods, all of which received Tony nominations for best sets.
Christine Crook designs costumes for opera, theatre, dance, and wildly strange performance art. Recent credits include, Gloria (ACT), The Threepenny Opera (West Edge Opera), Weightless (BRIC/NYC and ACT SF), Men On Boats (ACT), Bernstein’s Mass (Lincoln Center NYC), Abraham In Flames (Z Space), Quartet (West Edge Opera). Christine has also presented design-driven live art and and costume installations in Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, and Berkeley. She was awarded a Bridging The Gap Grant for continued experimentation with costume design funding a gallery residency in Berlin 2016. She also recently participated as an artist in residence with Light Box in Detroit 2019. Christine has an MFA in costume design from UCSD, and teaches costume design with University of San Francisco and Academy of Art University. christinecrook.squarespace.com
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Producer Cath Brittan is originally from Manchester, England. She lived in Vienna for many years and was a producer for the Vienna Festival. She has worked as production manager and producer in theaters and opera houses around the world including English National Opera, London; The Bolshoi, Moscow; Teatro Real, Madrid; The National Theater of Finland, Opera de Comique, Paris; The Staatsoper, Vienna; Grand Théâtre de Genève, Geneva, and many more.
Recent and up-coming productions include Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (dir. Christopher Alden); Glass Handel (2018 & 2019); Comet Poppea (dir. Yuval Sharon); Bandwagon (New York Philharmonic) - all with Anthony Roth Costanzo; Das Paradies und die Peri, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Peter Sellars; 2018/19 and 19/20 Soundbox Season, San Francisco Symphony; Orphic Moments dir. Zack Winokur with The Master Voices; Abraham In Flames (Aleksandra Vrebalov & Niloufar Talebi); Perle Noir (Tyshawn Sorey & Julia Bullock @ The Met Museum), Arkhipov (Peter Knell & Stephanie Fleischmann); Birds in the Moon (Mark Grey & Júlia Canosa i Serra); Ihpigenia (Wayne Shorter & Esperanza Spalding); In a Grove (Christopher Cerrone & Stephanie Fleischmann), History's Persistent Voices with Julia Bullock; MASS Visual Album with Davóne Tines; Everything That Rises Must Converge (Jennifer Koh & Davóne Tines, dir. James Darrah) and The Indian Queen (dir. Peter Sellars) Vienna Staatsoper.
Cath is also the producer for AMOC*, the American Modern Opera Company (Artistic Directors: Zack Winokur & Matt Aucoin).
Playwright and librettist, Júlia Canosa i Serra has worked for many international projects since 1996. She collaborates with many artists, directors, dancers and composers. Her most notable works include The Lorca Project by Benjamin Dw- yer and VOX21 in Dublin, Hafliði Hallgrímsson’s Mini-Stories, Raymond Deane’s The Wall of Cloud at the Opera Theatre Company, also in Ireland. She worked for Sala Becket Obrador Internacional de Dramatúrgia, in Barcelona, in many productions. With Àlex Ollé (La Fura dels Baus) as a dramaturge, particularly in Quartett (Francesconi) at Teatro alla Scala in Milan or more recently in Histoire du Soldat (Stravinsky) for Ópera de Lausanne and Lyon. She has also directed and written for La Chaudière Intimae at Le Pot au Noire, Grenoble. Last April 2019, she debuted her adaptation of Frankenstein by Mark Grey at La Monnaie Opera House in Brussels. She is currently writing an adaptation of The Odyssey for Mark Grey.
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Deborah O’Grady, fine art photographer and video artist, is a frequent collaborator with orchestras, including the Saint Louis Symphony, Sydney Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the United States Navy Band, creating video projections for live symphonic performance. From 2006-2008, O’Grady traversed the Navajo Nation to create projections for the oratorio “Enemy Slayer” in collaboration with Mark Grey and Laura Tohe. She continued her collaboration with Tohe in Code Talker Stories, creating portraits of the World War II Navajo Marines. This collection is in the Albuquerque Art Museum. O’Grady’s fine art photography examines the landscapes of the western United States using recorded myths and stories as her map. Recent landscape work looks beyond human impacts, to find nature’s strength and resurgence, in response to the climate crisis.
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David Finn's professional career began at age 16, working for puppeteer Burr Tillstrom and Kukla, Fran & Ollie. His first lighting design was for the Birmingham Royal Ballet’s acclaimed Nutcracker in 1990. David toured/designed for Twyla Tharp & Dancers and was resident designer for Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project. He has designed for the Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, National Ballet of Canada and Lyon Opera Ballet, amongst others. His opera career began in 1997 with Otello (Brussels) and has, since, included works at The Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Salzburg Festival, Paris Opera, Royal Opera, Dutch National Opera, Staatsoper Berlin, New York City Opera, San Francisco Opera and Canadian Opera, where he designed the Ring in 2006. Awards include the 2011 Yomiuri Award for Outstanding Lighting Design for The Hunting Gun (Tokyo), three Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Siegfried, Die Walküre & Rusalka (Canadian Opera) and a Knight of Illumination Award (Royal Ballet). David’s work with Cirque du Soleil includes Michael Jackson ONE, ZED, and R.U.N..
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Robert Castro directs classics and new work across the U.S. and internationally. Credits include: The Public Theater/NYSF, New York Theatre Workshop, La Jolla Playhouse, Center Theatre Group/LA, Santa Fe Opera, Wiener Festwochen (Austria), Bolshoi Opera (Russia), Teatro Real (Spain). Served as Associate Artist: Mark Taper Forum/Center Theatre Group, Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at ART/Harvard University, and El Teatro Campesino. Awards include: NEA/TCG Fellowship for Directors, TCG/Doris Duke New Generations Grant, Sherwood Award, Hellman Fellows Program. Member: New York Theatre Workshop and Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab.
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