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Her music has been performed allover the world by the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, the Minnesota Orchestra, the South Carolina Philharmonic, NOW Ensemble and many others. Upcoming projects include new recordings by eighth blackbird, Kronos Quartet and her own ensemble Victoire, the world premiere of her chamber opera, Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt, at The Kitchen in New York in 2012, and the premiere of a new orchestral work by the League of Composers Chamber Orchestra. Recent performances include a workshop staging of Song from the Uproar at Bard College Conservatory, and a performance by the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, She is the recipient of four ASCAP Young Composer Awards, a Fulbright Grant, and grants from the Jerome Foundation and the Barlow Endowment. In 2006 Missy taught composition at Yale University, and is now Executive Director of the MATA Festival in New York City. Missy is also an active pianist, and often performs with Victoire, an "all-star, all-female quintet" (Time Out NewYork) that she founded in 2008 dedicated exclusively to her own compositions. Victoire will release its debut CD on New Amsterdam Records in September, 2010.

Opera/Music Theater libretti include David T. Little’s Dog Days (Zankel Hall, New York City Opera VOX) and Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera (Bard Conservatory); Jeff Myers’ The Hunger Art (American Lyric Theater, Center City Opera Theater, Burning Bayreuth); Jay Anthony Gach’s Nora at the Altar-Rail (A.L.T.); andKristin Hevner’s Bully Pulpit (Metropolis Opera Project). A founding member of The New Ensemble, he contributed lyrics ton on play: shadows of a dream and Black Snow in collaboration with composer Andrew Gerle. As a filmmaker, Royce wrote and directed From Sky and Soil (Corus Young Filmmakers Initiative), I Will Not Be Sad Anymore (Quebec Cooperative Filmmakers Initiative), Pig and Bear (Frigid Fest NY) and Good Woman, a collaboration with American fashion designer Marc Bouwer. Upcoming projects include collaborations with Missy Mazzoli, Du Yun, Nick Martin, Rachel Peters, Mark Baechle and Matt Marks. Artistic Director of opera-theater company The Coterie, founded with soprano Lauren Worsham. B.F.A: Concordia University, Montreal; M.F.A: NYU.

TED HEARNE (b.1982, Chicago) is a composer, singer, bandleader and recording artist. Inspired by the overlay of different viewpoints and their sonic possibilities, he creates personal and multi-dimensional works that often explore unconventional interactions of text and music, and are rooted in a sense of inquiry.

The New York Times has praised Mr. Hearne for his "tough edge and wildness of spirit," and "topical, politically sharp-edged works." Pitchfork called Hearne's work "some of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory -- from any genre," and Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that Hearne's music "holds up as a complex mirror image of an information-saturated, mass-surveillance world, and remains staggering in its impact."

Hearne's Sound From the Bench, a cantata for choir, electric guitars and drums setting texts from U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments and inspired by the idea of corporate personhood, was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. Place, Hearne’s work written with poet Saul Williams and director Patricia McGregor, was nominated for two GRAMMY Awards and was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize.

Commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Barbican Centre and Beth Morrison Projects, and scored for 18 instrumentalists and 6 vocalists, Place was premiered to critical acclaim in October 2018 in Fall 2018 the BAM Next Wave Festival. “‘Place’ takes shape in songs that emerge like a graffiti mural as repetitive gestures gradually bloom into vibrant, brash statements in high-volume color. The six singers bring with them deep familiarity with diverse vocal styles… but it was impossible to ignore the presence of the real Mr. Hearne at his command post conducting the musicians, manipulating the sound and driving the auto-da-fé of his own orchestration… It always felt as if Hearne was questioning his own comfort and — in the final moment — his own power” (The New York Times).

Hearne's oratorio The Sourcesets text from the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs, along with words by Chelsea Manning (the U.S. Army private who leaked those classified documents to WikiLeaks), and was premiered to rave reviews at the 2014 BAM Next Wave Festival. The New York Times called The Source "a 21st Century masterpiece," and included it on its list of the best classical vocal performances of 2014 and best albums of 2015, noting that the work “offers a fresh model of how opera and musical theater can tackle contemporary issues: not with documentary realism, but with ambiguity, obliquity, and even sheer confusion.” During the 2016-17 season, the original production of The Source (directed by Daniel Fish) was presented by both the LA Opera and San Francisco Opera.

Hearne’s piece Katrina Ballads, another modern-day oratorio with a primary source libretto, was awarded the 2009 Gaudeamus Prize in composition and was named one of the best classical albums of 2010 by Time Out Chicago and The Washington Post. His ongoing collaboration with legendary musician Erykah Badu pairs newly composed music with arrangements of Badu’s work for orchestra, most recently presented with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, whom Hearne also conducted.

Law of Mosaics, Hearne’s 30-minute piece for string orchestra, has been performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. His album of the same name, with Andrew Norman and A Far Cry, was named one of The New Yorker’s notable albums of 2014 by Alex Ross.

A charismatic vocalist, Hearne’s newest project is Dorothea, a kaleidoscopic art pop collaboration embodying the tender, pathos-ridden, darkly funny words of poet Dorothea Lasky with synth beats, rhapsodic textures and the heavenly vocals of “Los Angeles-based polymath” Eliza Bagg. He has performed with Philip White as the vocal-electronics duo R WE WHO R WE, whose debut album (New Focus Recordings, 2013) was called “eminently, if weirdly, danceable and utterly gripping.” (Time Out Chicago). Other recent albums of vocal music of various stripes include The Sourceand Outlanders(New Amsterdam Records) and The Crossing's acclaimed recording of Sound From the Bench (Cantaloupe Music). 

Ted Hearne was awarded the 2014 New Voices Residency from Boosey and Hawkes, and is a member of the composition faculty at the University of Southern California. Ted's many collaborators include poets Dorothea Lasky and Jena Osman, visual artists Sanford Biggers and Rachel Perry, directors Daniel Fish and Patricia McGregor, and filmmakers Bill Morrison and Jonathan David Kane, and his works have been conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, John Adams and Gustavo Dudamel. Recent commissions include orchestral works for the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Ballet of London, New World Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and A Far Cry, chamber works for Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble dal Niente and Alarm Will Sound, and vocal works for Conspirare, The Crossing and Roomful of Teeth.

Jena Osman’s books of poems include Motion Studies (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019), Corporate Relations (Burning Deck, 2014), Public Figures (Wesleyan University Press, 2012), The Network (Fence Books 2010, selected for the National Poetry Series in 2009), An Essay in Asterisks (Roof Books, 2004) and The Character (Beacon Press, winner of the 1998 Barnard New Women Poets Prize).

Osman was a 2006 Pew Fellow in the Arts, and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Howard Foundation, and the Fund for Poetry. She has been a writing fellow at the MacDowell Colony, the Blue Mountain Center, the Djerassi Foundation, and Chateau de la Napoule.

She founded and edited the award-winning and internationally recognized literary magazine Chain with Juliana Spahr for twelve years; Osman and Spahr now edit the occasional ChainLinks Book series together.

Osman received an M.A. in poetry and playwriting from Brown University, and a Ph.D. in English from the Poetics Program at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She teaches in the MFA Creative Writing program at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Nico Muhly (b.1981) is an American composer and sought-after collaborator whose influences range from American minimalism to the Anglican choral tradition. The recipient of commissions from The Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Philadelphia Orchestra and others, he has written more than 80 works for the concert stage, including the operas Two Boys (2010), Dark Sisters (2011), and the forthcoming Marnie; the song cycles Sentences (2015), for countertenor Iestyn Davies, and Impossible Things (2009), for tenor Mark Padmore; a viola concerto for violist Nadia Sirota; the choral works My Days (2011) and Recordare, Domine (2013), written for the Hilliard Ensemble and the Tallis Scholars respectively and most recently Looking Up (2017), a work for choir and orchestra for the Cathedral Choral Society. Muhly is a frequent collaborator with choreographer Benjamin Millepied and, as an arranger, has paired with Joanna Newsom and Antony and the Johnsons, among others. Planetarium, a large work co-written with Sufjan Stevens and Bryce Dessner, was released on 4AD records. He has composed for stage and screen, with credits that include music for the 2013 Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie and scores for the films Kill Your Darlings; Me, Earl And The Dying Girl; and the Academy Award-winning The Reader. Born in Vermont, Muhly studied composition with John Corigliano and Christopher Rouse at the Juilliard School before working as an editor and conductor for Philip Glass. He is part of the artist-run record label Bedroom Community, which released his first two albums, Speaks Volumes (2006) and Mothertongue (2008). He currently lives in New York City.

Anthony Roth Costanzo (countertenor) mades his debuts at the Los Angeles Opera as the title role in Phillip Glass' Ahknaten, the Finnish National Opera in Kaija Sariaaho's Only the Sound Remains, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in performances of Messiah, and with both the London Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic as Prince Go-Go in performances of Le Grand Macabre, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle and directed by Peter Sellars. He also produced and starred in his critically acclaimed show, Orphic Moments, at the Landestheater in Salzburg. Mr. Costanzo has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera as both Ferdinand and Prospero in the world premiere of The Enchanted Island, and as Prince Orlofsky in a new production of Die Fledermaus after making his debut as Unulfo in Rodelinda. He also recently made his debuts at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in the world premiere of Jimmy Lopéz' Bel Canto and the San Francisco Opera in Partenope. He made his European debut at the Glyndebourne Festival in Rinaldo, and has since appeared at the English National Opera in The Indian Queen and Ahknaten, the Teatro Real in Death in Venice and in a performance of Britten's Canticles with Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake, and in concerts with Jordi Savall in Barcelona, Paris, and Versailles. He has also performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, on Broadway and in the Merchant Ivory film, A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Princeton University where he has returned to teach, and received his masters from Manhattan School of Music.