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Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider writes music of direct expression and vivid narrative that has been hailed as “rapturous” (The New York Times), “groundbreaking” (The Boston Globe), and “ravishingly beautiful” (NPR). One of the “Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music” (The Washington Post), Snider’s work has been commissioned and/or performed by the Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, National, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras; New York Philharmonic; Birmingham Royal Ballet; Emerson String Quartet; Renée Fleming; Colin Currie; eighth blackbird; and Roomful of Teeth, among many others. Snider’s recent works include Forward Into Light, an orchestral commission for the New York Philharmonic; Drink the Wild Ayre, the final commission by the Emerson String Quartet; and Mass for the Endangered, performed by dozens of choirs the world over. Her four full-length LPs – The Blue Hour, Mass for the Endangered, Unremembered, and Penelope – have garnered acclaim from The New York Times, NPR, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Gramophone Magazine, BBC Music Magazine, Pitchfork, and many others. A founding Co-Artistic Director of New Amsterdam Records, Snider has an M.M.and Artist’s Diploma from the Yale School of Music, and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. Her music is published by G. Schirmer.

Gabriel Crouch is Director of Choral Activities and Professor of the Practice in Music at Princeton University. He began his musical career as an eight-year-old in the choir of Westminster Abbey, where his solo credits included a Royal Wedding, and performances which placed him on the solo stage with Jessye Norman and Sir Laurence Olivier. After completing a choral scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was offered a place in the renowned a cappella group The King’s Singers in 1996. In the next eight years he made a dozen recordings on the BMG label (including a grammy nomination), and gave more than 900 performances in almost every major concert venue in the world. Since moving to the USA in 2005 he has built an international profile as a conductor and director, with recent engagements in Indonesia, Hawaii and Australia as well as Europe and the continental United States. In 2008 he was appointed musical director of the British early music ensemble ‘Gallicantus’, with whom he has released six recordings under the Signum label to rapturous reviews, garnering multiple ‘Editor’s Choice’ awards in Gramophone Magazine, Choir and Organ Magazine and the Early Music Review, and, for the 2012 release ‘The Word Unspoken’, a place on BBC Radio’s CD Review list of the top nine classical releases of the year. His recording of Lagrime di San Pietro by Orlando di Lasso was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award in 2014, and his follow-up recording - Sibylla (featuring music by Orlandus Lassus and Dmitri Tymoczko) was named ’star recording’ by Choir and Organ magazine in the summer of 2018. His most recent release is Mass for the Endangered, a new composition by Sarah Kirkland Snider released on the Nonesuch/New Amsterdam labels, which has garnered high acclaim from the New York Times, Boston Globe, NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’ and elsewhere.

Elkhanah Pulitzer is a highly esteemed opera director known for her bold, nuanced stage direction that explores the intersection of music and theater through innovation and hybridized forms, creating compelling and visually stunning productions. Recent projects include directing John Adams’ Antony and Cleopatra, which premiered at San Francisco Opera in September 2022; she makes her Metropolitan Opera directorial debut with this production in May 2025. Other recent highlights include a new production of Handel’s Julius Caesar with Opera Theatre of St. Louis in June 2024, and European productions of David Lang’s prisoner of the state, which premiered at the New York Philharmonic in 2019.
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Additionally this season, Pulitzer continues her collaboration with cellist Alisa Weilerstein directing “Fragments,” a groundbreaking, multi-year project for solo cello that weaves together the 36 movements of Bach's solo cello suites with 27 newly commissioned works. The second and third installments of “Fragments” will be performed at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall on January 21 and May 20, 2025 respectively.
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Past projects include a live tour of Esperanza Spalding’s album 12 Little Spells; and DIORAMA, an art installation at the I.O.U. in San Francisco. Pulitzer has directed projects with the Los Angeles Philharmonic including John Adams’ Nixon in China and Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, the latter of which was also staged at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. She has also directed John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary at the San Francisco Symphony, and Lucia di Lammermoor and Judas Maccabaeus at Los Angeles Opera. 

Pulitzer directed Wagner’s Flying Dutchman at San Francisco Opera in 2013 and returned to serve as Artistic Curator of SF Opera Lab, an experimental chamber opera two-year program from 2015-17, where she developed the mission, brand, and programming. She has directed multiple productions at West Edge Opera, among them Alban Berg’s Lulu, Thomas Ades’ Powder Her Face, and Luca Francesconi’s Quartett. She has collaborated on next-generation projects with Washington National Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Omaha, Opera Theater of Saint Louis, and the Canadian Opera Company. Theater directing credits include work with Impact Theater, Cutting Ball, Riverside Theater, and Ensemble Theater Company.

Pulitzer was honored with the Opera America Success Award for her libretto Dream of the Pacific, an opera composed by Stephen Mager, commissioned and performed by Opera Theatre of St. Louis. She graduated UC Berkeley in Theater Arts Phi Beta Kappa and holds an MFA from Columbia in Directing. Born in Boston and raised in St. Louis and Marin, Pulitzer also serves as board vice president of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, which advances experimentation in art curation, installation and live programming.

Deborah Johnson — also known as CandyStations —
is a multimedia artist, visual librettist, and educator.

She has worked with artists including Sufjan Stevens, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Sandbox Percussion, Sofi Tukker, M83, Annie B. Parson, Ray LaMontagne, Alarm Will Sound, Bang on a Can, The Fray, and Wilco — with performances at Coachella, Eastman Theatre, Disney Concert Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Museum of Modern Art, MASS MoCA, Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden, The Fillmore, and Wiener Konzerthaus.

Her site-specific performances and installations have been presented at SXSW, Lighthouse ArtSpace, Sundance, 92Y Tribeca, MoMA, Chicago’s Millennium Park, and the Baltimore Museum of Art, with residencies at MASS MoCA, The Experimental Television Center, NYU, Slalom NYC, and The Atlantic Center for the Arts. She presents regularly on performance design and the evolving relationship between classical and emerging technologies.

She is a recipient of a New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Film & Video Grant in New Technology for incorporating 4D volumetric technology in Hildegard, an award-winning opera by Sarah Kirkland Snider, produced by Beth Morrison Projects, and directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer.

A Professor at Pratt Institute, she teaches Time and Movement alongside Light, Color, and Design, building responsive visual worlds that expand the architecture of visual design and performance.

Marsha Ginsberg is a visual artist and stage designer working between performance, opera and photo/installation formats. She received her MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art with post-grad studies at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. She has designed spaces and clothes for live performances in major theaters and museums in New York City, and regionally throughout the United States. Internationally —work in Germany, Switzerland, France, Greece, UAE, including Festival D’Autumn Paris, HKW Berlin; Opera Basel; Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar; Opéra National de Bordeaux; Athens Epidaurus Festival, etc. Current: “Primary Trust,” by Eboni Booth at Roundabout, Laura Pels, NYC; “Treemonisha” by Scott Joplin with orchestrations and prologue/epilogue by composer Damien Sneed, Opera Theater of St. Louis. “Letters from Max” by Sarah Ruhl at Signature Theater, NYC; Benjamin Britten’s “Midsummer Nights Dream” in Repertory at Deutsche Oper Berlin; Theater, NYC. Grants/Awards: 2023 Obie Award for the Creative Team for Sanaz Toosi’s “English”; 2023 Transformative Research Award, NYUAbu Dhabi; 2013 Obie Award for durational installation Habit (with David Levine); Multiple residencies at MacDowell Colony and Robert Wilson's Watermill Center. Project grants include: NYFA, NYSCA; Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NEA. In 2020 she was awarded the Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome where she will resume her residency in Fall 2023. A dedicated educator, she has taught widely in the United States and at the TU in Berlin. She is currently an Associate Arts Professor at NYU Abu Dhabi.

Molly Irelan is a Los Angeles based Costume Designer. She prides herself on a holistic approach to her work and is formally trained in the history and construction of garments as well as costume design. Molly holds a Bachelor’s degree in Costume History and Design from the University of Redlands (2010), an Associate degree in Fashion Design from the Art Institute of Portland (2012), and a Master’s in Costume Design from the UCLA (2016).

Molly has designed operas Elixir D’Amour (2017), Il Due Figaro (2018), and Cold Mountain (2019) at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, Amadigi (2016), Orphée (2020) at UCLA, Rev 23 (2020) at Prototype Festival, and the pulitzer prize winning p r i s m (2018) in Los Angeles, New York, Sao Paolo Brazil, and the Kennedy Center.

For screen Molly designed the opera miniseries desert in (2021) and feature Mirror Flores (2021). In 2022 she designed La Clemenza di Tito at The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, The Tragedy of Carmen at Velaa Island in the Maldives, The Central Park Five at Long Beach Opera, Onegin at Music Academy of the West, and Il Due Figaro at The Handel and Haydn Society in Boston. Most recently, Molly designed the world premiere of Kate Soper’s The Romance of the Rose (2023) as well as The Feast (2023), a collaboration between Long Beach Opera and Martha Graham Dance Company.

Pablo Santiago is a Mexican-American lighting designer. Born in Chiapas, Mexico, Pablo moved to the United States as a teenager and studied filmmaking at University of California, San Diego. After spending fifteen years working on major motion pictures, Pablo returned to school to earn a MFA in Theatrical Lighting Design from UCLA. He is the winner of the Richard Sherwood Award and Stage Raw Award and a four-time Ovation Award nominee. Pablo is proud to have long standing collaborations with many great artists. James Darrah Breaking the Waves, Threepenny Opera, Ellen Reid Pulitzer Prize-winner p r i s m, Desert In, Jose Luis Valenzuela Destiny of Desire, Mac Beth, Missy Mazzoli Proving Up,Breaking the Waves, Bill Rouch Mother Road, Patricia McGregor Skeleton Crew, Place, Good Grief, Ted Hearne Place, Christopher Rountree Sound Box, Proving Up, Flight, Giustino, Adam Rigg Lord of Cries, Rev 23, p r i s m, Yuval Sharon War of the World, Galileo, Die Walkure.

Pablo has designed for companies such as Santa Fe Opera, LA Opera, San Francisco Symphony, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Beth Morrison Projects. Some of the amazing venues he has worked at include Teatro Municipal São Paulo, Kennedy Center, BAM-Harvey Theater, Goodman Theater, Denver Center and Arena Stage in DC. To learn more about his work history please see Pablo's resume here.

Pablo obtained a BA in Visual Arts at UCSD (Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society) and his MFA in Lighting Design at UCLA, where he obtained Magna Cum Laude honors and won the Cirque du Soleil Grant.

Drew Sensue-Weinstein (he/him) is a sound and stage artist whose work explores sound as a dramaturgical tool. His practice draws from a multifaceted artistic background including contemporary and physical theatre, performance art, classical guitar, ambient music, death metal, and more. Drew’s recent work crisscrosses ecological Field Recording with environmental research, personal storytelling, pitched instrumentation, live hydrophone, electronics, spoken word, and ambient screaming. His research focuses on the connections between capitalism, Earth’s decaying ecosystems, and the decline in our collective mental health. Drew is a recent graduate of California Institute of the Arts with a graduate degree in Composition and Experimental Sound Practice. He currently lives in Los Angeles but is often bi-coastal between LA and NYC.

ANNIE JIN WANG is a dramaturg and generative artist for new plays, musicals, and opera. From the development of new works to revitalizing classic texts for today’s audiences, her body of work primarily investigates constructs of race, gender, and citizenship. Her collaborative approach is dynamic, compassionate, and rigorous, drawing upon a diverse range of artistic traditions and globally-informed touchpoints to support and expand the creative processes of artists at all stages of their practice.

Annie is celebrated for the deep relationships she fosters with her artistic collaborators, as well as for her versatility in working across disciplines and forms. In addition to live performance, she has facilitated development and revision processes for film, television, literature, and game design. She is currently based in Los Angeles, with artistic roots in New York City and ancestral roots in Beijing.

Laurel Jenkins is a dancer, choreographer, educator, and mother. Her choreography emerges from rigorous experimentation and interdisciplinary dialogues in the realms of contemporary dance, opera, music, and theater. LA Weekly writes that she creates “extraordinary movement/sound pieces in which the body becomes the most versatile of instruments, playing the music of an invisible dimension.” Through an ever-evolving choreographic process, Jenkins reimagines the contours of our collective experience, by engaging themes of individual interiority, human relationships, and our connection with that which is beyond human.

Jenkins’ work has been presented by Lincoln Center, Disney Hall, REDCAT, Automata, the Getty Center, Show Box LA, Danspace, Berlin’s Performing Presence Festival, Tokyo’s Sezane Gallery, and Paris’ Cité Internationale des Arts. She choreographed Bernstein’s MASS with the LA Phil and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. In addition, she has choreographed for LA Contemporary Dance Company, The Wooden Floor, and many universities including UNL. Jenkins was a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company from 2007-2012, and has danced in works by Vicky Shick and Sara Rudner. Jenkins performed in the opera Oedipus Rex/Symphony of Psalms by Peter Sellars and solos by Merce Cunningham in the Night of 100 Solos: A Centennial Event. Jenkins is the recipient of a Vermont Arts Council Grant, an Asian Cultural Council Grant, a French Institute Fellowship, holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence, an MFA from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, and is certified to teach the Skinner Releasing Technique. She is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Middlebury College in Vermont.