VOXVOX

Huang Ruo grew up in Hainan, China, studying piano and composition with his father before training in Shanghai and the United States. His musical language brings Chinese traditions into conversation with experimental sound, rock, and jazz through an approach he calls
“Dimensionalism.” Across opera, concert music, and multimedia work, he treats these influences as parts of a single, fluid artistic vocabulary.

James Schamus is a screenwriter, producer, director, and film scholar whose long collaboration with Ang Lee includes The Ice Storm and Brokeback Mountain. He co-wrote and produced both Lee’s original The Wedding Banquet and Andrew Ahn’s 2025 reimagining, bringing a direct
connection to the story’s evolution. A former head of Focus Features, he also teaches film history and theory at Columbia University.

Gillian Rae Perry is a composer and songwriter whose work is dedicated to themes of mental health, vulnerability, and interconnectedness. Her music has been described as “sweet and sensitive” (Parterre Box) as well as “gentle, introspective, caring, important, and beautiful” (Music City Review). She grew up on a bird farm in rural Texas, and her first compositions were written for the birds.

With a background in both film and music, Perry actively integrates art forms outside of music into her artistic practice. Raised in the theater, she finds immense joy in collaborating with others and holds a deep love for the theatrical. Perry is the laureate of the Antinori Foundation Grand Prize at Atlanta Opera’s New Works Festival for her chamber opera The Sickness with librettist David Davila. The Sickness will be premiered by Atlanta Opera in June of 2028.

Mo Holmes is a Black queer Southern playwright, librettist, and dramaturg, born in San Antonio and raised between Texas and Alabama. Her work spans writing for the stage and helping other artists develop new plays as a dramaturg and teaching artist. A Yale Drama Prize winner with an MFA from Columbia, she brings her Southern roots to Desert Bloom’s story of queer love in West Texas.

Scott Davenport Richards creates music at the meeting point of opera, jazz, and musical theater. His theatrical roots include originating the role of Sylvester in August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom on Broadway. His opera Blind Injustice, written with David Cote, premiered at Cincinnati Opera in 2019. A returning VOX artist, he previously brought A Star
Across the Ocean and Charlie Crosses the Nation to the program.

David Cote is an opera librettist, playwright, and critic whose life in theater has included acting in experimental productions and serving as Time Out New York’s chief drama critic. His operas include Blind Injustice, written with Scott Davenport Richards, and Lucidity. His experience onstage, on the page, and in the audience gives him several perspectives on how a story becomes theater.

Josh Schmidt is a composer and sound designer whose work connects musical storytelling with the expressive possibilities of theatrical sound. His award-winning Adding Machine and his adaptation of Shaw’s Candida, A Minister’s Wife, reflect an interest in finding a distinct musical
language for each dramatic world. His practice extends from Broadway and regional theater to film, including Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End.

Dick Scanlan is a writer, lyricist, and director whose career reaches from Broadway musicals to fiction and community arts. He co-wrote the book and wrote the lyrics for Thoroughly Modern Millie, and collaborated with Sherie Rene Scott on Everyday Rapture. His commitment to creative expression also led him to co-found artsINSIDEOUT, which works with mothers and children at Nkosi’s Haven in Johannesburg.

A 2024 Grammy-nominated producer, recipient of the 2020 Musical America Award for Artist of the Year/Agent of Change and a Kennedy Center 50NEXT Honoree (2022), Beth Morrison is an opera-theatre producer and the President and Creative Producer of Beth Morrison Projects and the co-Founding Director of PROTOTYPE: Opera/ Theatre/ Now Festival. Morrison is noted as a “contemporary opera mastermind” (LA Times) and “a powerhouse leading the industry to new heights” (WQXR). Beth created Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) in 2006 to identify and support the work of emerging and established living composers, and to change the opera industry by cultivating a new generation of talent and telling the stories of our time. BMP has commissioned, developed, produced and toured over 65 works in 19 countries around the world, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning chamber operas Angel’s Bone (Du Yun/ Royce Vavrek) and p r i s m (Ellen Reid/Roxie Perkins). Opera News has noted, “More than any other figure in the opera industry, Beth Morrison has helped propel the art form into the twenty-first century." In 2013, Beth co-founded the PROTOTYPE Festival for which she serves as Artist Director, which has become “essential to the evolution of American opera” (New Yorker). Morrison is also in demand as a speaker both nationally and internationally and has delivered key note speeches for Classical:Next, Opera America, Opera Europa, Mannes School of Music/ The New School, among others. Morrison holds a Bachelor of Music from Boston University, a Master of Music from Arizona State University, and an MFA from Yale School of Drama. Beth is also a Lecturer at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University.

TED SPERLING is a multi-faceted artist; director, music director, conductor, orchestrator, singer, pianist, violinist and violist. He is the Artistic Director of MasterVoices and Music Director of the recent Broadway productions of My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof and The King and I. He has directed the premiere productions of The Other Josh Cohen, Red Eye of Love, Striking 12 and See What I Wanna See, all off-Broadway.

A Tony Award winner for his orchestrations of The Light in the Piazza, Mr. Sperling is known for his work across many genres, including opera, oratorio, musical theater, symphony and pops. His video interpretation of Adam Guettel’s Myths and Hymns can be viewed on the PBS channel, AllArts, where you can also view his concert of Carole King songs. He earned rapturous reviews for his production of Stephen Sondheim’s The Frogs at Lincoln Center, Lady in the Dark with MasterVoices at NY City Center as well as for recent performances of Let ‘Em Eat Cake and Anyone Can Whistle at Carnegie Hall.

Mr. Sperling appeared as Steve Allen in the final episode of Season Two of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and as bandleader Wallace Hartley in the original Broadway musical, Titanic.

Artists that Mr. Sperling has directed and conducted include Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Isabel Leonard, Stephanie Blythe, Nathan Gunn, Rufus Wainwright, Glenn Close, Eric Idle, Kevin Kline, Martin Short, Deborah Voigt, Kelli O’Hara, Victoria Clark, Audra McDonald, Idina Menzel, Michael Bublé, Randy Newman, Bryn Terfel, Anthony Roth Constanzo, Anne Hathaway, Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jeremy Jordan, Santino Fontana, Dove Cameron, Jennifer Holliday, Cheyenne Jackson, Nathan Lane, Kristin Chenoweth, Vanessa Williams, Sutton Foster, Harvey Feierstein, Zachary Quinto, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jane Lynch, Patrick Wilson, Donna Murphy, Mandy Patinkin, Patti LuPone, Chita Rivera and Liza Minelli.

Maestro Sperling was principal conductor of Westchester Philharmonic for six seasons. Recent conducting appearances include performances with the Chicago Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra and San Diego Symphony. His program “The Traiblazing Music of Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Carly Simon” has generated enthusiastic responses from critics and audiences alike.

James Blaszko (he/him) is a queer first-generation American director and creative producer based in Central Harlem. He is a frequent collaborator of RuPaul's Drag Race contestant Sapphira Cristál, having staged and generated English subtitles to her maxi-challenge winning performance of "O mio babbino caro" as well as directing her music video featuring Katya. In 2023 he staged Handel’s XERXES at Detroit Opera (conducted by Dame Jane Glover), a revival of Yuval Sharon’s reverse-order LA BOHEME at Boston Lyric Opera, SWANN by Tamar-kali for Catapult Opera, and FREEDOM IS A CONSTANT STRUGGLE at Lincoln Center. He is also the Artistic Director of @apothecultureclub which brings new audiences to live arts through their enthusiasm for upscale consumption of legal cannabis.