Opera in the 21st Century: Librettist and Composer - Adoration and New Work

Joel is known for pushing the boundaries of opera, and has been called “Canadian opera’s enfant not-so-terrible.” In 2010, he founded Against the Grain Theatre in Toronto and served as its Artistic Director until 2023. Joel has adapted and translated over ten operas presented in unexpected venues, and was named an Arts Hero by The Globe and Mail in 2020 for his work directing the critically-acclaimed digital Messiah/Complex. He has also directed over 50 productions for opera companies across North America and Europe including The Canadian Opera Company, Vancouver Opera, and Minnesota Opera.  He is currently Artistic Director for Edmonton Opera.

Holly is an operatic vocal coach, collaborative pianist and répétiteur based in Montreal, QC. A graduate of Opera de Montreal’s Atelier Lyrique Young Artist Training Program (2018-2021), she currently works as Artistic and Administrative associate for the program. Most recently, Holly worked as principal repetiteur on Don Giovanni (NAC, Ottawa/Banff Arts Centre), Cosi Fan Tutte (Opéra Kelowna) and Le Nozze di Figaro (Opéra de Montréal).

This year, Holly was also seen on projects such as Bluebeard’s Castle (Against the Grain Theatre), Madama Butterfly (Opera de Montreal), as well as a new music workshops of Cusson/Vavrek’s Indians on Vacation, as well Ricketts/Vavrek’s Cremation of Sam McGee. 

Other production credits include Riders to the Sea/Le Flambeau de la nuit by Vaughn Williams/Tanguay-Labrosse (Opera de Montreal), Bizet’s Les pecheurs de perles (Jeunesse Musicales du Canada) , Cosi Fan Tutte (Edmonton Opera) and Die Zauberflote (Opera de Montreal), and Prestini/Vavrek’s Silent Light (Banff Centre). 

Alan Pierson has been praised as "a dynamic conductor and musical visionary" by the New York Times, "a young conductor of monstrous skill" by Newsday, "gifted and electrifying" by the Boston Globe, and "one of the most exciting figures in new music today" by Fanfare. He is the Artistic Director and conductor of the acclaimed ensemble Alarm Will Sound, which has been called "the future of classical music" by the New York Times and "a sensational force" with "powerful ideas about how to renovate the concert experience" by the New Yorker.  Mr. Pierson served as the Artistic Director and conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. The New York Times called Pierson’s leadership at the Philharmonic "truly inspiring," and The New Yorker's Alex Ross described it as “remarkably innovative, perhaps even revolutionary.” 

As a guest conductor, Pierson has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, L.A. Opera, Nationaltheater Mannheim, the London Sinfonietta, the Steve Reich Ensemble, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the New World Symphony, and the Silk Road Project, among other ensembles. He is co-director of the Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensemble, and has been a visiting faculty conductor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, the Eastman School of Music, and at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity. 

Pierson regularly collaborates with major composers and performers, including Yo Yo Ma, Steve Reich, Dawn Upshaw, Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, David T. Little, Augusta Read Thomas, David Lang, Donnacha Dennehy, La Monte Young, Tyshawn Sorey, and choreographers John Heginbotham, Christopher Wheeldon, Akram Khan and Elliot Feld. He has spearheaded critically acclaimed cross-genre collaborations with artists like Yasiin Bey, Erykah Badu, and Medeski Martin and Wood. He also develops unique concert and online experiences that fuse music, theater, and multimedia to tell stories that connect listeners more deeply to great music.

Mr. Pierson received bachelor degrees in physics and music from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a doctorate in conducting from the Eastman School of Music. He has recorded for Nonesuch Records, Cantaloupe Music, Sony Classical, and Sweetspot DVD.  
 

Royce Vavrek (Librettist) is a librettist and lyricist whose opera Angel’s Bone with composer Du Yun was awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music. He is known for his diverse collaborations with composers including David T. Little (Dog Days, Am I Born, JFK), Missy Mazzoli (Song from the Uproar, Breaking the Waves, Proving Up), Ricky Ian Gordon (27, The House Without a Christmas Tree), Joshua Schmidt (Midwestern Gothic), Paola Prestini (Yoani, The Hubble Cantata) and Gregory Spears (O Columbia). Recent projects include Film Stills, a series of operatic monologues for mezzo-soprano Eve Gigliotti, directed by R.B. Schlather and composed by Du Yun, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly and Paola Prestini; Jacqueline with composer Luna Pearl Woolf; Song of America: Beyond Liberty created for Thomas Hampson with director Francesca Zambello; and a new opera with David T. Little through the Met/LCT commissioning program. Royce is co-Artistic Director of The Coterie, an opera-theater.

Lesley (she/her) is excited to be spending time in the mountains again this summer! Working primarily in opera, she has been on the stage management team at the Canadian Opera Company for over 25 years, and has been the stage manager for opera productions at the Glenn Gould School for the past 10 years.  Favourite credits include: Don Pasquale, Fidelio, Tosca, Pomegranate, Die Walkure, Salome, Traviata (COC); Flight, Rinaldo, The Magic Flute, Die Fledermaus, Svadba, Cendrillon (CGS).

Some of her other favourite credits include: Figaro’s Wedding, Kopernikus, A Little Too Cozy (Against the Grain Theatre); Orphée (AGT/Opera Columbus/Banff Centre); Gould’s Wall, Shanawdithit (Tapestry Opera); The Queen In Me (Amplified Opera/Nightwood Theatre).

She has also enjoyed stage managing for the Canadian Children’s Opera Company, Soundstreams, Tafelmusik, the University of Toronto Opera School, and the Royal Conservatory of Music.

Mary Kouyoumdjian (Composer) is a composer with projects ranging from concert works to multimedia collaborations and film scores. As a first generation Armenian-American and having come from a family directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, she uses a sonic palette that draws on her heritage, interest in music as documentary, and background in experimental composition to progressively blend the old with the new. Kouyoumdjian has received commissions for such organizations as the New York Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble [ICE], Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the American Composers Forum/JFund, Roomful of Teeth, WQXR, REDSHIFT, Experiments in Opera, the Nouveau Classical Project, Music of Remembrance, Friction Quartet, Ensemble Oktoplus, and the Los Angeles New Music Ensemble. Her music has been described as “eloquently scripted" and "emotionally wracking” by The New York Times and as "the most harrowing moments on stage at any New York performance" by New York Music Daily. Kouyoumdjian has taught at the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers program, Juilliard's Music Advancement Program, Columbia University, and is currently on faculty at The New School's Mannes Prep program. Kouyoumdjian is proud to be published by Schott's PSNY.

Elizabeth Bowman was appointed as Editor-In-Chief of Opera Canada magazine in May 2022. Before moving to the editorial side, she founded and ran Bowman Media, a boutique communications firm with a special focus on the arts for over a decade with clients that included the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, conductor James Gaffigan, soprano Joyce El-Khoury, mezzo soprano Wallis Giunta, and more. The firm focused on public relations, design, branding, marketing, and social media strategy. She was the Executive Assistant to the General Director (Alexander Neef) and Board Administrator of the Canadian Opera Company from 2008-2010. She holds a post-graduate diploma in Arts Administration and Cultural Management and a Bachelor of Music.

Brooklyn-based composer, pianist, and conductor Daniel Schlosberg’s music has been performed by the Dover Quartet, Minnesota Orchestra, Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Nashville and Albany Symphonies, at Carnegie Hall, (le) poisson rouge, Royal Albert Hall, Beijing Modern Music Festival, and David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption, and has also been featured in the New York Times and WNYC’s Soundcheck. Daniel has received the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards. He has composed for and music directed at the Soho Repertory Theater, Public Theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and Playwrights Horizons. Current projects include composition and music direction for Jeremy O. Harris’s A Boy’s Company Presents (premiering Summer ‘23), music direction for Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond’s Only an Octave Apart at Wilton’s Music Hall in London (October ‘22) and at the Spoleto Festival (June ‘23), and The Extinctionist, a new opera for Heartbeat Opera (premiering Spring ‘24). Daniel is the Music Director of Heartbeat Opera, for which his radical re-orchestrations of classic operas have been praised by the Wall Street Journal as “ingenious.” In addition to collaborations with Angel Blue, Ariana DeBose, Ben Stiller, Tony Kushner, Anthony McGill, and the Imani Winds, Schlosberg was a pianist on the Grammy-winning soundtrack of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, and a featured soloist in Only an Octave Apart with the New York Philharmonic.

Mexican-American bass-baritone, Richard Ollarsaba, praised by The Washington Post for his “meltingly smooth bass-baritone” and for “evoking a young Ruggero Raimondi in looks and manner”, represented the USA in the 2019 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, was a member of the Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago and a grand finalist in the 2013 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Previous credits include the title role in Don Giovanni with Opera Hong Kong, Opera Grand Rapids, Opera Carolina, and Lyric Opera of Chicago stepping-in to the role on hours’ notice, Escamillo in Carmen with the Glimmerglass Festival, Portland Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Kentucky Opera, Minnesota Opera, North Carolina Opera, and Tulsa Opera, in Le nozze di Figaro in the role of Figaro with New Zealand Opera and Minnesota Opera and in the role of Count Almaviva with Virginia Opera and Knoxville Opera.

In addition to performances on the operatic stage, Mr. Ollarsaba appears regularly in concert and recital. Fall ’22 he premiered the self-curated recital “Neighbors Abroad, Family At Home” highlighting composers from Mexico and the USA. Concert credits include Bernstein’s Songfest with the Ravinia Festival, bass soloist in Verdi’s Requiem with the Master Chorale of South Florida and the Salisbury Symphony, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Macon Symphony Orchestra and Master Chorale of South Florida, and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy in his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. That concert was a gala celebration of the venerable festival’s 75th birthday and was telecast nationally on PBS.

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.  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 60 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, 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.

Alla Salakhova is a mezzo-soprano entering her final year of the Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance program at the University of Alberta. She was the University of Alberta student finalist in Edmonton Opera’s inaugural Rumbold Vocal Prize. This season, she performed Le Nozze di Figaro excerpts with The University Symphony Orchestra and the roles of Peterman in Monsieur Choufleuri and Ruth (cover) in The Pirates of Penzance (UofA Opera Theatre). Recent credits also include The Secretary in The Consul and Drusilla in L'incoronazione di Poppea (Opera NUOVA) for which she was praised by Opera Canada for having the “presence of a seasoned performer”. Other selected credits include Mrs. Northwind in the Canadian premiere of The Enchanted Pig, and Spirit 1 in The Magic Flute (Edmonton Opera). Alla is a member of the Edmonton Opera Chorus and was fortunate to perform in Tosca, Home for the Holidays, and Orphée+ this past season. With the support from the Association for Opera in Canada’s Opera Artist Resilience (OAR) Program, she was also able to role-study the titular role of Orphée as well as gain experience in administration through a mentorship with Edmonton Opera. In addition to her passion for performing, she is always looking for opportunities to grow her knowledge of the Opera industry in all sectors. In Alla’s free time, you can find her drinking coffee, going on walks in Edmonton’s River Valley, and spending time with her cat, Sam (a.k.a. Samantha, Sammy, and Salmon). 

American tenor and voice teacher Jason Ferrante has been praised by Opera News for "singing up a stylish storm" and by the Sarasota Herald Tribune as "one of the best voices I have heard"  In the past two seasons, he has been heard as Beadle Bamford in a new production of Sweeney Todd with Opera Omaha, Don Basilio and Don Curzio in Le Nozze di Figaro in his debut with Virginia Opera and Knoxville Opera, the Fourth Jew in Salome in his debut with Tulsa Opera and a debut with the Palm Beach Symphony as tenor soloist in Mozart's Requiem conducted by Gerard Schwarz. He has performed over 80 roles on the operatic stage and has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras including the Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Juilliard and National Symphony Orchestras. In addition to his two-decade stage career, Ferrante has become one of the most in-demand voice teachers in the opera world, teaching professionals who appear on the stages of the world and teaching singers in training programs at the opera companies of Minnesota, Pensacola, Nashville, Portland, Wolf Trap, Arizona and Brevard. He is a regular judge for the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition and leads the classical voice discipline for YoungArts.   

Sandra Horst is a conductor and educator based in Toronto. In addition to making her conducting debut with the Canadian Opera Company in Il viaggio a Reims, she is also the Price Family Chorus Master, with repertoire spanning more than 70 operas.

As Director of Musical Studies for Opera at the University of Toronto she has conducted repertoire on the main stage ranging from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, to Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing. Last fall, with the first live audience in three years, she conducted a triple bill of Hin und Zurück (Hindemith), Monsieur Choufleuri (Offenbach) and Gallantry (Moore) and in spring, Arthur Benjamin’s A Tale of Two Cities. 

Sandra was a guest faculty member of Open Space: Opera in the 21st Century at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity and she is also a frequent Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition judge. Ms Horst served as Chorus Master and audition consultant for Opera Theatre of St Louis, Chorus Master for Edmonton Opera, and has been on the music staff of the Canadian Opera Company, Juilliard Opera Centre, Chautauqua Institute School of Singing, Boston Lyric Opera and Opera Ontario. She currently serves as an industry mentor for Tapestry Opera’s Women in Musical Leadership program. 
Recognized as one of the 100 Alumni of Achievement, in 2019 she received an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Wilfrid Laurier University and holds a Masters degree in Accompaniment from New England Conservatory, Boston. An active collaborator, she has been heard in recital with Brandon Cedel, Michael Schade and Marie Berard, Erin Wall, Myles Mykkanen and Elena Tsaligova. Recent conducting performances include Orphée+ with Edmonton Opera and Florence, the Lady with the Lamp with Voicebox: Opera in Concert. 

Anna is thrilled to be working on this project. She lives in amiskwacîwâskahikan, known as Edmonton, AB. Her recent Edmonton Opera credits include: Stage Manager for Stabat Mater, Tosca and Cosi Fan Tutte. Her recent ASM credits include: Orphée+, La Boheme, Candide (cancelled), Rigoletto, The Misadventures of Count Ory, Hansel & Gretel, Electra, La Cenerentola, and Turandot at Edmonton Opera and The Fiancée at the Citadel Theatre.  She has worked as a stage manager and ASM in Edmonton since graduating from the Theatre Production Program at MacEwan in 2007. Anna also works as an IATSE Local 210 theatre technician