Thursday, May 19, 2022

JAMIE EREKSON, Paint My Eyes, is a composer, librettist, and creative producer whose work ranges from a large-scale musical deconstruction of Shakespeare’s Richard II at Carnegie Hall, to a 12′x12′x6′ interactive kinetic sound sculpture, to a site-specific collaboration with Ballet West exploring redlining in Salt Lake City. His debut multimedia music-theatre piece, Paint My Eyes (100’), was heralded as “a strong piece of theater” with “marvelous” music (Warne, UTBA), and his opera, The Lost Children of Hamelin (105’), was reviewed as “captivating” (Giusti, Utah Lyric Opera) and “one of the most moving operas we’ve put on at BYU” (Babidge, The Juilliard School). His work has been showcased at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Columbia University, and he has received commissions, grants, or awards from the Albany Symphony Orchestra, The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, the Salt Lake City Arts Council, the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, The Laycock Center, Mannes School of Music, and Brigham Young University. He lives in Washington Heights with his wife, intermedia artist Emily Erekson, and their three children.

MATTHEW GREENE, The Ten Plagues of Ethan, is a playwright, librettist, and lyricist whose works have been seen on both coasts and a few places in between. His play Thousand Pines had its world premiere at Westport Country Place, directed by Austin Pendleton. The autobiographical Good Standing played at Theater Row as part of the United Solo Theatre Festival and his play Gregorian premiered at Walker Space, produced by Working Artists Theatre Project. Adam and Steve and the Empty Sea had its sold-out world premiere at Plan B Theatre in January, where it was named Best Original Play by the 2013 Salt Lake City Arty Awards. It subsequently had a run at the 2013 New York International Fringe Festival and was presented as part of OUTReach’s LGBTQ Youth Summit. His other plays include Job Well Done (national finalist, American College Theatre Festival); Bread of Affliction (Society for the Study of Jewish American and Holocaust Literature); #Mormoninchief (New York International Fringe Festival). His film Boy with Blue was awarded Best of Fest at the Oceanside Film Festival. He spends his days working with Opening Act, an organization that provides theater education to underserved high schools. A California native and proud foster father, Matthew earned a B.A. in Theatre at Brigham Young University and currently lives in New York City.

Friday, May 20, 2022

JOHN ANDREW TARBET, Behrman: A Musical in One Act, has been writing and composing music for the stage since he first learned to play notes on the piano. His first musical, book/music/lyrics for a church "Road Show." was written in his teens. More recently, John was the musical director/conductor for four different national tours of Broadway shows. He is currently pursuing a doctorate in music education at Columbia University, Teachers College.

KELLY DUPUIS is a playwright and lyricist who is currently working on her first novel, about a girl coming of age in Massachusetts in the 1980s. She is also the founder of KJ Kitchen, her personal cheffing business. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her partner, Richard and their three year old daughter, Daisy. BA, Vassar College. MFA, NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program.

CHARIS BEAN DUKE, Pudding Lane, finds inspiration in the music of Palestrina, George Crumb, Stephen Sondheim, and Mozart. Her love for all things drama manifests itself in her chamber operas and children’s operas. Her music has found its way into schools across the country and has been performed in concert halls from New Mexico to Hong Kong. When she’s not busy composing or music directing for local university theater programs, she can be found looking for signs of extra-terrestrial life with Special Agents Mulder and Scully.

Saturday, May 21, 2022

TED BUSHMAN, Pocket Universe, is a composer, lyricist, author, and actor from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has written three full-length musicals: an electronica adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac, a folk musical about the young life of Theodore Roosevelt, and a historical climate epic called Human about a tribe of early people facing a climate crisis. His science fiction has been published in Metaphorosis and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. tedbushman.com insta: @importanceofbeingted twitter: @tedbushman

Saturday performance photographs by Andrey Nastasenko.

LISA DESPAIN, That Hell-Bound Train, is the recipient of an OPERA America Discovery Award for Female Composers and a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Award for That Hell-Bound Train (Libretto – David Simpatico.) She is the winner of the 2020 Zepick Modern Opera Commission (Opera Kansas) for Staggerwing, No Ladies in the Lady’s Book (Utah Opera) and Men I’m Not Married To (Cleveland Opera Theatre) based on a short story by Dorothy Parker (Libretti by Rachel J. Peters.) Ms. DeSpain’s latest commission, The Nightingale, (libretto – Melisa Tian, On Site Opera) premieres August 2023 at the Winter Garden Atrium, NYC.

Additional works include American Nativity (a Christmas Oratorio), Rise & Fall, String Quartet No. 1 and the musicals Like I Care! - Tale of a Middle School Scrooge and Storyville (lyrics by Kristen Anderson-Lopez, FROZEN.)
She is a Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow, Copland House Residency, winner of multiple Barlow Awards and the ASCAP Commission Honoring the Duke Ellington Centennial. She is the choral arranger of Broadway hits (Hamilton, In the Heights, Next to Normal) for Alfred Music and Professor of Music at LaGuardia Community College – CUNY.