let me come in

David Lang is one of America’s most honored and performed composers. His score for Paolo Sorrentino’s film Youth received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, among others. Other recent work includes man made, a concerto for solo percussion quartet and orchestra, co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony; the large orchestra work mountain for the Cincinnati Symphony; the opera anatomy theater, written in collaboration with visual artist Mark Dion, at LA Opera; and the whisper opera for International Contemporary Ensemble, which premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. His most recent work at BAM was love fail, written for Anonymous 4, with stories by Lydia Davis and texts, music and stage direction by Mr. Lang.

Learn more at BillMorrisonFilm.com.

The 2022 winner of the prestigious Richard Tucker Award, Angel Blue has emerged in recent seasons as one of the most important sopranos before the public today. On September 23, 2019, she opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 2019/20 season as Bess in a new production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. These performances followed her internationally praised French opera debut and role debut as Tosca at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July of 2019. She has also been praised for performances in many other theaters, such as the Vienna State Opera, Semperoper Dresden, San Francisco Opera, Seattle Opera, Theater an der Wien, Oper Frankfurt and San Diego Opera. She began the 2021/22 season with her return to the Metropolitan Opera, making her role debut in Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones as Destiny/Loneliness/Greta and reprising the role of Bess. The soprano also made her house debut at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich as Mimi in La Bohème, returned to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Violetta in La Traviata, and appeared for the first time with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.

Puccini’s La Bohème has played an especially prominent role in the development of Angel Blue’s career. She made her debut at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan as Musetta. As Mimi, she has won special international acclaim. Ms. Blue first sang the role at the English National Opera in London in 2014 and has since sung Mimi for her debuts at the Palau de Les Arts in Valencia in 2015, at the Vienna State Opera in 2016, and with the Canadian Opera Company in 2019. Mimi was also the role of her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2017, and it is as Mimi that she will debut this season at the Hamburg State Opera. In Germany, she has already been heard as Mimi at the Semperoper Dresden. Other recent operatic engagements have included her debuts as Liu in Turandot at the San Diego Opera in 2018, as Marguerite in Faust at the Portland Opera in 2018 and as Bess in Porgy and Bess in Seattle in the same year. She debuted in Baden Baden as Elena in Mefistofele in 2016 and sang her first Violetta in La Traviata at the Seattle Opera in 2017.

Also active on the concert platform, Ms. Blue has appeared in recital and in concert in over 35 countries. Important orchestral engagements have included Porgy and Bess at the Berliner Philharmoniker with Sir Simon Rattle, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Münchener Philharmoniker under the baton of Zubin Mehta, and Verdi’s Requiem in Sydney, Australia with Oleg Caetani. She has also sung Strauss’s Four Last Songs and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Peri in Schumann’s Das Paradis und die Peri with the Accademia Santa Cecilla in Rome, conducted by Daniele Gatti, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Cincinnati Symphony under Music Director Louis Langree. Ms. Blue debuted in recital at the Ravinia Festival in August of 2019.

Angel Blue was raised in California and completed her musical studies at UCLA. She was a member of LA Opera's Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program from 2007 to 2010, after which she moved to Europe to begin her international career at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia, Spain in 2009 and at the Verbier Festival in 2010.

Learn more at AngelJoyBlue.com.

Canadian pianist and vocal coach Bryan Wagorn serves as an assistant conductor at he Metropolitan Opera and regularly performs throughout North America, Europe, and Asia as soloist, chamber musician, and recital accompanist to the world's leading singers and instrumentalists.

He has appeared on major television and radio stations including Good Morning America, WQXR and CBC Radio, has performed in recital for the George London Foundation, the Marilyn Horne Foundation and Richard Tucker Foundation, and with artists such as Anthony Roth Costanzo, Nadine Sierra, Karita Mattila, Joyce DiDonato, Pinchas Zukerman, Carol Wincenc, and the New York Woodwind Quintet. A participant at the Marlboro Music Festival, and music staff at the Glyndebourne Festival, Mr. Wagorn has also been engaged as staff coach at the Ravinia Steans Music Institute, and served on the faculty of the National Arts Centre Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute and Carnegie Hall's National Youth Orchestra. He has been a guest coach at the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Program and at the Glyndebourne Festival’s Jerwood Young Artist Program.

He made his solo recital debut at New York City's Carnegie Hall in 2009, and has performed two extensive tours with Jeunesses Musicales de Canada, and performed chamber music with members of the Metropolitan Opera  Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Chicago Symphony. Mr. Wagorn is also on the advisory board of the Hildegard Behrens Foundation and the Time In Children's Arts Initiative.

Mr. Wagorn holds degrees in piano performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Canada, the University of Ottawa, the Mannes College of Music, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Manhattan School of Music. He is a graduate of The Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, and serves on the faculty of Mannes College of Music.