prism

Ellen Reid is one of the most innovative artists of her generation. A composer and sound artist whose breadth of work spans opera, sound design, film scoring, ensemble and choral writing, she was awarded the the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her opera prism, which premiered as part of the LA Opera Off Grand series.

Along with composer Missy Mazzoli, Ellen co-founded the Luna Composition Lab, a mentorship program for young, female-identifying, non-binary, and gender non-conforming composers. Since the fall of 2019, she has served as Creative Advisor and Composer-in-Residence for Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

Ellen received her BFA from Columbia University and her MA from California Institute of the Arts. She is inspired by music from all over the globe, and she splits her time between her two favorite cities – Los Angeles and New York. Her music is released on Decca Gold. Learn more at EllenReidMusic.com.

Roxie Perkins is an artist who writes and directs for theater, opera, television and film.

She is the librettist of Ellen Reid's Pulitzer Prize-winning opera prism. Together they also won the Music Critics Association of North America's 2019 "Best New Opera" Award. Director James Darrah's production of prism is currently a nominee for “Best World Premiere” at the International Opera Awards of 2020. The opera was released as an album through Universal's Decca Gold label and was featured on NPR’s list of the “Best Classical Music of the Decade.”

Roxie has been awarded a Sundance Playwright Fellowship, and her plays have been a semi-finalist for the Eugene O'Neill National Theatre Conference as well as for the Princess Grace Award. Her writing has been nominated to The Kilroy's "THE LIST" and We For She’s “WriteHer List,” annual rankings of the best unproduced plays and original TV pilots by women. She directed Green Umbrella: Theatre of the Outrageous, a program of three short operas performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Her work has been programmed at the Kennedy Center's Direct Current Festival, REDCAT, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, New York Philharmonic, Jazz at Lincoln Center, PROTOTYPE Festival, LA Opera, Opera Omaha's ONE Festival, Cutting Ball Theater, A Noise Within's "Noise Now" Artist Residency, Crowded Fire Theater's Matchbox Reading Series, The Tank NYC, The LARK’s Roundtable Reading Series, On The Verge Summer Repertory Theater, and internationally at Theatro Municipal in São Paulo. A production of prism in São Paulo was nominated for the 2019 Prêmio CONCERTO Award for Best Opera Production in Brazil. Roxie has worked as a Visiting Lecturer at CalArts and UCLA's School of Theatre, Film, and Television, as well as a Teaching Artist at Berkeley Repertory School of Theatre.

 Learn more at RoxiePerkins.com.

Rebecca Jo Loeb recently returned to the Deutsche Oper Berlin for a staged production of Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Frasquita in Carmen, and to the New York Festival of Song to reprise Bernstein’s Arias and Barcarolles on tour to Boston and New Hampshire. She debuted with the Teatro Municipal de Santiago (Schoolboy/Groom in Lulu) and Theater Freiburg (Susan in Love Life) and returned to the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Second Maid in Elektra) and New York Festival of Song (Bernstein’s Arias and Barcarolles) on tour.

In 2020, Anna Schubert performed the role of Fury 1 in Julian Wachner's frenetic opera REV 23 at the Prototype Festival, in a new production by James Darrah. A lover of new music and performance, Anna recently created the role of Bibi in the world premiere of Ellen Reid's opera prism. It debuted at LA Opera in 2018 and was then presented at the Prototype Festival in 2019, directed by James Darrah and conducted by both Julian Wachner and Daniela Candillari, and garnered glowing reviews; Anna's performance was described as "revelatory" (Catherine Womack, I Care If You Listen). The opera won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Music, which led to an album release on the Decca Gold label, as well as several performances over the 2019/20 season at Theatro Municipal de São Paulo and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

Anna Schubert made her debut on the LA new music scene with The Industry in 2015, singing the ethereal soprano role of L in Anne LeBaron's scenes from LSD: The Opera, first with Marc Lowenstein and Wild Up, and again a few months later in a staged version with Partch and under the baton of Christopher Rountree. In 2017, she made her debut with Opera Omaha singing the role of the Controller in their production of Jonathan Dove's Flight, where she was pleased to collaborate again with conductor Christopher Rountree and for the first time with director James Darrah. In 2018, she made her soloist debut with Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Phil in Bernstein's Mass, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer and choreographed by Laurel Jenkins. That production inspired a remount at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, where she reprised her role under the baton of Louis Langrée; the Wall Street Journal listed her as a "standout among the street-chorus soloists."

Anna also performs actively as a concert soloist. Highlights of her repertoire include Orff's Carmina Burana; Handel's Laudate Pueri; and Mozart's Exsultate Jubilate, Requiem, Vesperae solennes de confessore, and Mass in C Minor. Anna is also particularly well-known for her masterful Messiah solos; in 2013, she made her LA Master Chorale debut as a soloist in Handel's Messiah for their 50th anniversary season at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Since then, her soloist credits with the Master Chorale have included Bach's St. Matthew Passion, Gubaidulina's Canticle of the Sun, a version of Handel's Alexander's Feast staged by Trevore Ross, Handel's Israel in Egypt, and several performances of Messiah. In 2016, Anna was one of 21 Master Chorale singers to perform in a new staged production of Orlando di Lasso's Lagrime di San Pietro, directed by Peter Sellars and conducted by Grant Gershon, which the LA Times lauded as "a major accomplishment for the LA Master Chorale" and "a major accomplishment for music history." In 2018, Lagrime launched a worldwide tour, and over the next year, Anna performed the piece at the Ravinia Festival, the Salzburg Festival, and in Australia, Mexico, England, France, Germany, and several U.S. states.

Outside the world of classical vocals, Anna enjoys a stimulating career as a session singer. Her voice appears in various film and TV soundtracks, including The Lion King (2019), Mulan (2020), Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker, Call of the Wild, Creed, The Accountant, Sing, A Wrinkle in Time, Smallfoot, and Minions. Her classical chops come in handy in scores like Keanu (2016) and Birds of Prey (2020), in which her solo soprano vocals can be heard dramatically soaring over orchestra and choir alike.

Learn more at AnnaSchubertSoprano.com.

James Darrah's visually and emotionally arresting work at the intersection of theater, opera and film is currently in demand in venues all over the world. His productions of operas, theater, music videos, film and installations are known for their elegance with virtuosic and visceral "striking [work] that injects real drama" (New York Times), merging innovative design with unexpected movement, narrative heft and dance.

He is the newly named artistic director and chief creative officer of Long Beach Opera.

Current projects include debuts and new productions with the Kennedy Center, Theater an der Wien, Santa Fe Opera, Prototype Festival and Theatro Nacional São Paolo in Brazil. In 2020 he also creates an original art installation with composer Ellen Reid, filmmaker Adam Larsen and LA Opera and continues collaborations with Beth Morrison Projects, Opera Omaha/ ONE Festival and Opera Philadelphia as well as Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony where he will direct a new production of The Flying Dutchman with Tilson Thomas conducting and Frank Gehry designing. He is also currently in development for the new opera Dante with composer Patrick Cassidy and film producer Martha De Laurentiis, an expansion of Cassidy’s aria “Vide Cor Meum” originally written for the 2001 film Hannibal.

Recent highlights include developing and directing acclaimed productions of new operas including the world premieres of Reid's Pulitzer Prize-winning prism (premiered by LA Opera Off Grand in 2018) and Missy Mazzoli's Breaking the Waves and Proving Up, the New York premiere of Julian Wachner’s Rev23 in addition to Philip Glass' Les enfants terribles and the lauded West Coast premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain. He has crafted music videos with “enigmatic twists” (NPR) for artists including Joyce DiDonato and Jakub Józef Orlinski on the Warner Music label, and produced a video for Mazzoli’s Grammy-award nominated Vespers.

Mr. Darrah is artistic director of the ONE Festival, where he is "expanding the boundaries of the operatic form" (Wall Street Journal) by framing opera in a context that is both inclusive and relevant while establishing a first of its kind operatic artist residency for myriad artists in the genre. He is also committed to training the next generation of singer and performer, joining the UCLA Faculty of the Herb Alpert School of Music in 2019 and was named the new creative director of Music Academy of the West’s Vocal Institute, where he has brought new productions of works and residences by myriad artists and contemporary composers Higdon, Mazzoli, Reid and Jonathan Dove and Kaija Saariaho.

Following his professional debut with Chicago Opera Theater, he has worked with Boston Lyric Opera, Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, The International Handel Festspiele, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Getty Villa Museum in Malibu, Salle Playel in Paris, Barbican Centre, Bard Summerscape and Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Merola/ San Francisco Opera, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Tanglewood Music Festival, Pacific Musicworks, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, The Union for Contemporary Art, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and Teatro Nacional de Sao Carlos in Lisbon. He was co-artistic director/founder of Chromatic, a new collective of artists and production company in Los Angeles from 2014 to 2016, completed an MFA in Theater, Film and Television at UCLA and later continued studies with Stephen Wadsworth at The Juilliard School. He has received the national Princess Grace Award in Theater, the James Pendelton Foundation Grant, was a directing nominee in the 2015 International Opera Awards, has led world premieres of two operas to win “Best New Opera” awards from Music Critics Association of North America and was named Musical America’s New Artist of the Month for December 2015.

He was born in San Antonio, Texas and currently lives in Los Angeles.

Learn more at JamesDarrah.com.

He is a Princess Grace Award winner, a two-time American Theater Wing Henry Hewes Design Award nominee, a Connecticut Critics Circle Award nominee, and a multiple Ovation Award nominee. He was a recipient of the Donald Oenslager Fellowship in 2012 and the Pierre Cardin Fellowship in 2015.

Recent and upcoming designs include productions by Soho Rep, Mark Taper Forum/Center Theatre Group, Signature Theater, The Guthrie, Seattle Rep, New York Theater Workshop, Williamstown Theater Festival, The Foundry Theatre, The Public Theater, Yale Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Westport Country Playhouse, REDCAT, Opera Philadelphia, Cincinnati Opera, and Manhattan Theatre Club. He received his BA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his MFA from the Yale School of Drama.

Learn more at AdamRiggDesign.com.

Chris Emile is a choreographer, performer, and director based in Los Angeles. He received his formal education from the Alvin Ailey School and the Alonzo King LINES Ballet/Dominican University joint program, receiving his BFA in dance. He is the co-founder/curator for movement-based collective “No)one. Art House” which has programmed site specific performances, educational workshops, and installations for the last five years throughout Los Angeles. His work has been presented by Hauser & Wirth, the Getty Museum, MOCA Los Angeles, and the California African American Museum, among others. Commercially and otherwise, Chris’ choreographic work has been commissioned by LA Opera in Ellen Reid’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera prism, San Francisco Symphony, Solange Knowles, Anderson Paak, and Refinery 29. He has been a guest lecturer at the California Institute of the Arts, UCLA, AMDA, and Loyola Marymount University.

Molly Irelan received her master’s in costume design from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, where she studied under Chrisi Karvonides Dushenko and Deborah Nadoolman Landis. There she designed stage productions including The Revenger’s Tragedy and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as UCLA’s annual TV pilot. With a background in costume history, she has curated multiple exhibits, including an exhibit of the classic Dr. Who costume designs of June Hudson and a retrospective of American Horror Story costumes at the Paley Center in Beverly Hills. She is currently working on multiple Ryan Murphy television projects. She frequently collaborates with director James Darrah, having designed his productions of The Elixir of Love and The Marriage of Figaro for the Music Academy of the West’s 2017 and 2018 summer seasons, as well as Amadigi for UCLA.

Learn more at MollyIrelan.com.

Pablo Santiago is a Mexican-American lighting designer. 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 such as James Darrah, Jose Luis Valenzuela, Ellen Reid, Missy Mazzoli, Karen Zacarias, Bill Rouch, Patricia McGregor, Ted Hearne, Christopher Rountree, Francois-Pierre Couture, Adam Rigg, Adam Larsen and Yuval Sharon.

Pablo has designed for companies such as Oregon Shakespeare Festival, LA Opera, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Symphony, Boston Lyric Opera, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Opera Omaha, Center Theater Group Music Academy of The West, Broad Museum and Beth Morrison Projects. Some of the amazing venues he has worked at include Teatro Municipal Sao Paulo, the Goodman Theater, Disney Concert Hall, Davies Hall, Mark Taper Forum, Kennedy Center and Arena Stage in DC, La MaMa in NYC, Skirball Center, Paramount Theater, Huntington Theater and Majestic Theater in Boston, and BAM-Harvey Theater.

Recent highlights include The Fall of The House of Usher (feature film for Boston Lyric Opera); The Anonymous Lover (digital content for LA Opera); Pulitzer Prize-winner p r i s m (LA Opera, Sao Paulo, Prototype Festival), Macbeth and Mother Road (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Arena Stage); Place (BAM-LA Philharmonic-Beth Morrison Projects), Proving Up (ONE Festival/Opera Omaha and Miller Theater); Valley of the Heart and Zoot Suit (Mark Taper Forum); Threepenny Opera, Norma (Boston Lyric Opera); Destiny of Desire (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Goodman Theatre, Arena Stage); War of the Worlds (Los Angeles Philharmonic and The Industry); Breaking the Waves (Opera Philadelphia and Prototype Festival); Pelleas et Melisande (Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra); Flight, Pagliacci and Madama Butterfly (Opera Omaha); On the Town (San Francisco Symphony); Skeleton Crew and The Cake (Geffen Playhouse).

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. Instagram: @pablosdesign

He cut his teeth (or ears) as an engineer on the New York City contemporary music scene (le Poisson Rouge, VIA, BMP, MATA). An avid musician since his youth, Garth was strongly influenced by his time as a student of avant garde percussion at UCSC under the tutelage of Willie Winant. Coupled with the music department’s emphasis on contemporary and experimental music, this set him on the path he is on today. He is technical director for National Sawdust. Recent credits include the sound design for “FLEXN” with Peter Sellars at the Park Avenue Armory, engineering Jeff Zeigler/Andy Akiho/Roger Bonair-Agard at the Prospect Park Bandshell for Celebrate Brooklyn and mixing Alarm Will Sound with Dance Heginbotham in Seoul, Korea. He has worked with Kronos Quartet, Philip Glass Ensemble, Terry and Gyan Riley, David T. Little, Steve Reich, Paul Simon, Atoms for Peace, Erykah Badu, the Brooklyn Philharmonic and many more. He was the sound engineer for Dog Days, presented by LA Opera at REDCAT in 2016. After that work's 2012 premiere as part of the Peak Performances series at Montclair State University, the New York Times wrote: “Unseen but felt: the sound engineering, by Garth MacAleavey, is aggressive, and at times bombastic, in ways that complement the work. Amplified voices grow strident at peaks. The opera’s ending comes awash in electric distortion.”

Grammy-nominated interpreters of both early and new music, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street has redefined the realm of 21st-century vocal music, breaking new ground with an artistry described as “blazing with vigour…a choir from heaven” (The Times, London). This premier ensemble, under the direction of Julian Wachner, can be heard in New York City and around the world in performances described as “thrilling” (The New Yorker), “musically top-notch” (The Wall Street Journal), and “simply superb” (The New York Times).

The choir leads liturgical music on Sundays at Trinity Church and St. Paul’s Chapel, while performing in Bach + One, Compline by Candlelight, Time’s Arrow, and many other concerts and festivals throughout the year, often with Novus NY, the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, and the Trinity Youth Chorus. The choir anchors Trinity’s critically acclaimed annual performances of Handel’s Messiah, which The New York Times declares to be “the best Messiah in New York.”

The choir has toured extensively throughout the United States, making appearances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Shed at Hudson Yards, the Kennedy Center, REDCAT in Los Angeles, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, BAM Next Wave Festival, and the Prototype Festival, among others. Increasingly in-demand internationally, the choir has also performed in recent seasons at Montreal’s Salle Bourgie, Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Norway’s Stavanger Cathedral, and London’s Barbican Theatre. Performance partners have included Bang on a Can All-Stars, the New York Philharmonic, and the Rolling Stones. The choir was featured in the 150 Psalms Project, performing at the Utrecht Early Music Festival and Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival.

In addition to its Grammy-nominated recording of Handel’s Israel in Egypt, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street has released recordings on Naxos, Musica Omnia, VIA Recordings, ARSIS, Avie Records, Acis, Broadway Records, Cantaloupe Music, Decca Gold, and Philip Glass’s Orange Mountain Music, which recently released Trinity’s monumental performance of his Symphony No. 5. Prominently evidenced by this discography is Trinity’s long-term commitment to new music, which has led to many collaborations with living composers including Ellen Reid, Du Yun, Paola Prestini, Ralf Gawlick, Elena Ruehr, and Julia Wolfe, whose 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning and Grammy-nominated work, Anthracite Fields, was recorded with the choir. Along with NOVUS NY and conducted by Wachner, the choir also collaborated on and recorded two Pulitzer Prize-winning operas: Du Yun’s Angel’s Bone and Ellen Reid’s "p r i s m."