The Zolle Suite

Photo: Zhen Qin

Currently based in New York City, Du Yun works at the intersection of opera, orchestral, theater, cabaret, musical, oral tradition, public performances, electronics, visual arts and noise. Her body of work is championed by some of today’s finest performing groups and organizations around the world.

Known for her “relentless originality and unflinching social conscience” (The New Yorker), Du Yun’s second opera, Angel’s Bone (libretto by Royce Vavrek), won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize; in 2018 she was named a Guggenheim Fellow; and in 2019, she was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Classical Composition category for her work Air Glow. As an avid performer and bandleader (Ok Miss), her onstage persona has been described by the New York Times as “an indie pop diva with an avant-garde edge.”

Du Yun is Professor of Composition at the Peabody Institute, and distinguished visiting professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. A community champion, Du Yun was a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble; served as the Artistic Director of MATA Festival (2014-2018); conceived the Pan Asia Sounding Festival (National Sawdust); and founded FutureTradition, a global initiative that illuminates the provenance lineages of folk art and uses these structures to build cross-regional collaborations from the ground up. In 2018, Du Yun was named one of 38 Great Immigrants by the Carnegie Foundation, and in 2019 the Beijing Music Festival named her “Artist of the Year.”

(ChannelDuYun.com)

Established in 1990, and now in its 26^th year of operation, Acme Filmworks has produced works with some of the most notable animation directors from around the world. Diamond produced the Academy Award-nominated short film Nibbles (2003) and the animated feature film Drawn From Memory (1995) for PBS’ American Playhouse. He was also the executive producer of the WB Networks series Drew Carey’s Green Screen Show (2004.)

Diamond has lectured at leading animation schools and has served as a juror and guest speaker at numerous film events and festivals. He has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Shorts Films and Feature Animation Branch since 2002. He serves on several Academy executive committees and sub-committees.

Learn more at AcmeFilmworks.com.

For more than 30 years, Steven Woloshen has passionately created over 50 award-winning, abstract films and time-based installations for festivals, galleries and museums. Woloshen is a teacher, film conservationist, animator, craftsman and the author of two books, Recipes for Reconstruction: The Cookbook for the Frugal Filmmaker (2010), a hands-on manual for decay, renewal and other handmade, analogue film techniques, and Scratch, Crackle & Pop! A Whole Grains Approach to Making Films without a Camera (2015).

He made his first animated short, Max Monkey, at the age of 12. Years later, he worked as editor for several Austrian production companies and television networks. In 2011, he graduated from Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg and founded the animation studio "NÖT“ (Neuer Österreichischer Trickfilm) together with his former fellow students Johannes Schiehsl and Conrad Tambour. In 2018 he created his first graphic novel, Schwanzer: Architect, Visionary, Maestro,  about Austrian architect Karl Schwanzer. In 2021 his film Coming Home qualified for an Oscar in the category Best Animated Short Film.

Filmmaker and designer Kristian Pedersen graduated with an MA in Visual Communication from Bergen Academy of Art and Design. Working as a freelance animator and designer in Oslo, he has produced animated poetry films in collaboration with the small press Gasspedal, publishing house Gyldendal, and the National Library. Kristian has developed a distinct visual signature and narrative style, and his films have been featured at festivals for film, animation, literature and poetry film. He was awarded Goethe Institute's Film Prize at Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin, 2014.

Oliver Harrison is a London-based artist, filmmaker and animator. An early exponent of kinetic typography, Harrison's work has been shown in festivals and galleries around the world, including: Cannes Film Festival, Tate Modern London and the BFI Southbank.

Harrison’s film Apocalypse Rhyme won the Best Motion Graphics award at the 2014 British Animation Awards. Love is All—a three minute epic—has been shown in over 70 festivals around the world, including the celebrated Cannes Director’s Fortnight. The film has picked up seven awards including the Jury Prize at Oberhausen and a Jury Prize at the New York Film Festival. The making of the film was featured at the Barbican exhibition Passionate Obsessions and at the Tate Modern exhibition Thresholds of the Frame.

Harrison's featurette The Fallen Word, premiered at the BFI in May 2013, coinciding with a digital release of his work called The Fallen Word and Collected Films. Oliver Harrison has made six films: Amore Baciami (1988), Time (1990), Spirit of Place (1992), Love is All (2000), Apocalypse Rhyme (2013) and The Fallen Word (2013). Harrison is currently working on a new short animation entitled Aria.

Before the pandemic, Oliver completed a series of animated films for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. The pieces were screened live in 2019 with a number of performances of Dream of the Song by the composer Sir George Benjamin.

Oliver Harrison studied at St. Martins School of Art in Covent Garden, London. His graduation film Amore Baciami—a film made up entirely of typography—received much acclaim and was later bought by DMB&B and made into a commercial for the Royal Mail. This commercial subsequently won a string of awards including a Gold Lion at Cannes Advertising Awards, a Gold Arrow at the British Advertising Awards. Much of Oliver's work features music written by himself, sometimes in conjunction with other composers.

Learn more at OliverHarrison.com.

American mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn performs in a wide range of styles and venues, from Purcell to Pierrot Lunaire, Cherubino to The King and I, J.S. Bach to P.D.Q. Bach. She has performed with New York City Opera, the Wooster Group, Philip Glass/Robert Wilson, OperaOmnia, American Symphony Orchestra; on the stages of Carnegie Hall, the Mann Center in Philadelphia, and London’s West End; and at Festivals including the Edinburgh, Verbier, Grimeborn, Tête-à-Tête, and Festival d’Autumne. As an Artist in Residence at HERE arts center, Hai-Ting created and performed Science Fair: An Opera With Experiments, a staged solo show of science set to music.

Hai-Ting was featured in the revival and tour of Phillip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, performed at venues around the world from 2011 through 2014, and sang the role of Belle in Glass’s La Belle et la Bête, also on tour. Operatic roles include Didone in The Wooster Group’s wildly experimental production of La Didone, Poppea in Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea and Medea in Cavalli’s Giasone with Opera Omnia, as well as Nicklausse and the Muse in Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, Hansel in Hansel and Gretel, Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, and in Peter Maxwell Davies’s unaccompanied monodrama The Medium. An ardent advocate of new vocal repertoire, she has premiered new works by Conrad Cummings, Yoav Gal, Renée Favand-See, Amy Beth Kirsten, Tarik O’Regan, Ellen Reid, Matthew Schickele, Stefan Weisman, and Du Yun, and she was featured in the 2017 Resonant Bodies Festival, a singer-centered celebration of new music in New York.

Of mixed Chinese and Jewish ancestry, Hai-Ting is a native of Northern California and currently resides in New York City. She holds degrees from the Eastman and Yale Schools of Music.

Learn more at Hai-Ting.com.

With a commitment to cultivating a more curious and engaged society through music, the International Contemporary Ensemble – as a commissioner and performer at the highest level – amplifies creators whose work propels and challenges how music is made and experienced.

“America’s foremost new-music group”
Alex Ross, New Yorker

Learn more at ICEorg.org.