Erin Alcorn, soprano

Sarah Scofield, mezzo-soprano

Erik Nordstrom, baritone

Michael Delfín, pianist

Composer, Vocalist, Music Director, and Producer Tariq Al-Sabir has been described as a “boundless talent” by Baltimore’s City Hall and The Examiner deemed him “a rising musical mastermind.” A musician with a command over many styles, his early passion for music was supported by the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University with a full scholarship for composition lessons that started while he was in middle school and maintained through his high schooling at the Baltimore School for the Arts. In 2006, Tariq’s first job was lending his voice as a lead vocalist to the season 4 theme song for HBO’s “The Wire.”

Al-Sabir, now based in NYC, is a sought after creator and collaborator. He was featured on Al Jazeera for his innovative work that creatively and seamlessly challenges genre separation. In 2016, Tariq was invited to be a performer and speaker at TEDxMidatlantic, focusing on his experiences and projects with music, justice, and music education for Black students Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and New York City.

In 2017, he premiered commissioned works at The Lincoln Center, National Sawdust, and Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater. He collaborated with Kambui Olujimi and the Lone Wolf Recital Corps at MoMA in short film and live performance for the exhibition Projects 107: Lone Wolf Recital Corps. He nationally and internationally premiered the roles of Richard Moss and Travis Douglass in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, an opera by Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon. 

In 2018 Tariq was selected to be a member of the inaugural SUITE/Space Artist residency with the legendary Mabou Mines Theater Company, where he conceived and presented a workshop  version of his theatrical-multimedia song cycle #UNWANTED in their new theater at  Performance Space 122. #UNWANTED premiered to the world at THE SHED in NYC among the inaugural Open Call commissions. Al-Sabir served as music director for the Off-Broadway run of Black Light created by Daniel Alexander Jones at the Public Theater and Greenwich House Theater. In Summer of 2019, Al-Sabir made his LA Philharmonic debut in the cast of Meredith Monk’s ATLAS under the direction of Yuval Sharon. He went on to collaborate with Monk on her new evening-length performance, Indra’s Net. He most recently served as music director for Blood Orange, supporting Harry Styles for all 15 nights of his Love on Tour residency at Madison Square Garden.

Praised as a "mature artist with a voluminous sound," baritone and composer Joel Balzun holds a master’s in vocal performance and literature from Eastman School of Music. At Eastman, he was nominated for the Teaching Assistant Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Balzun previously taught at Fullerton College and is frequently invited to present masterclasses both in schools and at conferences. His students have consistently been admitted to prestigious institutions across the country including Manhattan School of Music, Peabody Institute and University of Southern California.

From Carnegie Hall to the Kennedy Center, Balzun continues to actively perform across the country. As a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, he sang alongside Stephanie Blythe in a concert of Great American Songbook selections and Dawn Upshaw and Sanford Sylvan in Shostakovich's brooding Symphony No. 14. His continually-expanding repertoire includes the title roles of Don Giovanni and Gianni Schicchi, Belcore in L'elisir d'amore, Valentin in Faust, John Brooke in Adamo’s Little Women, among many others.

On the concert stage, Mr. Balzun has been a featured soloist in Copland's Old American Songs, Dvořák’s Te Deum, Fauré's Requiem, Haydn's The Creation, and numerous cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach. His acclaimed performance of Bach's Johannes-Passion with the Rochester Bach Festival was broadcast multiple times across the United States. He has also been successful in numerous competitions, including prizes from Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Lyndon Woodside Oratorio-Solo Competition, Houston Saengerbund Vocal Competition and Orpheus National Vocal Competition.

Balzun is the founding curator of Black Dog Commission, a new commissioning series for art song repertoire which openly discusses life with mental illness, as inspired by his own journey with depression. Balzun completed the young artist programs at Opera Saratoga, Pittsburgh Festival Opera and Tanglewood Music Center. He is currently a teaching assistant at University of Southern California, where he is completing his Doctorate of Musical Arts degree. For more information, including upcoming performances, visit his website.

Emily Cooley is a Philadelphia-based composer of orchestral, chamber, and vocal music whose work has been described as “masterfully written and orchestrated” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) and “a beautiful delicacy” (Vermont Today). Frequently in dialogue with works of contemporary fiction and critical theory, her music questions conventions of narrative, re-imagines emotional expression, and explores the dynamics of power and vulnerability. 

Cooley's orchestral music has been performed by the Nashville, Cincinnati, Minnesota, Louisville, Milwaukee, Berkeley, Sioux City, and Eastern Connecticut symphony orchestras; the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra; and numerous university and conservatory orchestras. Her work Assemble, for multitrack cello, was recently recorded by Ashley Bathgate and will be released on Bathgate's forthcoming album, 8 Track. 

Also active as a concert producer and curator, Cooley is a founding member and the current publicity director for Kettle Corn New Music, which produces a year-round series of new music concerts in New York City, hailed for creating “that ideal listening environment that so many institutions aim for: relaxed, yet allowing for concentration” (New York Times). Cooley is also a frequent collaborator with incarcerated musicians at SCI-Graterford in Pennsylvania, and she held the Community Artist Fellowship at the Curtis Institute of Music in 2017-18.

Born in 1990 in Milwaukee, WI, Cooley holds degrees from Yale University, the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music, and the Curtis Institute of Music. She has been in residence at Yaddo, Copland House, and the Avaloch Farm Music Institute, and a fellow at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, and the Norfolk New Music Workshop. She is a recipient of the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the ASCAP Morton Gould Award. Her mentors include John K. Boyle, Kathryn Alexander, Andrew Norman, Stephen Hartke, Jennifer Higdon, David Ludwig, and Mary Javian.

Rosśa Crean (they/them) jokingly says they “write strange music that they like to listen to when they are by themself, eating raw cookie dough in a dark closet,” but in truth, their music has been referred to as being “funny...and virtuosic” (Classic Concert Nova Scotia), having “exceptionally different, outstanding quality” (Download), and music that “stirs you deep, undertones of humanity” (Access Contemporary Music). Composing and creating music with a focus on the evocative and lyrical, they began their professional career as a Bass-Baritone, specializing in avant-garde and Contemporary Classical music, many of which were their own compositions. While pursuing their Masters at Illinois State University in Composition, they have studied with Stephen Taylor, David Feurzeig, and Nancy Van de Vate. They have trained in several vocal styles, including rock, opera, sean-nós (traditional Gaelic singing), and Indian and Middle Eastern vocal ornamentation.  

As a synesthete, Crean occasionally creates projects that focus on neurological responses between sound, color, and emotional states. Their chromesthesia was a creative tool in the creation of the Edward Gorey partnering art installation entitled "Summerland: A Ghost Story," a collaboration with visual artist Ken Gerleve. It has most recently been featured in their opera, "The Great God Pan," (2018-19 American Prize winner) where the prepared piano was notated with specific color designations for each note of a pitch class Crean saw as representing the other world that threatened the moral existence of humanity in the original story on which it was based. Their one-act opera “The Times Are Nightfall,” a queer sequel to “Don Giovanni,” premiered at Opera America in July 2018. Their most recent work, “The Priestess of Morphine,” a monodrama in song cycle style, was commissioned and premiered by the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago in June 2019.

A prolific collaborator, Crean has received commissions from and worked with numerous artists, including The Mozart Players at Oberlin College, Opera on Tap (Chicago and New York), Loyola University Museum of Art, bassist Gahlord Dewald, The New Consort, and the Lynx Project. Their musical work has also been featured on Skope TV, Much Music, Fuse TV, and Comcast OnDemand.

A staunch advocate for queer and gender equality, Rosśa founded the “Rosśa Crean Presents” performance series in Chicago, Illinois, which showcases emerging POC, LGBTQIA+, and female-identifying composers and performers.

Meg Huskin is a Chicago-based composer, vocalist, and writer whose work embraces melody and the rhythms of language to tell stories that blur the boundary between modern and traditional themes. Recent performances of her work have taken place at the LunART Festival, Madison New Music Festival, OLMC Concert series, and Chicago’s inaugural songSLAM competition, where she earned second place for “Tikka Masala.”

Meg graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music where she majored in music composition, voice performance, and creative writing. As part of her senior thesis, she wrote a libretto based on an original story, Fayaway, and has since been setting it to music. She has studied with composers Gilda Lyons, Laura Schwendinger, Stephen Dembski, and others. She has participated in New Amsterdam Record’s Composing Workshop, the Wintergreen Composer’s Retreat and the From-Page-to-Stage Emerging Composers program. Her choral work “They Tore Down the Church” won the Mullins Sacred Music Prize in 2016.

Meg remains an active singer, having studied with soprano Mimmi Fulmer. Whenever she can, she supports Chicago’s storefront opera community in ensemble roles, or technical support. In her free time, she likes to read novels, watch Netflix, and hang out with her sisters.

Award-winning composer Dr. Benjamin Krause embraces many musical idioms, from the traditional classical repertoire to new music and jazz. His music includes works for orchestra, chamber and jazz ensembles, vocalists and electronics. He was the recipient of a Copland House Residency Award (2018–19), was named the Distinguished Composer of the year in 2018 by the Music Teachers National Association, and has been recognized through other awards and fellowships by the Houston Symphony, Brush Creek Arts Foundation, Presser Foundation and the RED NOTE New Music Festival, among others.  

Dr. Krause, who was based in Texas during his doctoral studies, has performed at venues including New York City's Carnegie Hall and Houston's Zilkha Hall, Museum of Fine Arts, and Menil Collection. In solo performances and in collaborations with many ensembles, he has premiered and performed more than 50 new works and performed the works of major 20th- and 21st-century composers such as George Crumb, Louis Andriessen, John Cage and Pierre Jalbert.

At Hope, he teaches courses in the music department’s core curriculum — including music theory and aural skills — as well as composition, piano and jazz. He also performs and records regularly with fellow Hope faculty members.

Before joining the Hope faculty in 2018 Dr. Krause taught for three years at Valparaiso University, where he founded and directed its New Music Ensemble.

Aristea Mellos is a Greek-Australian composer of contemporary classical music whose compositional voice has been described as “unnerving and awe-inspiring” (Limelight Magazine 2020). Born on the island of Crete, she received her formative musical training in Sydney, where she was an avid chorister and also studied classical piano. 

A winner of ABC Classic’s Gallipoli Songs Competition, Aristea is a recipient of grants from Create NSW (2020, ‘21) the Presser Foundation (2015), the Earle Brown Foundation (2016), the Australia Council of the Arts (2014), the American Australian Association (2013, 2014) and the Eastman School of Music (Professional Development Award 2014). Aristea is a represented artist of The Australian Music Centre.  Her music has been published by the Capliano Review, and Soundboard Magazine, and has been released and broadcast by ABC Classic, NPR, Tall Poppies, Artist Share, Xenofone, WAYO 104.3FM, and Fine Music.

As a composer who focuses on art songs and intimate chamber music, Mellos has worked closely with many notable soloists including pianists: Bernadette Harvey, Stephanie McCallum, Erin Helyard, Ada Arumeh Kim Lowery, Corey Hamm, and Daniel Pesca, vocalists: Jane Sheldon, Helen Zhibing Huang, Anna Dowsley, Michael Lampard, Sophia Burgos and Madeline Cain, and instrumentalists: Elinor Frey, Josinaldo Costa, Zach Sheets, Phil Pierick and Emlyn Johnson.

A fellow of Art Song Lab (VISI 2013), the AYO's Composer School (2010), and the Bowdoin International Music Festival (2009), Aristea holds a Doctorate (DMA) and Master's (MM) in Composition and Piano from The Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester 2017, 2012). In 2010, she graduated with Honors Class I from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (University of Sydney) and she also holds an A.Mus A. in piano performance.

Prizes and scholarships include: the Howard Hanson Ensemble Prize (2015), the Bernard Rogers Memorial Prize (2014), the T.A. Prize for Teaching Excellence (2014), the Belle S. Gitelman Prize (2016 & 2011), the Paul Sacher Scholarship (2010-2012), the Doris Burnett Ford Scholarship (2006-2010), and the Roy Agnew Memorial Fund (2006). Her primary teachers have included Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, David Liptak, Robert Morris, Lisa Bielawa, Nigel Butterley, and Trevor Pearce.

Aristea has a long association with Ossia New Music (having sat on the board in 2011-12 & 2014-15), and is the co-founder of The Ritsos Project, a festival that fosters cross-cultural exchange between the United States and Greece. Recent projects include the joint artistic directorship of The Sydney Bach Society - a recital series in Sydney, Australia that promotes young Australian performers and composers. Upcoming projects include commissions for Australia’s leading keyboard players: Stephanie McCallum and Erin Helyard for a new album to be released in late 2022 by ABC Classic.

Travis Reynolds is a composer and pianist originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, now based in Los Angeles.  Described as “musically intriguing… [and] extremely memorable” (I Care If You Listen), his music has received regular performances around the globe, including Carnegie Hall, Kaufman Music Center, and the Kennedy Center.  

Recent honors and engagements include a new work for the N.E.O Voice Festival in Los Angeles, winner of tenor Gregory Wiest’s call for scores for his song cycle Birds Gone South, and the winner of Arcady’s 2022 Emerging Artist Composition Competition for “[by zero]”.  A selection of his art songs were released on LYNX’s debut album beautiful small things in March, and will be published by New Music Shelf later this year.  

When he is not composing, he works as a collaborative pianist and teacher, and directs the music program at First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles.