David Carlson
David Carlson began composing at the age of 10, studying theory and composition at the Los Angeles Conservatory's High School of the Arts and continued at the California Institute of the Arts, where he composed using the avant-garde techniques of the 1970s. In the early 1980s, he embraced a more personal style of extended tonality, which has become the predominant language of his subsequent music. He has composed three operas: The Midnight Angel, Dreamkeepers and Anna Karenina, several chamber works and numerous orchestral pieces which have been performed by the San Francisco Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the National Symphony and many others. He has been commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer, Chanticleer and several opera companies, including Glimmerglass Opera and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Carlson has received numerous awards and fellowships, including an Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which made possible the first commercial recording of his orchestral music. Anna Karenina, performed by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, is recorded on the Signum Classics label.

Susan Kinsolving
Susan Kinsolving's books of poems are The White Eyelash; Dailies & Rushes, a finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Award; and Among Flowers. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies and periodicals, including The New York Times, Yale Review, The Washington Post, Texas Review, Poetry, The New Republic and The New Criterion. She has taught poetry in the Bennington Writing Seminars, University of Connecticut, Willard-Cybulski Men’s Prison and California Institute of the Arts. This year, she is the poet-in-residence at The Hotchkiss School. As a librettist, she has had works performed with the Marin Symphony, Santa Rosa Symphony and Glimmerglass Opera, and The Baroque Choral Guild in New York, The Netherlands, Italy and California. She has received poetry fellowships from Connecticut, New York, Illinois, France, Italy, Scotland, Switzerland and Wyoming.

Kelly Bixby
Kelly Ann Bixby has been recognized for the "rich, luminous sound" she brings to song, concert and operatic repertoire. Her 2012-2013 season includes Puccini Heroines, a program on behalf of Opera Company of Philadelphia, a performance inside the Barnes Museum with the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra and an artsong series, LyricFest. She recently premiered Lew Spratlan's choral work Hesperus is Phosphorus as a soloist and member of the contemporary chamber ensemble, The Crossing. Bixby sang as a young artist in the CoOPERAtive Program in 2009, has appeared with the Spoleto Festival USA, Princeton Festival Opera and DuPage Opera.

Thomas Bagwell
Thomas Bagwell’s appearances as a collaborative pianist have taken him to such venues as New York's Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Musikverein, the Concertgebouw and numerous concert halls across the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico and Japan. His activities as a coach and teacher have led to invitations to give master classes for colleges and apprentice programs in opera companies. He was an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera for nine seasons, and has served in the same capacity for many seasons at the Washington National Opera, The Santa Fe Opera and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Bagwell has partnered in recital with singers including Marilyn Horne, Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Denyce Graves, Frederica von Stade, Andrea Rost, Kristine Jepson, James Morris, Roberta Peters and Lucine Amara. His recital collaborations with the rising generation of singers include Elaine Alvarez, Eric Cutler, Gregory Turay, Rinat Shaham, Thomas Meglioranza and Jesse Blumberg. In the field of chamber music, Bagwell has been a participant at the Marlboro Music Festival and has performed recitals with violinists Midori, Miranda Cuckson and Scott St. John, with whom he made a critically acclaimed CD of works by Antonin Dvorak on the Marquis Classics label. He has received degrees from the Mannes College of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, and has studied with Warren Jones, Graham Johnson and Edna Golandsky.