Lewis Spratlan
Composer Lewis Spratlan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2000, has recently completed Architect, a chamber opera based on the life and work of the architect Louis Kahn. A Summer’s Day, commissioned by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor, was premiered at Boston's Jordan Hall in May 2009, and his opera Life is a Dream received its world premiere atThe Santa Fe Opera in 2010, under the baton of Leonard Slatkin. This spring has seen performances of Dona Nobis Pacem at Lincoln Center, by the Riverside Choral Society under Patrick Gardner; the premiere and an additional performance of Travels at Rutgers University, led by the composer's son Daniel; and Apollo and Daphne Variations by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.  A BMOP CD presenting this work, together with A Summer's Day and Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, Eliot Gattegno, soloist, will soon be released.  His chamber opera Architect will appear on a Navona CD/DVD in the near future. His music is recorded on the Albany, Gasparo, Koch International Classical, Navona, Opus One and Oxingale labels.

Susan Snively
Susan Snively is the author of four books of poetry: From This Distance (Alice James, 1981), Voices in the House (Alabama Poetry Series, 1988), The Undertow (University of Central Florida, 1998) and Skeptic Traveler (David Robert Books, 2005.) She has taught at Smith, Mount Holyoke and Amherst Colleges, and has received fellowships from the NEA and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation. For 27 years, she directed the Writing Center at Amherst College. A guide at the Emily Dickinson Museum, Snively wrote and narrated the films Seeing New Englandly and My Business is to Sing, produced by Ernest Urvater, in the series Angles of a Landscape. She is writing a novel about Dickinson’s love affair with Judge Otis Phillips Lord.

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.