Kevin Jones (www.kevinjones-soundart.com)
is a composer and writer whose music has been presented throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia and Canada. His dramatic works for radio have been broadcast internationally and he has written and directed more than a dozen music/theater works over the past two decades. He was Composer in residence at the American Institute of Musical Studies, in Graz Austria, was formerly Co-Artistic Director of the Reeves/Jones Performing Group and Music Director for Joy Kellman & Company.
Recent publications include: Moving Target? on working with speech synthesis/recognition technology in sound art, for the British journal, Reflections on Process in Sound, Summer 2014; Co-authored the paper Exploring Expressivity and Emotion with Artificial Voice and Speech Technologies for the British Journal Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology, Fall, 2013.
His fiction has been published in the Minetta Review and the Portable Lower East Side and his performance works were included in the anthology Text-Sound Texts, edited by Richard Kostelanetz. He has received grants and commissions from Meet the Composer, Composer’s Forum, the Harvestworks Foundation, Security Pacific Galleries, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and New American Radio.
He currently resides in upstate New York, which is a very nice place to live.
Photo: James Prez
Emily Gray (www.emilyjanegray.com)
Award-winning mezzo-soprano Emily Gray achieved success at an early age when she was named BBC Radio 2 Choir Girl of the Year 2000, leading to a number of television appearances including Songs of Praise, ITV Calendar, BBC Look North and radio interviews with BBC Radio 2, 3 and Women’s Hour. She went on to record the album ‘Passiontide’ for Naxos. Reaching number 8 in the classical charts, Emily was nominated for two Brit Awards and described as “the thinking man’s Charlotte Church”. This was followed by a UK arena tour to audiences of twenty to thirty thousand.
Emily now regularly sings in and around London both as a soloist and as a member of various vocal groups. She also runs vocal and sight-reading workshops for community choirs in the North London area and for the staff at Google’s London office. She recently recorded another album due for release in 2016 and is currently continuing her training under Linda Hirst at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.
Photo: Rooz Ahmadian
Hannah Wasileski - Video Projection Design
Hannah is an Obie award-winning visual artist and projection designer from Berlin and based in Brooklyn, whose work spans opera, theatre, music and installation. Her recent design work in the US includes Livin’ La Vida Imelda with Ma-Yi Theatre Company, architectural projection design for La Celestina at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (with Manual Cinema and Opera Erratica), The World is Round at BAM, La Prose du Transsiberien at Yale Beinecke, ReAnimator Requiem at Abrons Arts Center, Sarah Ruhl’s Dear Elizabeth at Yale Rep & Berkeley Rep, Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, A Streetcar Named Desire at Yale Drama, The Strange Tales of Liaozhai and My Life in a Nutshell at HERE Arts Center. Her installation and video art have been exhibited in London, Brighton and Glasgow. Upcoming designs include operas at Bard Summerscape, Prototype Festival, and Spoleto Festival USA. Hannah holds an MFA in design from Yale. www.hannahwasileski.com
Copyright 2014, Kevin Jones
Lisa J. Coates (www.lisajcoates.com)
A versatile singer described as beautifully engaging with an innate sense of the stage, Yorkshire-born mezzo-soprano Lisa J Coates discovered a love of singing from an early age, both as a chorister and soloist. She is Co-Director of Timeline Songs with award -winning composer Stef Conner presenting heritage vocal events, which superimpose elements of music and history; and is currently engaged in researching the application and impact of new media in contemporary performance practices. She was previously a member of the Northern Sinfonia and the 24, specialising in new and unusual music ranging over a thousand years.
She has worked with composers such as Veljo Tormis, Gavin Bryars, Thomas Simaku and Roger Marsh and collaborated with groups such as the Chimera Ensemble, Juice, Blackhair, members of Red Byrd and Electric Pheonix, the Eboracum Quartet and the Serbian Arts council.
Lisa has appeared live on the BBC One Show and on Russian Channel 1 News, and in 2013 was a finalist in the Llangollen International Eisteddfod and has performed in a variety of operatic roles both classical and contemporary.
Her education includes Performance and music studies at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Jazz and classical voice studies in Montreal, Quebec, Vocal performance studies with Dr John Potter, University of York, and independent performance studies in Barcelona.
Joy Kellman - Choreographer
Joy Kellman’s choreography has been presented in Sweden, Germany, Spain, and France, across the US and in NYC at venues such as The Joyce Theater, Central Park’s SummerStage, The 92ndStreet Y Harkness Dance Project, Dance Theater Workshop and WAX. She has received choreography grants/commissions from Harkness Foundation for Dance, Meet the Composer, The Yard, DTW’s First Light Project, and Massachusetts Arts and Humanities Foundation, among others and from companies that include The Boston Ballet and Seattle’s d9 Dance Collective. Besides her work for the theater she has created pieces for alternate spaces such as galleries, stairwells, ferry transports and arboretums. Site-specific commissions include works for The Making Waves Festival and Dances for Wave Hill, NY, The River Arts Festival, MA and The Water Festival, Sweden. Currently, she is developing an intergenerational project with independent film director Frank Laurents. Originally from Chicago, Joy Kellman attended California Institute of the Arts where she received her Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Fine Arts. As a performer, she has had the privilege of working with distinguished dance artists, among them, Bella Lewitzky, Arthur Aviles, Lynda Davis, Marta Renzi and Daniel Nagrin. She has been a faculty member/guest artist at numerous universities, festivals, and studios in the US and abroad and has been on faculty at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts since 1996.
Bryony Purdue - Company Manager
Bryony has loved being on stage since she was young and also had aspirations to direct and produce. It is this love of all aspects of theatre and music that lead her to being asked to become Company Manager for the East-West Arts Initiative in their recent production of Madama Butterfly at Cadogan Hall. She excelled in this role with an experienced team and contributed greatly to the social media, company management, covering a lead role and surtitles with his particular venture. Having studied as an operatic Mezzo-Soprano alongside Emily Gray and Lisa J. Coates, she is a perfect fit to the team, aiming bring ‘Your Call…’ to a wider and ever-growing audience.