Huang Ruo (Composer, Conductor) has been lauded by The New York Times for having “a distinctive style.” His vibrant and inventive musical voice draws equal inspiration from Chinese ancient and folk music, Western avant-garde, experimental, noise, natural and processed sound, rock, and jazz to create a seamless, organic integration using a compositional technique he calls “Dimensionalism.” Huang Ruo’s diverse compositional works span from orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater, and dance, to cross-genre, sound installation, architectural installation, multimedia, experimental improvisation, folk rock, and film. His music has been premiered and performed by the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, National Polish Radio Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Asko/Schoenberg, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, and conductors such as Wolfgang Sawallisch, Marin Alsop, Andrew Davis, Michael Tilson Thomas, and James Conlon. His opera An American Soldier (with libretto by David Henry Hwang) received its world premiere at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in June 2018, and was named one of the best classical music events of 2018 by The New York Times. Huang Ruo is a composition faculty at the Mannes School of Music in NY, and is the artistic director and conductor of Ensemble FIRE. He was selected as a Young Leader Fellow by the National Committee on United States–China Relations in 2006. Huang Ruo’s music is published by Ricordi.
 
Basil Twist (Director, Designer) is a third-generation puppeteer. He is the sole American to graduate from the École Supérieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mezieres, France. Twist’s showmanship was spotlighted in New York by The Jim Henson International Festival of Puppetry with his award winning The Araneidae Show. This recognition coupled with the ground-breaking and multiple award-winning Symphonie Fantastique, Twist was revealed as a singular artist of unlimited imagination. Subsequently Twist has created over 20 original full-length works for the stage. Highlights include Petrushka, The Rite of Spring (Lincoln Center), Dogugaeshi (Barbican, Paris, Charleveille-Mezieres), Behind the Lid (New York) and Arias with a Twist (Paris, Stockholm). He was set-designer and co-director for A Streetcar named Desire (La Comédie Française). Other operas he has directed and designed include Respighi’s La bella dormente nel bosco (Lincoln Center Festival, Spoleto) and Hansel and Gretel (Houston, Atlanta, Michigan Opera). Ballet collaborations with Christopher Wheeldon include Cinderella, (Dutch National and San Francisco Ballet), The Winter’s Tale (Royal Ballet) and The Nutcracker (Joffrey). His honors include Obie, Henry Hewes and Doris Duke Performing awards, multiple UNIMA and Bessie Awards, a Guggenheim fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship and The Rome Prize. He directs the Dream Music Puppetry Program at HERE in New York City.
 
The Choir of Trinity Wall Street
Peerless interpreters of both early and new music, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street has redefined the realm of 21st-century vocal music, breaking new ground with artistry described as “blazing with vigour…a choir from heaven” (The Times, London). This premier ensemble, under the direction of Julian Wachner, can be heard live, online, and in recordings in performances described as “thrilling” (The New Yorker), “musically top-notch” (The Wall Street Journal), and “simply superb” (The New York Times).

In addition to leading daily liturgical music at Trinity Church, over the past 2 years the choir has also produced many video performances highlighting Anglican repertoire. These recordings were featured weekly on Trinity’s Comfort at One series and included a partnership with Amplify Female Composers. A typical season for the choir includes performing in Bach One, Compline by Candlelight, and many other concerts and festivals throughout the year, often with NOVUS NY, the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, and the Trinity Youth Chorus. The choir anchors Trinity’s critically acclaimed performances of Handel’s Messiah, which The New York Times declares to be “the best ‘Messiah’ in New York.”

The choir has toured extensively throughout the United States, making appearances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Shed at Hudson Yards, the Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, BAM Next Wave Festival, and the PROTOTYPE Festival, among others. Increasingly in-demand internationally, the choir has also performed in recent seasons at Montreal’s Salle Bourgie, Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Norway’s Stavanger Cathedral, and London’s Barbican Theatre. Performance partners have included Bang on a Can All-Stars, the New York Philharmonic, and the Rolling Stones. The choir was featured in the 150 Psalms Project, performing at the Utrecht Early Music Festival and Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival.

In addition to the Grammy Award-nominated recordings Luna Pearl Woolf: Fire and Flood and Handel’s Israel in Egypt, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street has released recordings on Naxos, Musica Omnia, Pentatone, VIA Recordings, ARSIS, Avie Records, Acis, Broadway Records, Cantaloupe Music, Decca Gold, and Philip Glass’s Orange Mountain Music, which released Trinity’s monumental performance of Glass’s Symphony No. 5. Prominently evidenced by this discography is Trinity’s long-term commitment to new music, which has led to many collaborations with living composers including Ellen Reid, Du Yun, Trevor Weston, Paola Prestini, Luna Pearl Woolf, Ralf Gawlick, Elena Ruehr, and Julia Wolfe, whose 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning and Grammy Award-nominated work Anthracite Fields was recorded with the choir. Along with NOVUS NY and conducted by Wachner, the choir also collaborated on and recorded two Pulitzer Prize-winning operas: Du Yun’s Angel’s Bone and Ellen Reid’s p r i s m

Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) is one of the foremost creators and producers of new opera-theatre and music theatre, with a fierce commitment to leading the industry into the future, cultivating a new generation of talent, and telling the stories of our time. 

Founded by “contemporary opera mastermind” (LA Times) Beth Morrison, who was honored as one of Musical America’s Artists of the Year/Agents of Change in 2020, BMP has grown into “a driving force behind America’s thriving opera scene” (Financial Times), with Opera News declaring that the company, “more than any other… has helped propel the art form into the twenty-first century.” 

Operating across the US and internationally, with offices in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, BMP’s unique model offers living composers the support, guidance, and freedom to experiment, allowing them to create singularly innovative and impactful projects. Since forming in 2006, the company has commissioned, developed, produced and toured over 50 works in 14 countries around the world, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning chamber operas Angel’s Bone and p r i s m. 
 

In 2013, BMP co-founded the PROTOTYPE Festival with HERE Arts Center, which has been called “utterly essential” (The New York Times), “indispensable” (The New Yorker), and “one of the world’s top festivals of contemporary opera and theater” (Associated Press).

St. Ann’s Warehouse plays a vital role on the global cultural landscape as an American artistic home for international companies of distinction, American avant-garde masters and talented emerging artists ready to work on a grand scale. St. Ann’s signature flexible, open space allows artists to stretch, both literally and imaginatively, enabling them to approach work with unfettered creativity, knowing that the theater can be adapted in multiple configurations to suit their needs.
 
In the heart of Brooklyn Bridge Park, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Marvel Architects and Charcoalblue theater consultants have designed a spectacular waterfront theater that opened in October 2015. The new Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Theater offers St. Ann’s signature versatility and grandeur on an amplified scale while respecting the walls of an original 1860’s Tobacco Warehouse. The building complex includes the Studio for smaller-scale events and community uses, a welcoming foyer/exhibit space, and The Max Family Garden, designed by landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and open to Brooklyn Bridge Park visitors during Park hours.

Over four decades of consistently acclaimed landmark productions that found their American heart and home at St. Ann’s include Lou Reed’s and John Cale’s Songs for ‘Drella; Marianne Faithfull’s Breaking Away and Seven Deadly Sins; Artistic Director Susan Feldman’s Band in Berlin; Charlie Kaufman and the Coen Brothers’ Theater of the New Ear; The Royal Court and TR Warszawa productions of Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis; The Globe Theatre of London’s Measure for Measure with Mark Rylance; Druid Company’s The Walworth Farce, The New Electric Ballroom and Penelope by Enda Walsh and the Landmark / Galway International Arts Festival Productions of Walsh’s Misterman, featuring Cillian Murphy, Ballyturk and Arlington; Lou Reed’s Berlin; the National Theater of Scotland’s Black Watch and Let the Right One In; Kneehigh Theatre’s Brief Encounter, 946 and Tristan & Yseult; Yael Farber’s Mies Julie; Dmitry Krymov Lab’s Opus No. 7; the Donmar Warehouse all-female Shakespeare Trilogy: Julius Caesar, Henry IV, The Tempest; Kate Tempest’s Brand New Ancients; Tricycle Theatre’s Red Velvet, the Young Vic production of  A Streetcar Named Desire with Gillian Anderson; Mark Rylance’s Nice Fish, the National Theatre’s People, Places & Things, and the World Premiere of the complete Taylor Mac’s A 24 Decade History of Popular Music, including the one-time only 24-hour marathon in 2016. St. Ann’s has championed such artists as The Wooster Group, Mabou Mines, Jeff Buckley, Cynthia Hopkins, Daniel Kitson, Emma Rice and Kneehigh, Hal Willner’s multi-artist tribute concerts, and an historic David Bowie concert in 2002. St. Ann’s recently produced an acclaimed, sold-out run of a reimagined production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! directed by Daniel Fish, in association with the Bard Fisher Center and co-producer Eva Price, which went on to win the 2019 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical on Broadway;  the Gate Theatre Dublin’s acclaimed Hamlet, directed by Yael Farber,  with a knockout performance by Academy Award nominee Ruth Negga; and an astonishing play about refugees, The Jungle, a Good Chance Theatre co-production with London’s  National Theatre and The Young Vic. During the COVID-19 pandemic, St. Ann’s was part of a State Task Force for Flexible Spaces, advising on guidelines for reopening performing arts spaces with open floor plans and without fixed seating.

PROTOTYPE – OPERA | THEATRE | NOW is a co-production of Beth Morrison Projects and HERE. The annual festival produces and presents a wide spectrum of works, from intimate black-box experiences to larger chamber opera productions. The festival has been hailed as “essential to the evolution of American opera” by The New Yorker, and as “one of the world’s top festivals of contemporary opera and theater” by The Associated Press. PROTOTYPE gives voice to a diverse group of composers, librettists, performers and musicians across all genres, backgrounds, and cultures. The festival has become a global reference of artistic excellence in the field of opera and music-theatre.

St. Ann’s Warehouse is supported by Lead Season Sponsor Bloomberg Philanthropies, Howard Gilman Foundation, American Express, Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, J.L. Greene Arts Access Fund in The New York Community Trust, The JKW Foundation, Booth Ferris Foundation, The NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund in The New York Community Trust, The Shubert Foundation, The Tow Foundation, SHS Foundation, Andrew J. Martin-Weber, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts  and the Small Business Administration’s Shuttered Venue Operators Grant  and Paycheck Protection Programs, along with many generous individuals and foundations. 
 
St. Ann’s is deeply grateful for Senator Charles E. Schumer’s visionary leadership of the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program.
 
Book of Mountains & Seas was commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Toronto Soundstreams, Koorbiennale, Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech, Hong Kong New Vision Festival, and Linda & Stuart Nelson. Additional commissioning support provided by the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts.
?
Book of Mountains & Seas is made possible by the Jim Henson Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.