Mark Campbell is a Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning librettist and lyricist whose works are among the most successful in the contemporary opera canon. Campbell has written 40 opera librettos, lyrics for seven musicals and text for six song cycles and four oratorios. His works include Silent Night, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, The Shining, Elizabeth Cree, The Manchurian Candidate, As One, A Year to the Day, Later the Same Evening, Unruly Sun, Songs from an Unmade Bed and many more. Campbell mentors future librettists and composers in such programs as the American Opera Project and American Lyric Theater. In 2020, he created and funded the Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, the first award for opera librettists in the history of the art form, and in 2022 he co-created the True Voice Award to help with the training of transgender singers, administered by Washington National Opera. Andrea Davis Pinkney is the acclaimed librettist for The Snowy Day with composer Joel Thompson, a work based on the beloved bestselling classic by Ezra Jack Keats. The opera has been hailed by the New York Times for its ability to “change perceptions about Black identity and attract new audiences to opera.” Additionally, Pinkney is a New York Timesbestselling and award-winning author of numerous books. She is a four-time NAACP Image Award nominee and has been inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame. She and her work are the subject of the Emmy-nominated film Andrea Davis Pickney: National Author Engagement. Celebrated as an author, editor, and publisher, Pickney is the recipient of the Regina Medal (Catholic Library Association), the Coretta Scott King Award, and the Kerlan Award (University of Minnesota) for her singular body of work and distinguished contribution to the field of literature. Priti Gandhi was named Artistic Director of Oregon’s Portland Opera in 2021 after serving as Chief Artistic Officer of the Minnesota Opera and artistic administrator of the San Diego Opera. Chief among her accomplishments was serving as a member of the team that helped save San Diego Opera from near closure in 2014. Gandhi has had a 20-year international opera career, appearing with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Seattle Opera, San Diego Opera Théatre du Châtelet, the Royal Opera House, Prague’s Estates Theatre, and the New York City and San Francisco Operas. An alumna of young artist programs at Cleveland Opera and San Diego Opera, Gandhi is also a published journalist and speaker. Doug Hooker was recently appointed CEO of the Midtown Connector Park project, an initiative to build a public park over a portion of the connector highway in Atlanta. Throughout his career Hooker has worked for both public and private sector organizations. Though he “retired” last year after leading the Atlanta Regional Commission for many years, he serves on the boards of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, the Latin American Association, the Clayton State University Foundation, and the St. Vincent de Paul Society. He is a Special Fellow of the Urban Studies Institute of Georgia State University, where he teaches urban and regional governance. With a lifelong love of music, Hooker has served on boards of the Fox Theatre, the Trey Clegg Singers, the Aurora Theatre, the Atlanta Music Project, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and The Atlanta Opera. He has composed several works for orchestra, choir, and solo voice. His most recent premieres were Pandemic Elegy, a work for string quartet, in February 2023; and Without Regard to Sex, Race, or Color,composed for orchestra and premiered in February 2022. Tinashe Kajese-Bolden is an award-winning director, actor, and educator who was named the BOLD Women’s Leadership Circle Artistic Director Fellow for Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre and is a Princess Grace 2019 Award winner for directing. She received a Map Fund Award to develop All Smiles, a work that centers on the experience of children on the autism spectrum, for Theater for the Very Young. Her directing credits include Native Gardens (Karen Zacarias) at Virginia Center Stage; Nick’s Flamingo Grill (Phillip DePoy), a world premiere at the Alliance Theater; Eclipsed (Danai Gurira) at Synchronicity Theater; and Ghost (Idris Goodwin) at the Alliance Theatre. As an actor, Kajese-Bolden has worked on and off Broadway, at regional theaters, and on television and film. She appeared in the NAACP Image Award winning mini-series The Bobby Brown Story, with Oprah Winfrey in the HBO film The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and in numerous television roles including Cherish the Day, Valor, The Inspectors, Outcast, Powers, Greenleaf, Cold Case and others. Tazewell Thompson is an internationally acclaimed director for opera and theater, an award-winning playwright, librettist, teacher, and actor. His opera Blue with composer Jeanine Tesori won the 2020 Music Critics Association of North America Award for Best New Opera. The New York Times included Blue as Best in Classical Music for 2019. He has more than 150 directing credits, including 30 world and American premieres, in opera houses and theaters across the USA, France, Spain, Italy, Africa, Japan, and Canada. His award-winning play Constant Star has had 16 national productions, garnering nine Barrymore Awards, five NAACP Image Awards, and three Carbonell Awards. His production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, broadcast Live from Lincoln Center, received Emmy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Production - Classical Music. A select list of operas directed includes Dialogues of the Carmelites, Death in Venice, Xerxes, Carmen, Don Giovanni, The Tender Land, Street Scene, Pearl Fishers, Norma, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Patience, and Freedom Ride. He is director of Opera Studies at Manhattan School of Music.
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