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Christopher Cerrone (composer/librettist) (b. 1984, Huntington, NY) is a Brooklyn-based
composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal, and electronic music. A founding
member and co-artistic director of the “enterprising ensemble” Red Light
New Music (New York Times), and one of the “five talented guys” (The New
Yorker) of the Sleeping Giant composers collective, Cerrone’s delicate,
intricate works often evoke the many writers who have inspired him: Italo
Calvino, Louise Glück, Kurt Vonnegut, Jorge Luis Borges.
Cerrone’s opera, Invisible Cities, "a series of arresting musical moments ...
the most satisfying piece on the program" (The New Haven Advocate), was
performed in May 2009 by New York City Opera as part of its annual VOX
Contemporary American Opera Lab (Cerrone is the youngest composer to
receive this honor). That same season, Invisible Cities was performed at the
Virginia Arts Festival under the direction of Rhoda Levine, where Cerrone was a fellow at the John
Duffy Composers Institute. In June 2009, Invisible Cities was also performed at the first annual Yale
Institute for Music Theatre, directed by Robin Guarino. Invisible Cities receives its fully staged
premiere in New York this season with Red Light New Music, directed by Luisa Proske.
Other current projects include a New York Youth Symphony-commissioned violin concerto, to be
performed by Hahn-Bin with the NYYS at Carnegie Hall; a new one-act opera for American Lyric
Theatre (where Cerrone is currently a composer-in-residence), to be premiered at New York City’s
Symphony Space; and a new trombone quartet for the New York-based ensemble Guidonian
Hand.
Cerrone’s concert works have been performed in the US, Europe, and Asia, by the Orchestre
National de Lorraine (Metz, France), Flexible Music (New York), the New Music Institute at the
Hochschule für Musik, Berlin, the Yale Philharmonia, the Manhattan Composers' Orchestra (New
York), the New Music Collective (Charleston, SC,) the Grenzenlos Ensemble (New
York/Berlin/Melbourne/Shanghai), the Zwo Concert series (Berlin), and throughout New York City,
Europe and at the Kennedy Center with Red Light New Music.
Cerrone has won awards and grants including ASCAP’s 2010 Morton Gould Young Composer
Award, a CAP Grant (2009) and CAP Recording Grant (2010) from the American Music Center,
and the Yale School of Music’s Ezra Laderman Prize.
Cerrone is currently pursuing his doctorate at the Yale School of Music, where he studies with
David Lang, Christopher Theofanidis, Martin Bresnick, Ezra Laderman, and Ingram Marshall. He
has worked with composers including Pierre Boulez, Salvatore Sciarrino, Charles Wuorinen, Mark
Adamo, Richard Danielpour, and Julia Wolfe, and received his undergraduate degree in 2007 from
the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Nils Vigeland and Reiko Fueting.
An active performer and lecturer, Christopher Cerrone has appeared as a guest musician with
Alarm Will Sound, TACTUS, and the Manhattan School Percussion Ensemble. He has taught
music theory at the Manhattan School of Music, lectured on contemporary music at Columbia
University and the Berlin University of the Arts, and has taught electronic music and composition at
Yale College. Additional information can be found at www.christophercerrone.com.
 Louisa Proske (director) is a theatre director from Berlin, Germany. Directing credits include: international tour of Macbeth through five European countries to mostly sold-out houses (Cambridge European Tour), 4.48 Psychosis, The Importance Of Being Earnest, No Exit, The Vagina Monologues (all Apollonysus Theatre, York, UK), A Servant To Two Masters (Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Daily Mail Pick Best of the Day), The Barber Shop (Cambridge Footlights), The Venetian Twins (Dryden Theatre Cambridge, UK), Bench Seat, Merge, Lurker, Binnorie, Borrowed Parts, Drinks and Desire, Wonders of the Invisible World Revealed, Acorn, The Dead at the Door, Rain, and Superhero (all part of Mason Gross Theatre Company short play festival), tour of company-devised piece (Lucy’s Dream) through schools and orphanages in India and Nepal, One Day It Came, Thriftcrawl (Yale School of Drama). Louisa taught Acting Shakespeare at the New York City Shakespeare Lab. She has assistant directed some of the most prominent German and American opera and theatre directors, including Willy Decker, Harry Kupfer, and Robert Woodruff.
Louisa received her BA in English Literature from Cambridge University, UK, and a second BA in Philosophy and Politics from York University, UK. She just completed her first year of graduate study for an MFA in Theatre Directing at the Yale School of Drama.
 Ted Hearne (music director) is an active composer, conductor, and performer of new music. He
is Resident Conductor of Red Light New Music, and Artistic Director
of Yes is a World, a nonprofit organization working to promote
peace and social change through musical diversity and the
collaboration of young artists. Ted was music director for the
premiere of David Lang’s opera Anatomy Theatre in 2005
(performed by ICE), and the premiere of Michael Gordon's Lightning
at our Feet as part of the 2008 Next Wave Festival at BAM. He
conducted the world premiere of Bryan Senti's ballet From the
Margins, This Unmentioned at the Brooklyn Lyceum, and led the
American premiere of Constantine Koukias's Prayer Bells with Opera
IHOS in Chicago in October 2010. Also a singer, Ted has premiered
works by Jenny Johnson, Matt Marks and Jacob Cooper.
Ted's piece Katrina Ballads is the recipient of the 2009 Gaudeamus
Prize. This hour-long dramatic song cycle sets to music entirely
primary-source texts from the week following Hurricane Katrina, and
has been heard at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, at the New York City
Opera as part of their festival VOX 2009: Showcasing American Composers, and most recently at
New York City’s (le) Poisson Rouge in a production featuring new work from renowned filmmaker
Bill Morrison.
Ted Hearne's music has been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, the Calder Quartet, The
Knights, and New York City Opera; and has been heard at the MATA Festival, Bang on a Can
Marathon, and Carlsbad Music Festival; and commissioned by Chicago's Third Coast Percussion,
San Francisco's Volti Choral Arts Laboratory, Charleston's New Music Collective, Newspeak,
Huntsville Symphony, Albany Symphony and Ensemble ACJW. Ted is a recipient of the Charles
Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an ASCAP Foundation Morton
Gould Young Composer Award, and a Meet the Composer Commissioning Grant. Upcoming
commissions include a 20-minute work for the Juilliard-based Toomai Quintet, a 60-minute work
for New York's DITHER Electric Guitar Quartet, and a 20-minute work for the Yale Glee Club and
Yale Symphony Orchestra, to be premiered in April 2011 at Carnegie Hall. More information can be
found at www.tedhearne.com.
 Red Light New Music (orchestra/production team) is a New York-based ensemble, concert
series, and composers collective dedicated to presenting exciting and original contemporary music
from musicians around the world. We perform, present, and compose works that are both avantgarde
and visceral, challenging and edifying – we
strive to present works which both expand and
enrich what the word music means.
Inspired by generations of American composers –
from Ives to Copland to Cage to Reich – who knew
that their best performances were ones that they
made, we began in 2005 presenting concerts of
works by composers who we believed in – Gérard
Grisey, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Beat Furrer,
as well as our own works. Our earliest concerts
were in churches and schools – from there we set
out and expanded to art spaces, galleries,
universities, and cultural centers all over the world, from the Kennedy Center in Washington DC to
The Stone, Galapagos Art Space, and the Italian Academy at Columbia University in New York to
the Hochschule für Music "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin; we have been lucky enough to share our music
with audiences from all over.
Currently in our sixth season, we have been has featured weeklong residencies at the University of California, San
Diego and the Usinesonore Festival in Malleray-Belivard, Switzerland, and performances in New
York City at Symphony Space, The Tank, and The Stone. More information can be found at
www.redlightnewmusic.org
 Christiana Little (dramaturg) is a performer, writer and
director in New York City. A graduate of the Manhattan School of
Music, Christiana is equally comfortable singing operatic and
musical theatre repertoire as she is modern music and cabaret.
She is a frequent guest artist with the Red Light New Music
ensemble, and has premiered groundbreaking works by up-andcoming
composers at venues ranging from Merkin Hall to the
Stone, including two one-woman musical dramas written
especially for her versatile “beautiful soprano” voice, which can
also take on a “cool, bluesy sound.” (The Austin Chronicle). She
recently concluded a regional tour with the off-Broadway musical
Chuckleball. She has been praised as “skillful at comedy...with
(truly) funny faces and slapstick, over-the-top gestures” (DUMBO
Review). Other favorite past roles include: Cinderella in Into the
Woods, Lucy Lockit in The Beggar’s Opera, Yum-Yum in The
Mikado. Christiana is an accomplished voice-over artist (both commercial and industrial), having
worked for Apple Computers, the State of Texas General Land Office and Multi-Media Group, Inc.
Christiana is the director of opera programming and marketing for Emerging Pictures, an all-digital
film distribution company in midtown Manhattan. In this capacity, Christiana curates a season of
operas from La Scala, the Royal Opera House and Gran Teatre del Liceu to broadcast into movie
theatres worldwide. Her program notes and synopses are read by thousands of Opera in Cinema
patrons each week. She has written a guide book to her alma mater, Southwestern University,
which was published by College Prowler Press and available at Barnes and Noble. She is currently
writing the screenplay for an as-of-yet untitled horror film. She studied creative writing at Columbia
University and Southwestern University.
Christiana recently made her New York directorial debut with her production of Into the Woods at
the Bridge Theatre in Manhattan, starring LA Opera Domingo-Thornton Young Artist, Matthew W.
Anchel. She has also directed countless plays for children (and written several) for the Kids Acting
Studio in Austin, Texas, her hometown. She teaches voice and performance technique out of her
home studio in Astoria. More information about Christiana can be found at www.christianalittle.com
Laura Grey (video projections) is an artist and graphic designer who recently completed her
MFA at the Yale University School of Art. Her work has been shown at the Norberg Festival,
Sweden, Yale School of Art Green Gallery, the Yale University Art Gallery Evening Performance
Series (2009 and 2010), Area Gallery (Dartmouth College), and 1926 Gallery (Chicago, IL). In March
2010, she co-organized and curated Present Continuous, an evening of performance and video
work held at the Yale University Art Gallery. She has designed for the Yale University Art Gallery,
the Yale Sustainable Food Project, and Dartmouth College’s Hopkins Center for the Performing
Arts among other clients. She studied painting and art history as an undergraduate at Dartmouth
College (BA 2002), and also received a MALS from Dartmouth College (2007). More information
can be found at www.tearsandbubbles.com.
 Ekmeles (vocal ensemble) is a vocal ensemble dedicated to the performance of new and rarely-heard works, and gems of the historical avant garde. New York is home to a vibrant instrumental New Music scene, with a relative paucity of vocal music. Ekmeles was founded to fill the gap by presenting new a cappella repertoire for solo voices, and by collaborating with these instrumental ensembles. Director Jeffrey Gavett brings a hybrid vision to the group: he is an accomplished ensemble singer and performer of new works, and holds degrees from Westminster Choir College and Manhattan School of Music's Contemporary Performance Program. He has assembled a virtuoso group of colleagues who bring their own diverse backgrounds to bear on the unique challenges of this essential and neglected repertoire.
Jeffrey Gavett (choir director) brings a hybrid vision to the group: he is an accomplished ensemble singer and performer of new works, and holds degrees from Westminster Choir College and Manhattan School of Music's Contemporary Performance Program. He has assembled a virtuoso group of colleagues who bring their own diverse backgrounds to bear on the unique challenges of this essential and neglected repertoire.
Marte Johanne Ekhougen (set designer) graduated in 2010 from Tisch School of the Arts in New York. She has designed sets, puppets and costumes for several
productions in recent years, including A Midsummer Nights Dream (dir. James Rutherford, NYC 2011), Home Sweet Home (Christopher Berdal, NYC 2010), Messels Memorandum (Claire De Wangen, Oslo, 2010), Popdalen (Cathrine Bjorndalen, Oslo 2010), Wonder (Rachel Chavkin, New York, 2010), Miss Julie (Henning Hegland, New York 2009) and Strindberg/Strindberg (Mark Wing-Davey and Jim Calder, New York 2008), as well as working on short films, art installations, comics and independent projects. Marte received her BA in fine arts at 2004 from the Norwegian Theater Academy in Fredrikstad, and
worked for two years on a fellowship from the Norwegian Arts Council.
www.superhelga.com
Mark Nagle (costume designer) is entering his 2nd second year at the Yale School of Drama Design Department. He was just awarded the Donald M. Oenslager Award for Stage Design. Upcoming: Jib, YSD. Regional: Twelfth Night, Peter and the Pirate, Gross Indecencies; Assistant designer: Compulsion, Eclipsed; Yale Rep. Assistant Costume Designer for 2 seasons at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.
Bruce Steinberg’s (lighting designer) designs have been seen in venues ranging from a Soho laundromat to Italian concert halls — and even an occasional theatre. Recent work includes: Les Mamelles de Tiresias (Emma Griffin, The Juilliard School), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (Daniel Fish, University of Rochester), wonder (Rachel Chavkin, NYU TSOA Graduate Acting Department), Art of Memory (Tanya Calamoneri at 3LD), The Screens (Kathryn Hamilton, Riverside Theatre), and Blue Before Morning (Gia Forakis, the D-R-2). He received his MFA from New York University's TSOA, Department of Design for Stage and Film. Bruce was also a founding board member of Salem Art Works, a new art colony and sculpture park, where he lit Mark di Suvero's For Euler (1997) and Double Tetrahedron (2004) for July 4th 2005 and 2006. Other visual art installations include Keren Cytter's Mysterious Serious (2009) at X-Initiative. As terraNOVA Collective's Resident Lighting Designer, Bruce has collaborated on their soloNOVA festival from 2007 thru 2009 and was awarded the New York Innovative Theater's Outstanding Lighting Design Award for his work on Kate McGovern's Blue Before Morning.
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