OSSM Faculty

Soprano Amy Burton has enjoyed a long and varied career in opera, concert, oratorio, chamber music, and cabaret. She has sung with the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, at the White House, and with major opera companies, orchestras, and chamber music festivals throughout the US, Europe, Ireland, the UK, Japan, and Israel. A noted performer of Mozart, Handel, Poulenc, and 20th and 21st-century music, she is equally passionate about popular song of the 1920s and ’30s and appears frequently in this repertoire with her husband, composer-pianist John Musto. 

As a leading soprano for the New York City Opera for twelve seasons, Ms. Burton was the recipient of NYCO’s Christopher Keene Award, Kolosvar Award, and the Diva Award. She received Opera America’s first-ever Artist Advocate Award, and was a top prizewinner from the Gerda Lissner, George London, and Sullivan Foundation competitions, as well as the Marian Anderson International Vocal Competition. She has recorded for Albany Records, Angel/EMI, Bridge, CRI, Harbinger, Naxos, Opera America, and SoundMirror. Her new recording, Rendez-vous, with John Musto at the keyboard, will be released in 2027.

Ms. Burton’s residencies and master classes have included the Chautauqua Institution, CCM, the New England Conservatory, Ravinia Steans Institute, Hartt College, Vassar College, University of Calgary, Ithaca College, Glimmerglass Festival, SongFest, Parsons Paris, the Classical Singer Convention, Hunter College, SUNY Fredonia, and Opera Saratoga, where she also played Mrs. Higgins in My Fair Lady. 

A sought-after teacher, Burton is on the voice faculty at Juilliard, the Mannes School of Music, the CUNY Graduate Center Doctoral program, and the summer program Perform Opera in Italy. She has previously taught French vocal literature at Manhattan School of Music and maintains a private voice studio in New York City.

Salvatore Champagne's singing career began in 1988 when he was chosen to be the tenor soloist in a European tour of Leonard Bernstein's Songfest conducted by the composer. Immediately thereafter, he joined the ensemble of the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, Germany, appearing in a wide range of leading tenor roles. For the next ten years he was engaged as guest artist in many of Europe’s finest opera houses and concert halls.

He is a much-sought-after voice instructor and appears throughout the country giving master classes and seminars. Champagne’s students have won many prestigious competitions, including the Metropolitan Opera Council auditions, and appear regularly with premiere performing organizations throughout the United States and abroad.

Juno nominated soprano Martha Guth regularly presents concerts and recitals at major venues which include Wigmore Hall, Lincoln Center, The National Cathedral, Ravinia, and both Oxford Song and Leeds Lieder. Her interpretations have been called “Magical” (Opera Now); “Truly amazing” (Montreal Gazette) and “Thrilling” (Globe and Mail), and her concerts have been recorded and broadcast by the CBC Radio/Radio Canada, the BBC and the WDR in Germany.   Long time recital partners include Graham Johnson, Erika Switzer and Javier Arrebola.

As a young artist Martha won first prize at both the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition and the Concours Musical International de Montréal, launching a performance career specializing in concert and song repertoire. Her deep interest in art song led her to co-found Sparks & Wiry Cries with pianist Erika Switzer, a non-profit dedicated to art song spanning publication, live performance, and commission of new works. Her discography includes Summer Night, a Juno nominated disc of songs by Healy Willan on Centrediscs; Das Ewig Weibliche a solo disc of Schubert songs with Penelope Crawford on fortepiano; Roberto Sierra’s Beyond the Silence of Sorrow with the Orquesta Sinfonica de Puerto Rico for Naxos (nominated for a 2016 Latin GRAMMY); John Fitz-Roger’s Magna Mysteria for the Innova label; Go by Contraries, songs of Andrew Staniland with Baritone Tyler Duncan and Pianist Erika Switzer released on Centre Discs.

Martha is Associate Professor of Voice at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, has been Co-Artistic Director of SongFest and Director of its Composer/Mentorship program. She spent summers on faculty at the Vocal Academy for The Collaborative Piano Institute, and at Opera Seme in Arezzo, Italy and presented lectures, masterclasses and recitals at dozens of major universities throughout North America specializing in song literature spanning the 19th Century to today, and is a regular adjudicator for National Voice Competitions.

American mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, has graced nearly all the major world opera house stages and concert halls during her four-decades-long career. With numerous recordings, she has been featured on national public television everywhere from “Great Performances” to “Sesame Street”. A champion of new works, Ms. Graves has premiered operas, song cycles, and won competitions and countless awards. Her signature opera roles include Carmen, Dalila and the more contemporary Margaret Garner and The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson.

Denyce Graves is an educator and on faculty at The Juilliard School and Peabody Conservatory. The Emmy and GRAMMY Award winner has received many honorary Doctorates of Musical Arts, is an arts advocate and currently serves as Global Music Ambassador for the United States. A portrait of Ms. Graves can be seen as part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institute's National Portrait Gallery, and her image is represented in the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Ms. Graves formed The Denyce Graves Foundation in 2021 to support singers at all stages of their careers & honor the contributions of those who have gone before. The Denyce Graves Foundation cultivates programs aimed at encouraging exceptionally talented vocal artists of all backgrounds to fulfill their potential. The organization’s philanthropic arm has already seen remarkable success to help save the National Opera House in Pittsburgh, an essential but neglected piece of American history.

While Ms. Graves still enjoys an active career as a stage director and performer, she sees her legacy extending far beyond her recordings through her work with The Denyce Graves Foundation, empowering the next generation of outstanding singers and reintroducing the world to the critical but forgotten musical heroes of our past. With its slogan, "Educating is Activism”, The Denyce Graves Foundation—and its luminous founder—are on their way to lifting the soul of America.

Soprano Katherine Jolly focuses on physical and mental wellness in her teaching, using yoga, dance, and mindfulness exercises to support solid vocal technique. She has presented workshops of coauthored research on yoga, singing, and performance anxiety at conferences of the International Congress of Voice Teachers, Voice Foundation, Performing Artists Medical Association, National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), and the College Music Society.

Jolly is a frequent judge and clinician with organizations including the National Opera Association, Schmidt Foundation, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Washington National Opera, NATS, Interlochen Summer Academy, and ArtsBridge.

A bright, accomplished singer on opera and concert stages, Jolly has appeared in leading coloratura and soubrette roles in multiple seasons with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Houston Grand Opera, Florida Grand Opera, New York City Opera, Virginia Opera, Amarillo Opera, Piedmont Opera, Union Avenue Opera, Lyric Opera Cleveland, American Lyric Theater, and others. In the concert arena, she has performed with the Virginia Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Lima Symphony, Bach Society of Saint Louis, Cleveland Composers Guild, Chamber Project STL, Sacramento Choral Society and Orchestra, Northwest Florida Symphony, Sinfonia Gulf Coast, and Musica Sacra.

Jolly is a winner of the 2006 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Grand Finals, about which The New York Times wrote: "Katherine Jolly used her agile, bright lyric soprano to superb effect in showpieces from Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail and Ariadne auf Naxos.” Jolly returned to the Met in spring 2010 to workshop An Enchanted Island and was featured with City Opera’s VOX series for the new operas Acquanetta and Josephine, which was broadcast on NPR. The recording Preach Sister, Preach was released in 2019 on Navona records and earned rave reviews.

In addition to her Met Opera honors, Jolly has received awards from the George London Foundation, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and the McAllister Foundation.

Jolly earned Doctorate of Musical Arts (2015) and Master of Music (2001) degrees at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Barbara Honn and Thomas Baresel. She completed a Bachelor of Music (1999) at Boston University under the tutelage of Phyllis Hoffman.

She has been a member of the faculty at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, where she received a New Frontiers Grant for Creative Activity, and at Saint Louis University, where she was awarded a Mellon Faculty Career Grant and was a 2016-17 finalist for the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Nationally acclaimed baritone Timothy LeFebvre has wide-ranging experience from the operatic stage to the concert hall. Recent performances include Bach's Saint John Passion with Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, SC; Vaughan-Williams’ Dona nobis pacem with Binghamton University, Mendelssohn's Elijah with the State College Choral Society and Pennsylvania Chamber Orchestra; Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with the Butler County Symphony; Harbison’s Words from Paterson with Oberlin Conservatory Contemporary Music Ensemble; Handel’s Messiah with Evansville Symphony and Binghamton Downtown Singers; Britten’s War Requiem with Wichita Symphony; and Haydn’s Mass in Time of War with Symphoria (Syracuse, NY).

LeFebvre has appeared in concert with the Jacksonville Symphony, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Cleveland Pops Orchestra, Wichita Symphony, Pensacola Symphony, Evansville Symphony, Symphoria (Syracuse), Butler County Symphony Orchestra, Toledo Symphony, West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Vermont Symphony, Minnesota Symphony, Syracuse Symphony, American Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Spokane Symphony, Binghamton Philharmonic, Rochester Bach Festival, Berkshire Choral Festival, New Dominion Chorale, Williamsport Symphony, Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes, Syracuse Chamber Music Society, the Skaneateles Festival and the Marlboro Music Festival. He has also appeared in concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall. 

LeFebvre’s frequently performed opera roles include Rigoletto, Sharpless (Madama Butterfly), Germont (La Traviata), Count (Le nozze di Figaro), Falke (Die Fledermaus), Marcello and Shaunard (La Bohème), and Father (Hansel and Gretel). His operatic experience includes performances with Central City Opera, Tri-Cities Opera, Sarasota Opera, Chattanooga Symphony and Opera, Syracuse Opera, Indianapolis Opera, Opera Delaware, and Opera Theater of Pittsburgh.

LeFebvre graduated with honors from Carnegie Mellon University and Binghamton University.

Louise Toppin has received critical acclaim for her operatic, orchestral, oratorio and recital performances world-wide.  Represented by Joanne Rile Management, she toured "Gershwin on Broadway" with pianist Leon Bates.   She has recorded nineteen commercial CDs including on Albany Records Ah love, but a day, La Saison des fleurs and Dear Friends and Gentle Hears with Darryl Taylor (2025).  She has published 20 anthologies since 2021 including Black Composers in Song (Hal Leonard, 2026), An Anthology of Undine Moore Songs (Carl Fischer, September 2026), An Anthology of African and African Diaspora Songs, Songs of Harry Burleigh, Songs of Adolphus Hailstork, and Rediscovering Margaret Bonds.  She is also the publisher of the unpublished works of Julia Perry (distributed by Boosey and Hawkes). She wrote a chapter for The Florence Price Companion (Cambridge University Press, 2026) and co-authored Black Song:  A Manifesto for Music and Justice (University of Michigan Press, September 2026).

Recent performances include: world premiere of Julia Perry’s Frammenti dalla sua lettere di Santa Caterina with the Akron Symphony Orchestra, performances with Julia Bullock and the New World Symphony, co-curated and sang festival of Black Music in Hamburg with the Bremen Philharmoniker in Germany with Thomas Hampson and Larry Brownlee, performance at the U.S. Capitol for Congress and President Obama, and for the opening of the Smithsonian’s African American Heritage Museum. 

In addition to appearing on NPR’s All Things Considered, she co-hosts the Minnesota Orchestra “Listening Project”concerts, and hosts her radio show Conversations in African American music. A frequent guest on college campuses including Harvard, Yale, Duke, and many others.  She is the co-founder and Director of the George Shirley Vocal Competition, Director of Videmus (non-profit organization that promotes the concert repertoire of African American composers) and founder of the Africandiasporamusicproject.org research tool.

Previously, Toppin was the Distinguished University Professor of Music and Chair of the Department of Music at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  She is currently University Distinguished Professor of Diversity and Social Transformation and Professor of Music (Voice), at The University of Michigan.   For more www.louisetoppin.com.
Susan Youens, art song scholar (Notre Dame, Emeritus)

Bradley Williams has enjoyed an international career spanning more than two decades as one of opera’s sought-after tenors in the bel canto repertoire. He has appeared with leading companies throughout Europe, North America, and Australia, including the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Teatro Regio Torino, Teatro Carlo Felice, Opéra National de Lyon, Royal Danish Opera, Wexford Festival Opera, Opera Australia, Seattle Opera, Houston Grand Opera, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. His repertoire has included leading roles in La Cenerentola, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, I Puritani, La Sonnambula, La Fille du Régiment, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Faust, as well as Scott in the world premiere of Stewart Wallace’s Harvey Milk. His recordings include Bellini’s Adelson e Salvini for Nuova Era and Harvey Milk for Teldec. Williams is Chair of Voice at New England Conservatory, where he teaches singers from the undergraduate through doctoral and Artist Diploma levels. His students have won national and international competitions and perform professionally throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. Previously, he served as General Director of Cimarron Opera and Associate Professor of Voice at the University of Oklahoma. He is also frequently engaged as a masterclass clinician and adjudicator. A native of Conroe, Texas, Williams holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and pursued graduate studies at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Music is history made audible. Through performance, scholarship, and artistic creation, pianist Javier Arrebola brings music into dialogue with literature, history, and the arts, inviting audiences and artists alike to explore the enduring questions that connect us across time, language, and place.

A distinctive presence in art song and chamber music, Arrebola is currently Artistic Advisor and faculty at Carnegie Hall's SongStudio and a frequent guest at the Tanglewood Music Center, The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, and Shanghai Conservatory, among other leading institutions in North America, Europe, and Asia. His previous leadership roles include Co-Artistic Director and Director of the Piano Program at SongFest, Head of Piano for the Program for Singers at Ravinia's Steans Music Institute, Chair of Collaborative Piano at Boston University, and Visiting Professor at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music.

Beyond performance and teaching, Arrebola creates and develops interdisciplinary projects. His many projects include serving as video editor and illustrator for Graham Johnson's landmark Schubert in Life & Song at Wigmore Hall, and conceiving and curating SongFest's Songs of Unity & Hope, a global online celebration bringing together artists from more than 60 countries, with performances in over 40 languages.

Fluent in Spanish and English, with working knowledge of German, French, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, and Norwegian, he approaches repertoire as a living dialogue between sound, text, history, and human experience, one that transcends time and borders.

Thomas Bandy teaches collaborative piano, English, Italian, and German lyric diction for voice majors, and seminars at the Conservatory in Czech and Russian lyric diction and vocal repertoire. He also teaches classes in Lieder and mélodie. Bandy has also overseen the musical preparation of Oberlin’s mainstage opera productions. From 2008 until 2011, he was an assistant professor of vocal coaching at the University of Oklahoma, where he taught lyric diction and seminars on French mélodie. Bandy has also been on the faculty of the summer Taos Opera Institute in New Mexico as Czech, Russian, and Italian coach, and regularly gives masterclasses for singers and pianists at Notre Dame.

During the 2007–2008 school year, he was an assistant professor of collaborative piano at the Oberlin Conservatory, where he directed the vocal and instrumental accompanying programs. During the summer of 2008, he was pianist and coach at the Richard Miller Vocal Arts Symposium at Oberlin. Bandy studied collaborative piano with Martin Katz at the University of Michigan, and has played in the voice studios of Shirley Verrett and George Shirley, among many others.

David Breitman is equally at home with the fortepiano and the modern piano, and enjoys both solo and ensemble playing.  His collaboration with the late Sanford Sylvan spanned more than thirty years, with several hundred recitals and four CD’s, ranging from Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, to the premiere recording of The Glass Hammer, a major song cycle by the Cuban-American composer Jorge Martin. He has recorded the Mozart piano-violin sonatas on historical instruments with Jean-François Rivest, Beethoven’s violin sonatas with Elizabeth Wallfisch and cello sonatas and variations with Jaap ter Linden.  In a collaboration of a different sort, he was one of seven fortepianists on the ground-breaking recording of the complete Beethoven piano sonata cycle on period instruments for CLAVES from 1997.  

David joined the Historical Performance Program at Oberlin Conservatory in 1991,teaching fortepiano and clavichord as well as courses in performance practice.  With his book, Piano-Playing Revisited: What Modern Players Can Learn from Period Instruments which appeared to critical acclaim in 2021, he summarizes a lifetime of experience as a performer and teacher.  

Pianist Lydia Brown has worked with distinguished colleagues including Anton Belov, Courtenay, Budd Caramico, Stella Chen, Catherine Cho, Valerie Coleman, Robert deMaine, Lucy FitzGibbon, Ruby Hughes, Jennifer Johnson Cano, Richard King, Daniel McGrew, John Moore, Miles Mykannen, Charlie Neidich, Tara Helen O'Connor, Marina Piccinini, Brenda Patterson, Ed Parks, Marcy Rosen, Susanna Phillips, Robin Scott, Sarah Shafer, Lucy Shelton, Paul Sperry, Radovan Vlatkovic, and Camille Zamora. 

She has maintained frequent associations with the Pro Musicis Foundation, Young Concert Artists, the Piatigorsky Foundation, and Musicians from Marlboro, performing at venues like the Salle Cortot, Thèâtre des Champs-Elysées, Dusseldorf Insel-Festival, Library of Congress, Phillips Gallery, Neue Gallery NYC, Alice Tully Hall, Weill Hall, and Bourgie Hall. After completing the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, she became an assistant conductor at The Metropolitan Opera and San Francisco Opera. 

Recent music is a prime interest; she has premiered works by John Harbison, Richard Hundley, Libby Larsen, Paola Prestini, Renee Favand-See, and Daniel Sonenberg, and assisted on US operatic premieres of Pascal Dusapin’s Faustus, The Last Night, Kaija Saariaho’s Emilie, Tobias Picker’s Dolores Claiborne, Elliot Carter’s What Next?, and Nadia Boulanger’s La Ville Morte with Catapult Opera. 

Additionally, she has enjoyed long relationships with Spoleto Festival USA, Gotham Chamber Opera, SongFest, and the Marlboro Music Festival and School, overseeing the Vocal Program since 2006. She is currently the Chair of the Collaborative Piano Department at The Juilliard School.

Graham Johnson is recognised as one of the world’s leading vocal accompanists, studying at the Royal Academy of Music, London. In 1972 he was the official pianist at Peter Pears' first masterclasses at Snape Maltings, which brought him into contact with Benjamin Britten. In 1976 he formed the Songmakers Almanac to explore neglected areas of piano-accompanied vocal music; the founder singers were Dame Felicity Lott, Ann Murray DBE, Anthony Rolfe Johnson and Richard Jackson.  

Graham devises and accompanies concerts regularly at Wigmore Hall from the re-opening series in 1992 and in its centenary celebrations in 2001. He is Senior Professor of Accompaniment at the Guildhall School of Music and has led a biennial scheme for Young Songmakers since 1985. For Hyperion Records, he has devised and accompanied a set of complete Schubert lieder on 37 discs and a complete Schumann series. There is an ongoing French Song series and two solo recital discs with Alice Coote. Awards include the Gramophone solo vocal award in 1989 (Dame Janet Baker), 1996 (Die schone Müllerin, Ian Bostridge), 1997 (Schumann series, Christine Schäfer) and 2001 (Magdalena Kozena). He was The Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist of the Year in 1998 and in June 2000, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.  

He is author of several books, his latest: Poulenc – The Life in the Songs, was published in August 2020. 

Graham Johnson was made an OBE (1994), created Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et Lettres (2002), Honorary Member of the Royal Philharmonic Society (2010), and awarded the Wigmore Hall Medal (2013). He received Honorary Doctorates from Durham University, the New England Conservatory of Music, and the Edith Cowan University Western Australia. He was awarded the Hugo Wolf Medal (2014) for his services to the art of song and Germany’s Cross of the Order of Merit (2021). 

Lauded for “superb playing” and “poised, alert musicianship” by the Boston Globe, and labeled “definitely a man to watch” by London’s The Independent after his 2012 Wigmore Hall recital debut, American pianist Spencer Myer is one of the most respected and sought-after artists on today’s concert stage.     

He has been soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra, the Cape Town and Johannesburg Philharmonics, and the Indianapolis and New Haven Symphonies, among others. His 2005 tour of South Africa included a performance of Beethoven’s five piano concerti with the Chamber Orchestra of South Africa, followed by six subsequent return tours.  An in-demand chamber musician, his artistic partners have included violinist James Ehnes, cellists Lynn Harrell and Ralph Kirshbaum, clarinetist David Shifrin, and the Jupiter, Miami and Pacifica String Quartets.  Since winning the 2000 Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition, his reputation as a vocal collaborator has led to partnerships with Nicole Cabell, Martha Guth, Michelle DeYoung, Limmie Pulliam, Erin Wall, and many others.  He has served on the Board of the Brooklyn Art Song Society for the past decade. 

His career was launched with three important prizes: First Prize in the 2004 UNISA International Piano Competition in South Africa, the 2006 Christel DeHaan Classical Fellowship from the American Pianists Association and the Gold Medal from the 2008 New Orleans International Piano Competition. He is also a laureate of the 2005 Cleveland and Busoni International Competitions.  He was a member of Astral Artists’ performance roster from 2003-2010.

Previously on the piano and collaborative piano faculty of Boston’s Longy School of Music, Spencer Myer is currently Professor of Piano and Chair of the Piano Department at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he received the 2024 Trustees Teaching Award.  He has released six CDs on the Steinway & Sons label — Piano Rags of William Bolcom, four discs with cellist Brian Thornton, and the Four Chopin Impromptus.

Spencer Myer is a Steinway Artist.

www.spencermyer.com

Pianist Erika Switzer is an internationally acclaimed performer of song and chamber music. Her performances have been described as “precise and lucid” by the New York Times and “intelligent, refined, and captivating” by Le Monde. She is currently Associate Professor of Music at Bard College and the Bard Conservatory of Music, where she directs Collaborative Piano Studies. Beginning in the spring of 2027, she will join the faculty at the Universität für Musik und

darstellende Kunst Wien (mdw) as Professor of Lied and Oratorio. Erika Switzer collaborates with a range of top singers and instrumentalists around the world, frequently appearing at festivals and venues including New York’s Weill Hall (Carnegie), Geffen Hall, Frick Collection, and Bargemusic, at the Kennedy Center, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Spoleto Festival (Charleston, SC). With longtime duo-partner, baritone Tyler Duncan, she has recorded two albums on the Bridge label: English Song à la française and A Left Coast. Two further albums for Centrediscs feature the music of Canadian composers Jocelyn Morlock and Andrew Staniland. As a leader in envisioning and promoting the future of art song performance, she founded the organization Sparks & Wiry Cries in 2009 in collaboration with soprano Martha Guth. “Sparks” commissions new works, presents sparksLIVE events in New York City and songSLAM events internationally, and publishes The Art Song Magazine. Two volumes of songSLAM entries have been published by NewMusicShelf and a series of commissioned works have been published by EC Schirmer. Following her initial studies at the University of British Columbia, she completed a diploma in song interpretation at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München. During her years in Germany, she won numerous awards, including best pianist prizes at the Robert Schumann and Wigmore Hall International Song Competitions, and began her career as a recitalist. After moving to New York City in 2007, she completed her doctoral studies at The Juilliard School.

Matthew Aucoin is an American composer, conductor, and writer, and a 2018 MacArthur Fellow. He is a co-founder of the pathbreaking American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*), and was the Los Angeles Opera’s Artist in Residence from 2016 to 2020. As a composer, Aucoin is committed to expanding the possibilities of opera as a genre. His own operas, which include Eurydice and Crossing, have been produced at the Metropolitan Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Boston Lyric Opera, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Aucoin’s most recent work of music-theater, Music for New Bodies, is a collaboration with the legendary director Peter Sellars, based on the poetry of Jorie Graham. Aucoin’s orchestral and chamber music has been performed, commissioned, and recorded by Yo-Yo Ma, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, pianists Conor Hanick and Kirill Gerstein, the Brentano Quartet, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Julia Bullock, Erin Morley, Davóne Tines, Danielle de Niese, Paul Appleby, and many others. Aucoin has also received commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Ojai Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, Chicago’s Symphony Center, the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, and his book, The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera, was published in 2021 by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. He is currently Visiting Professor of Composition and Conducting at Boston University. He has also taught at Harvard University and The Juilliard School, and is a regular contributor to leading publications such as The New York Review of Books and The Atlantic.

Composer and pianist John Musto's activities encompass orchestral, operatic, instrumental, chamber and vocal music, and music for film and television. His music embraces many strains of contemporary American concert music, enriched by sophisticated inspirations from jazz, ragtime and the blues. These qualities lend a strong profile to his vocal music, which ranges from a series of operas – Volpone, Later the Same Evening, Bastianello and The Inspector – to a catalogue of art songs that is among the finest of any living American composer. 

As a pianist, he performs frequently as soloist and chamber musician in a broad range of repertoire including his own piano concerti. He appears frequently with his wife, soprano Amy Burton, in recital and cabaret.

Mr. Musto was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his orchestral song cycle Dove Sta Amore, and is a recipient of two Emmy awards, two CINE Awards, a Rockefeller Fellowship at Bellagio, an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, and a Distinguished Alumnus award from the Manhattan School of Music.  He is currently on the piano faculty of the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, where he also serves as Coördinator of the D.M.A. Program in Music Performance. Musto's work has been recorded by Bridge, Harmonia Mundi, Nonesuch, Cedille,  Archive, Naxos, Harbinger, CRI and EMI, Hyperion,  MusicMasters, Innova, Channel Classics, Albany, and New World Records. He is published by Peermusic Classical. 

Benjamin Binder, musicologist and pianist, is Professor of Music and Chair of the Musicianship Department at Duquesne University's Mary Pappert School of Music. He holds a master's degree in piano performance from Washington University and a Ph.D. in musicology from Princeton University.

His scholarly work on 19th-century Austro-German music and art song has appeared in Nineteenth-Century Music Review, the Journal of the American Musicological Society, and volumes from Oxford, Cambridge, and Routledge. He has presented papers at conferences of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Music Theory, and in 2024 published his co-edited essay collection The Lied at the Crossroads of Performance and Musicology with Cambridge.

As a pianist, Dr. Binder has been a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and a participant in the Cleveland Institute of Music Art Song Festival, accompanying recitals throughout North America. He presents song recitals and solo performances in Pittsburgh and beyond, including collaborations with the Carnegie Museum of Art, Andy Warhol Museum, City of Asylum, The Frick Pittsburgh, and Duquesne University.

As a public-facing scholar, Dr. Binder wrote a script for Thomas Hampson's Song: Mirror of the World, broadcast nationwide in the USA and across southwestern Germany, and has researched, written, and delivered interactive scripts as an event host for Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra concerts.

From 2010-14, Dr. Binder co-founded and directed the Vancouver International Song Institute's Song Scholarship and Performance program with pianist Cameron Stowe, bringing together performers, musicologists, theorists, and literary scholars in cross-disciplinary song study.

Tsitsi Ella Jaj is the Helen L. Bevington Associate Professor of Modern Poetry at Duke University, where she teaches in the English and the African & African American Studies departments. Her research encompasses global Black literary and cultural studies, and has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, and National Humanities Center, among others.

Jaji moved the U.S. from her native Zimbabwe to study piano performance at Oberlin Conservatory. She is delighted to return! Collaborating with singers there ignited her interest in artistic synergies between poetry and music. She has curated and written poetry which appears on albums including Songs in Flight (Shawn Okpebholo, nominated for a Grammy in 2025) and Visions (B.E. Boykin). Other composers she has had the joy of working with include Stephen Jaffe and Derek Jeter. She is the author of two poetry collections -- Beating the Graves and Mother Tongues, which reflect on kinship, diaspora, powerful women, and climate concerns. A third collection of poems, Tooth and Nail, along with a book about Miriam Makeba’s album, Sangoma, will be published in 2027. Her first book, Africa in Stereo: Music, Modernism and Pan-African Solidarity traces how exchanges between African American, Ghanaian, Senegalese and South African artists shaped political liberation projects.

Jaji continues to write for and alongside the visual arts, and she has published essays for exhibitions by Steve McQueen, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, biennale exhibitions in Bamako and Sao Paolo and most recently, the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s exhibition of African images, “Testaments to the Beautyful Ones.”

Susan Youens (J. W. Van Gorkom Professor of Music emerita at the University of Notre Dame)
Susan Youens  has written eight books on German song, as well as over-80 scholarly articles and chapters. She received four National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, as well as Guggenheim, National Humanities Center, and Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton fellowships, and is an honorary member of both the American Musicological Society and the Royal Musical Society of Great Britain.