Meet the Duelists and More

Composers
Librettists
Singers
Band
Hosts

Meet the Composers

Mexican artist, producer, and arts executive CHRISTIAN DE GRÉ CÁRDENAS has spent over 20 years shaping new work as a leading contemporary voice in the field. He has overseen more than 1,000 theatrical productions and is a seven-time New York indie theater festival winner. For 15 years, he served as Artistic Director of Mind The Art Entertainment and was General Manager of the New York International Fringe Festival, the largest multi-arts festival in the Americas.

De Gré Cárdenas has co-created 30 award-winning works with institutions including The Public Theater, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Discovery Channel, Broadway Cares, the Drama Desk Awards, and the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York. As a theater activist, he partnered with the United Nations Y-Peer Network, advancing Theater for Social Change across Eastern Europe, Northern Africa, and the Americas.

Most recently, he served as Director of the National Opera Center and as Chief Operating Officer of OPERA America, guiding the organization through the pandemic. He now splits his time between New York City—where he co-leads Heartbeat Opera—and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, developing new work across opera, theater, cabaret, film, and television.

SUSAN’S KANDER’S music has been performed across the United States, Europe, China, Australia, and South Africa. Her latest opera, Carry My Own Suitcase (co-written with Roberta Gumbel), will premiere at Buffalo Opera Unlimited in May 2026, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and Opera America’s Virginia Toulmin Fund.

Her 2018 opera dwb (driving while black), also with a libretto by Gumbel, has had ten productions nationwide. Its 2021 Albany Records release, featuring Gumbel, earned a Critics’ Choice award from Opera News, which called it “deeply affecting and innovatively conceived…transcendent…achingly lovely,” while The Washington Post described it as “searing…sung drama.”

Kander’s chamber music recording Hermestänze (2016) was praised by Gramophone as “raptly serene…eloquent…wrenchingly powerful.” She has received commissions from leading organizations including the National Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Opera Columbus, and Lyric Opera of Kansas City.

A recipient of a 2023 Chamber Music America Commissioning Grant, her septet Melodies Lost and Found premiered in Kansas City in 2025. Kander is a MacDowell Fellow and lives in New York.

NEVADA LOZANO is a musical theater composer/lyricist, orchestrator, arranger, music director, and pianist. He has worked as a music assistant on Broadway productions including Oklahoma! (2019 Tony Award for Best Revival), The Sound Inside (directed by David Cromer, starring Mary-Louise Parker), and Sea Wall/A Life (starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge). Most recently, he served as Conductor/Keys 1 for Rent at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

He has also contributed to new works in development, including A Face in the Crowd (music and lyrics by Elvis Costello, book by Sarah Ruhl) and Joy (music and lyrics by AnnMarie Milazzo, book by Ken Davenport). His original musical, The Carol of the Bells, was developed at Goodspeed Musicals’ Johnny Mercer Writers Grove (2022) and presented at the 2024 Festival of New Musicals.

As an orchestrator, Lozano’s work is featured on the podcast [insert movie here]: The Musical!, including episodes inspired by No Country for Old Men, The Blair Witch Project, and Space Jam. He also orchestrates Kragtar! and Moonfaker.

A member of the BMI Lehman Engel Workshop, he received the Jerry Harrington Award (2018) and was a finalist for the Fred Ebb Award (2023) and Jonathan Larson Grant. He studied at Eastman and Rice University.

Canadian composer MATTHEW RICKETTS, based in New York City, writes music described as “lyrical, contrapuntal, rhythmically complex and highly nuanced” (American Academy of Arts and Letters). Critics have also praised its “effervescent and at times prickly sounds” and “hypnotically churning exploration of melody” (I Care If You Listen), as well as its “tart harmonies and perky sputterings” (The New York Times).

A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, Ricketts has received additional support from the Fromm Music Foundation (2024), NYSCA (2024), Bogliasco Foundation (2023), Millay (2022), Civitella Ranieri (2021), and MacDowell (2019, 2022).

Deeply collaborative, his work spans film, dance, and vocal music. He composed the score for Glob Lessons, an official selection of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, and has collaborated with choreographers Michael Spencer Philips, Brendan Drake, and Jennifer Nichols. His vocal and theatrical projects include partnerships with writers Mark Campbell, Royce Vavrek, Mark Wunderlich, Alain Farah, and Tomson Highway.

Ricketts is on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and the Special Music School in New York City.

CHARLIE ROMANO is a Latin American composer with roots in Mexico and Panama, dedicated to telling untold stories through musical theater. His recent work includes Call Me from the Grave (2021 O’Neill Finalist, 2023 ASCAP Workshop), inspired by blues legend Robert Johnson; The Order of Chaos, an original musical about conspiracy theories (Equity reading at The Public Theater, 2025); Onward and Upward, adapted from Bridget Carpenter’s Up (The Man in the Flying Chair); and Word Nerd, a musical comedy centered on a crossword game show.

He is currently developing Tita, a new musical about his Panamanian immigrant grandmother, a vibrant polyglot whose life impacted communities around the world.

Romano completed the 2023 ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop under Stephen Schwartz and was selected to write an original song for the ASCAP/Netflix presentation on music for children’s television. He is the recipient of the 2023 ASCAP Foundation Harold Arlen Musical Theater Award and the 2024 Pipeline Arts Foundation Award and Grant.

Praised as “strikingly original” (The New York Times), composer KAMALA SANKARAM moves fluidly between experimental music and contemporary opera. Her work has been presented internationally at venues including Dutch National Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy Center. She has held residencies at the Glimmerglass Festival and Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and is currently in residence at Minnesota Opera.

A biracial Indian American and trained sitarist, Sankaram ხშირად draws on Indian classical traditions in works such as Thumbprint, A Rose, Monkey and Francine in the City of Tigers, Jungle Book, and the forthcoming The Many Deaths of Laila Starr.

Known for pushing the boundaries of form and storytelling, she has created innovative projects including an opera for the trees of Prospect Park (winner of the 2021 Creative Time Open Call), the world’s first virtual reality opera, and an augmented reality music walk for Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. Her work also includes a techno-noir piece featuring live data mining of the audience, reflecting her interest in blending technology, environment, and performance.

Brooklyn-based composer, pianist, music director, and arranger DAN SCHLOSBERG’S work has been performed by leading arts organizations nationwide. His recent and upcoming projects include orchestrations and music direction for The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse (2025), composition and music direction for The Counterfeit Opera (2025) and A Boy’s Company Presents, and a new orchestration of The Handmaid’s Tale (2025).

Schlosberg arranged and music directed Anthony Roth Costanzo is The Marriage of Figaro (2024) and music directed Only an Octave Apart (2023), later performing as piano soloist with the New York Philharmonic at its Lincoln Center remount (2022). In 2021, he was a pianist for Steven Spielberg’s film West Side Story.

As Music Director of Heartbeat Opera, Schlosberg has received national acclaim for projects including The Extinctionist(2024) and inventive re-orchestrations of operatic classics.

His honors include the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards. In 2023, he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Montag(SoHo Playhouse).

Schlosberg holds a DMA in Composition from the Yale School of Music and serves on the composition faculty at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Grammy-nominated composer/lyricist RONA SIDDIQUI is based in New York City and a recipient of the Kleban Prize, Jonathan Larson Grant, and Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award. Her autobiographical show The Brown Musical (formerly Salaam Medina: Tales of a Halfghan), about growing up bi-ethnic in America, has been presented at 54 Below and developed at Playwrights Horizons, directed by Raja Feather Kelly.

Her other musicals include Father Time (with Bryce Pinkham, Zack Fine, and Kirya Traber), Expect Victory (with Kris Dias), Rattle the Cage (with Lynn Rosen and Pia Wilson), and Hip Hop Cinderella. She has also received the ASCAP Harold Adamson Lyric Award, the ASCAP Foundation Mary Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Award, and the ASCAP Foundation/Max Dreyfus Scholarship.

As a performer, Siddiqui has appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and Late Night with Seth Meyers. Her residencies include Musical Theatre Factory and Ars Nova.

Her music direction credits include Broadway’s A Strange Loop (Obie Award winner, Grammy nominee) and Off-Broadway’s Bella: An American Tall Tale and Who’s Your Baghdaddy. She has also worked as an orchestrator on projects including Monsoon Wedding. Siddiqui is a faculty member at BerkleeNYC and NYU and holds a master’s degree from NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.

Meet the Librettists

JOSEPH REESE ANDERSON, poet and librettist, creates projects around the globe using poetic language to advance awareness, tolerance, and empathy through work that balances beauty and accessibility. Recent works include Fatty Fatty No Friends (FringeNYC Excellence Award; Innovative Theater Award nomination; NYMF Best of Fest; Time Out New York Critic’s Pick), Whiskey Pants: The Mayor of Williamsburg (Audience Favorite at FRIGID New York; ShowScore Critic’s Pick; Off-Broadway premiere at HERE), Cadence: Home, Orgullo! and Red Sky the Musical. His work has been presented at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, Broadway’s 54 Below, HERE Arts Center, The Stonewall Inn, and La MaMa E.T.C. An advocate and activist, he served as Outreach Coordinator at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital and founded Social Socials, a microfinancing initiative benefiting communities locally and abroad. He currently serves as a panelist for commissioning grants at OPERA America and is being commissioned by Maryland Opera Studio, Mercury Store and Roosevelt University to create new hybrid works. He is the founder of Capital Moments in Raleigh, NC, an artist collective supporting new work development.

GARRETT BELL is a New York City–based composer, lyricist, and playwright. After studying with numerous music teachers in his youth, he earned a BFA in Musical Theatre from Emerson College.

His plays include Requiem, Une Comédie Française, and the one-woman show Quarantine. His musical work includes the irreverent song cycle Hipsters Drinking Coffee and The Ballad of Elisa Lam, for which he wrote book and lyrics. His writing has been featured by Z Publishing House and Rattle, and he was selected for the HBMG Foundation’s National Winter Playwriting Retreat.

Bell recently completed By Moonlight, a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with collaborator Jonathan W. Colby. He is currently developing The Lost Boys, a vignette-style musical exploring a generation of gay men who grew up without role models.

A current participant in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, Bell is also a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

JAMES KENNEDY is a playwright and composer originally from North Carolina. Most recently, his new musical Prodigy enjoyed a sold-out extended run at University Settlement’s Speyer Hall. Other projects include his plays Paradise, Jo & Laurie, and And One, and his musicals Grasshopper Songs and Sweet Matthew. When not self-producing his work in bespoke performance, concert, and development events, his writing has been produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville/The Humana Festival of New American Plays, The Washington National Opera's American Opera Initiative, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Upstart Creatures, Emerson College, Dartmouth College, and Superhero Clubhouse, and he has performed sold out concerts at National Sawdust and the Green Room 42. He has received residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Everwood Farmstead, and The Orchard Project, and he is the recipient of the Rod Parker Playwrighting Fellowship and the Betsy Carpenter Playwrighting Award, as well as a finalist for the Princess Grace award.

DEBORAH D.E.E.P. MOUTON is an award-winning writer, director, performer, and critic, and the first Black Poet Laureate of Houston, Texas. Her genre-spanning work moves fluidly between page and stage. She is the author of Newsworthy(2019), later translated into German, Black Chameleon (2023), and the forthcoming children’s book Hush Hush Hurricane (2027). Her writing has appeared in Glamour, Texas Monthly, Muzzle, and ESPN’s Andscape, and she was named to the Houston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40.

A playwright of six operas and multiple plays, Mouton’s recent choreopoem PLUMSHUGA: The Rise of Lauren Andersonpremiered at Stages Theater and was featured on the cover of The New York Times Culture section. Her opera She Who Dared, composed by Jasmine Barnes, premiered at Chicago Opera Theater in 2025 and marked the first professionally produced opera written by two Black women.

Her memoir Black Chameleon received the 2024 Carr P. Collins Award for Best Nonfiction from the Texas Institute of Letters. She continues to expand her multidisciplinary practice with upcoming projects including The Call Me Mother Experience, an immersive installation opening in 2026 at the Health Museum in Houston.

After working in theater for most of her life, AMANDA QUAID began writing poetry in 2023 as a way to work creatively with illness. That same year, her poem “Patient and Daughter Appear Closely Bonded” was awarded the Bridport Prize, selected by Roger Robinson.

Subsequent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bellevue Literary Review, Rattle, Poetry Is Currency, Mom Egg Review, Broadsided, LONESOME, Book XI, DMQ Review, Bombay Gin, and Tendrils. Her debut collection, No Obvious Distress, a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize, is out now with John Murray Press and was named one of the Best Books of 2025 by The Independent.

She was raised in New York City, where she works as a dialect coach, teaches at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, and lives with her husband, daughter and chihuahua. She co-edits the ekphrastic poetry zine Metphrastics.

KELLEY ROURKE is a librettist, translator, and dramaturg known for her modern English adaptations of opera, praised as “crackingly witty” (The Independent) and “remarkably well wedded to the music and versification” (The New York Times). She is the 2024 recipient of OPERA America’s Campbell Opera Librettist Prize and has received two commissioning grants from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Rourke serves as artistic advisor for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative and as resident dramaturg for The Glimmerglass Festival. She has also mentored artists through Seattle Opera’s Creation Lab and the American Opera Initiative, and worked as a dramaturg for Chicago Opera Theater’s Vanguard Initiative.

A frequent guest lecturer, she has taught at Boston University, Carnegie Mellon University, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, and the University of Maryland. She was the founding editor of Opera America Magazine and contributed to the New Grove Dictionary of American Music.

Rourke holds degrees in piano performance and arts management and is an alumna of New Dramatists’ Composer-Librettist Studio and the Liz Lerman Critical Response Process Certification Program.