Cage Match

Stage director, choreographer, and dancer, Zack Winokur, born in Boston, Massachusetts, is a graduate of The Juilliard School and Concord Academy.  Upcoming performances in the 2017/18 season include a new production of Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea at the Cincinnati Opera, an immersive pairing of Gluck's Orfeo and Matthew Aucoin's Orphic Moment at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater, Monteverdi's Il Ballo delle Ingrate with William Christie at Juilliard, and Sondheim's A Little Night Music at the Royal Theatre Carré in Amsterdam. He also choreographs Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Dutch National Opera, Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie at Juilliard, remounts his production of Ana Sokolović's Svadba at the Festival Ljubljana, collaborates with grime artist Pepstar on a short film, and gives masterclasses at the Dutch National Opera Academy and New York University. 

Zack Winokur's most recent production seen in New York City, Cavalli's Venetian baroque masterpiece La Calisto for The Juilliard School, was hailed as "one of the most elegant and imaginative shows seen in New York this season" in Opera News, garnered rave reviews in a plethora of other publications including The New York Times and Vogue, and received a nomination for Best Production of the Year in Opernwelt, the only American production to be nominated. Additional productions include the The New Prince (Dutch National Opera, world premiere), Svadba (Festival d'Aix-en-Provence; Grand Theatre de Luxembourg, European premiere), Dido and Aeneas (La Nuova Musica at St John's Smith Square), A Study on Effort (Luminato Festival, named one of the top three shows in Toronto by The Globe and Mail in 2016), A Flowering Tree (Opera Omaha), Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, La Monnaie, Aldeburgh Music, DNO), Der Kaiser von Atlantis (Central City Opera, Juilliard Opera), Most of the Boys (Royal Opera House, world premiere), Mesh (International Contemporary Ensemble, world premiere), Triptych (Museum of Arts and Design), and a restaging of Episode 31 by Alexander Ekman for the Joffrey Ballet. He also co-directed, with Mary Birnbaum, a special performance in the Supreme Court for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 82nd birthday.

Zack Winokur has worked on film with Academy Award-nominated director Mike Figgis, collaborating on Burlington Project, a commission from the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and Dancing on Glass, with pianist Rosey Chan and fashion house Boudicca, which was exhibited in Paris, London, Beijing, Tokyo, and Barcelona. His choreography also has been seen in the music video The Virus for A Tribe Called Red; at David Lynch's Club Silencio and the Centre Pompidou; and in installations that took over the entire Royal Opera House, Covent Garden over the course of three days.

Stage director, choreographer, and dancer, Zack Winokur, born in Boston, Massachusetts, is a graduate of The Juilliard School and Concord Academy.  Upcoming performances in the 2017/18 season include a new production of Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea at the Cincinnati Opera, an immersive pairing of Gluck's Orfeo and Matthew Aucoin's Orphic Moment at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater, Monteverdi's Il Ballo delle Ingrate with William Christie at Juilliard, and Sondheim's A Little Night Music at the Royal Theatre Carré in Amsterdam. He also choreographs Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Dutch National Opera, Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie at Juilliard, remounts his production of Ana Sokolović's Svadba at the Festival Ljubljana, collaborates with grime artist Pepstar on a short film, and gives masterclasses at the Dutch National Opera Academy and New York University. 

Zack Winokur's most recent production seen in New York City, Cavalli's Venetian baroque masterpiece La Calisto for The Juilliard School, was hailed as "one of the most elegant and imaginative shows seen in New York this season" in Opera News, garnered rave reviews in a plethora of other publications including The New York Times and Vogue, and received a nomination for Best Production of the Year in Opernwelt, the only American production to be nominated. Additional productions include the The New Prince (Dutch National Opera, world premiere), Svadba (Festival d'Aix-en-Provence; Grand Theatre de Luxembourg, European premiere), Dido and Aeneas (La Nuova Musica at St John's Smith Square), A Study on Effort (Luminato Festival, named one of the top three shows in Toronto by The Globe and Mail in 2016), A Flowering Tree (Opera Omaha), Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, La Monnaie, Aldeburgh Music, DNO), Der Kaiser von Atlantis (Central City Opera, Juilliard Opera), Most of the Boys (Royal Opera House, world premiere), Mesh (International Contemporary Ensemble, world premiere), Triptych (Museum of Arts and Design), and a restaging of Episode 31 by Alexander Ekman for the Joffrey Ballet. He also co-directed, with Mary Birnbaum, a special performance in the Supreme Court for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 82nd birthday.

Zack Winokur has worked on film with Academy Award-nominated director Mike Figgis, collaborating on Burlington Project, a commission from the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and Dancing on Glass, with pianist Rosey Chan and fashion house Boudicca, which was exhibited in Paris, London, Beijing, Tokyo, and Barcelona. His choreography also has been seen in the music video The Virus for A Tribe Called Red; at David Lynch's Club Silencio and the Centre Pompidou; and in installations that took over the entire Royal Opera House, Covent Garden over the course of three days.

Matthew Aucoin is an American composer, conductor, writer, and pianist. He is the newly-appointed Artist-in-Residence at Los Angeles Opera. This position fuses his work as composer and conductor, from conducting the LA premiere of Philip Glass's Akhnaten, to composing a new full-length work which will premiere in a future season, to serving as the company's advisor on new music and working regularly with members of its opera studio.

In the 2014-15 season, Aucoin conducted the premieres of two of his operas: Crossing, at Boston's American Repertory Theater (directed by Diane Paulus); and Second Nature, a chamber opera for the young, at Lyric Opera of Chicago. He is currently at work on a new opera for the Metropolitan Opera / Lincoln Center Theater's New Works program.

In October 2016, pianist Conor Hanick and the Alabama Symphony gave the first performances of Aucoin's first piano concerto, commissioned by The Gilmore Foundation. Last season, his song cycle Merrill Songs was premiered by tenor Paul Appleby at Carnegie Hall. Violinist Jennifer Koh commissioned and debuted Aucoin's new solo violin work resolve for the New York Philharmonic Biennale and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

Aucoin has recently made orchestral conducting debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; the Rome Opera Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago (a special event featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma); opera productions have included Music Academy of the West (The Bartered Bride, as well as his own chamber opera Second Nature); Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, Italy (Le Nozze di Figaro) and Juilliard Opera (Eugene Onegin). 

Aucoin is a 2012 graduate of Harvard College, where he studied with the poet Jorie Graham; and a 2013 recipient of a graduate diploma in composition from The Juilliard School, where he studied with composer Robert Beaser. Shortly before he graduated from Harvard, Aucoin was hired as the youngest Assistant Conductor in the history of the Metropolitan Opera, where he worked with Thomas Adès, James Levine, and Valery Gergiev.

Aucoin remains an active pianist and regularly collaborates with violinist Keir GoGwilt, as well as many of the world's leading opera singers, including Renée Fleming, Paulo Szot, Rod Gilfry, and Anthony Roth Costanzo. An accomplished writer, Aucoin's essays and poetry have appeared in The Yale Review, The Colorado Review, The Boston Globe, and The Harvard Advocate. He has served as guest lecturer for the New York Shakespeare Society and a guest host for New York's WQXR. 

Violinist and violist Miranda Cuckson is a favorite of audiences for her performances of a great range of repertoire and styles, from music of older eras to the most current creations. From a strong grounding in the classical repertoire, she has become one of the most active and acclaimed performers of contemporary music. Downbeatmagazine recently stated that she "reaffirms her standing as one of the most sensitive and electric interpreters of new music."

Called "a prodigiously talented player who [can] make even the thorniest contemporary scores sing" (The New York Times), she appears as soloist and chamber musician in concert halls large and small, schools and universities, galleries and informal spaces. Recently, she made her Carnegie Hall (Stern Auditorium) debut in Piston's concerto with the American Symphony Orchestra. Her upcoming engagements include a new violin concerto by Georg Friedrich Haas which she will premiere in Tokyo, Stuttgart, and Porto, the New York premiere of Michael Hersch's violin concerto, and solo and chamber music at the West Cork Music Festival in Ireland. Her recent recital appearances include the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music series, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Met Breuer, Miller Theatre, Strathmore, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Look and Listen Festival in New York.

In addition to working with numerous emerging composing talents, Cuckson has collaborated with an array of renowned composers including Dutilleux, Carter, Adès, Sciarrino, Adams, Boulez, Hyla, Mackey, Crumb, Iyer, Saariaho, Davidovsky, Ran, Hurel, Bermel, Wyner, Murail, Wuorinen and Currier. In 2012, the Library of Congress commissioned a work for her by Harold Meltzer, which she premiered there on a program honoring Fritz Kreisler.

Her latest album - violin music by Wolpe, Carter and Ferneyhough - was released in 2017 on Urlicht Audiovisual and adds to her adventurous and varied discography. Her first album for ECM Records - sonatas by Bartók, Schnittke and Lutoslawski - was released in 2016, and her recording of Nono's La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura for violin and electronics on Urlicht Audiovisual was named a Best Classical Recording of 2012 by The New York Times.

Miranda is founder/director of the music non-profit Nunc, a member of the collective counter)induction, and a performer/curator at National Sawdust in Brooklyn. She studied at The Juilliard School, where she received her BM, MM and doctorate degrees and won the school's Presser and Richard F. French Awards. She is on the violin faculty at the Mannes School of Music.

Violinist Keir GoGwilt was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and grew up in New York City. As a soloist he has performed with groups including the Chinese National Symphony, the Orquesta Filarmonica de Santiago, the Bowdoin International Music Festival Orchestra, the Manhattan School of Music Chamber Sinfonia, and members of A Far Cry. As a recitalist and chamber musician he has played at festivals including the Luminato Festival, the Spoleto Festival in Italy, Rockport Chamber Music, Yellow Barn, and Taos, and at venues including Miller Theatre, the 92nd St Y, Sanders Theater, Dumbarton Oaks, and National Sawdust.

GoGwilt’s work spans the disciplinary range, both creatively and critically. His collaboration with dancer Bobbi Jene Smith on A Study on Effort incorporates his improvisations and poetry. They have been featured at the Luminato Festival, PS 122’s COIL Festival, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance. In addition to his activities as a performer, he is interested in re-writing common notions of technique and interpretation by examining what structural templates guide performers’ musical reproductions. These templates manifest historically and culturally specific ideas of music’s object. He has presented his work in conversational performances and presentations at Fordham University, the Scottish Poetry Library, the Peabody Essex Museum (together with Matthew Aucoin), the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music (with Roger Reynolds), and the Orpheus Institute in Ghent.

GoGwilt has worked closely with composers including Tan Dun, Tobias Picker (recording of violin and chamber music released with Tzadik Records), Carolyn Chen, Celeste Oram, and Matthew Aucoin. He has premiered several of Aucoin’s violin works including "Poem," "This Same Light," "Celan Fragments," and "Its Own Accord."

Graduating from Harvard University with high honors in 2013, GoGwilt was awarded the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts. GoGwilt has studied and collaborated with musicians including Lewis Kaplan, Robert Levin, Steven Schick, Charles Curtis, and Anthony Burr. He has served as associate concertmaster of the Canadian Opera Company, as faculty on the Wellesley Composer’s Conference and the Portland Bach Festival in Maine, and as backup strings for Chance the Rapper on SNL. At UCSD he has been a teaching assistant for courses including the history of European music and hip-hop.

Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo began performing professionally at the age of 11 and has since appeared in opera, concert, recital, film, and on Broadway.

Among his engagements in the upcoming season, Costanzo sings the title role in Giulio Cesare with Houston Grand Opera, stars in staged performances of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater at Lincoln Center's White Light Festival, returns to Opera Philadelphia for Written on Skin, and sings the title role in Orfeo ed Euridice at Florida Grand Opera and appears in concert with Les Violons du Roy at the Festival d'opéra de Québec. This past season, he appeared with both the London Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic as Prince Go-Go in Le Grand Macabre, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle and directed by Peter Sellars. He also debuted at the Los Angeles Opera as the title role in Phillip Glass's Akhnaten, at the Finnish National Opera in Kaija Saariaho's Only the Sound Remains, and at the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in performances of Messiah. 

Costanzo has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera as both Ferdinand and Prospero in the world premiere of The Enchanted Island, as well as Prince Orlofsky in a new production of Die Fledermaus after making his debut as Unulfo in Rodelinda. He made his European debut at the Glyndebourne Festival in Rinaldo and has since appeared at the English National Opera in Akhnaten and The Indian Queen. 

Passionate about interdisciplinary collaboration, Costanzo recently helped create two unique presentations of The Tales of Genji that incorporated traditional Kabuki, Noh actors, dancers and western music. He also created a pasticcio about castrati in collaboration with choreographer Karole Armitage and filmmaker James Ivory which was chronicled by the documentarian Gerardo Puglia. Costanzo played Francis in the Merchant Ivory film A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, and Simon in Brice Cauvin's De particulier a particulier.

In 2012, Costanzo won first place in Plácido Domingo's international competition Operalia. He is also a 2009 Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. He won a George London Award, received a career grant from the Richard Tucker Foundation, and became the first countertenor to win First Place in the Houston Grand Opera Eleanor McCullom competition.

Costanzo graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University and received his Masters of Music at Manhattan School of Music. In his youth, he performed on Broadway and in Broadway National Tours including A Christmas Carol, The Sound of Music, and Falsettos. He began his operatic endeavors playing Miles in The Turn of the Screw, and with an appearance alongside Luciano Pavarotti.

Stage director, choreographer, and dancer, Zack Winokur, born in Boston, Massachusetts, is a graduate of The Juilliard School and Concord Academy.  Upcoming performances in the 2017/18 season include a new production of Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea at the Cincinnati Opera, an immersive pairing of Gluck's Orfeo and Matthew Aucoin's Orphic Moment at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater, Monteverdi's Il Ballo delle Ingrate with William Christie at Juilliard, and Sondheim's A Little Night Music at the Royal Theatre Carré in Amsterdam. He also choreographs Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Dutch National Opera, Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie at Juilliard, remounts his production of Ana Sokolović's Svadba at the Festival Ljubljana, collaborates with grime artist Pepstar on a short film, and gives masterclasses at the Dutch National Opera Academy and New York University. 

Zack Winokur's most recent production seen in New York City, Cavalli's Venetian baroque masterpiece La Calisto for The Juilliard School, was hailed as "one of the most elegant and imaginative shows seen in New York this season" in Opera News, garnered rave reviews in a plethora of other publications including The New York Times and Vogue, and received a nomination for Best Production of the Year in Opernwelt, the only American production to be nominated. Additional productions include the The New Prince (Dutch National Opera, world premiere), Svadba (Festival d'Aix-en-Provence; Grand Theatre de Luxembourg, European premiere), Dido and Aeneas (La Nuova Musica at St John's Smith Square), A Study on Effort (Luminato Festival, named one of the top three shows in Toronto by The Globe and Mail in 2016), A Flowering Tree (Opera Omaha), Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, La Monnaie, Aldeburgh Music, DNO), Der Kaiser von Atlantis (Central City Opera, Juilliard Opera), Most of the Boys (Royal Opera House, world premiere), Mesh (International Contemporary Ensemble, world premiere), Triptych (Museum of Arts and Design), and a restaging of Episode 31 by Alexander Ekman for the Joffrey Ballet. He also co-directed, with Mary Birnbaum, a special performance in the Supreme Court for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 82nd birthday.

Zack Winokur has worked on film with Academy Award-nominated director Mike Figgis, collaborating on Burlington Project, a commission from the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and Dancing on Glass, with pianist Rosey Chan and fashion house Boudicca, which was exhibited in Paris, London, Beijing, Tokyo, and Barcelona. His choreography also has been seen in the music video The Virus for A Tribe Called Red; at David Lynch's Club Silencio and the Centre Pompidou; and in installations that took over the entire Royal Opera House, Covent Garden over the course of three days.

Matthew Aucoin is an American composer, conductor, writer, and pianist. He is the newly-appointed Artist-in-Residence at Los Angeles Opera. This position fuses his work as composer and conductor, from conducting the LA premiere of Philip Glass's Akhnaten, to composing a new full-length work which will premiere in a future season, to serving as the company's advisor on new music and working regularly with members of its opera studio.

In the 2014-15 season, Aucoin conducted the premieres of two of his operas: Crossing, at Boston's American Repertory Theater (directed by Diane Paulus); and Second Nature, a chamber opera for the young, at Lyric Opera of Chicago. He is currently at work on a new opera for the Metropolitan Opera / Lincoln Center Theater's New Works program.

In October 2016, pianist Conor Hanick and the Alabama Symphony gave the first performances of Aucoin's first piano concerto, commissioned by The Gilmore Foundation. Last season, his song cycle Merrill Songs was premiered by tenor Paul Appleby at Carnegie Hall. Violinist Jennifer Koh commissioned and debuted Aucoin's new solo violin work resolve for the New York Philharmonic Biennale and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

Aucoin has recently made orchestral conducting debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; the Rome Opera Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago (a special event featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma); opera productions have included Music Academy of the West (The Bartered Bride, as well as his own chamber opera Second Nature); Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, Italy (Le Nozze di Figaro) and Juilliard Opera (Eugene Onegin). 

Aucoin is a 2012 graduate of Harvard College, where he studied with the poet Jorie Graham; and a 2013 recipient of a graduate diploma in composition from The Juilliard School, where he studied with composer Robert Beaser. Shortly before he graduated from Harvard, Aucoin was hired as the youngest Assistant Conductor in the history of the Metropolitan Opera, where he worked with Thomas Adès, James Levine, and Valery Gergiev.

Aucoin remains an active pianist and regularly collaborates with violinist Keir GoGwilt, as well as many of the world's leading opera singers, including Renée Fleming, Paulo Szot, Rod Gilfry, and Anthony Roth Costanzo. An accomplished writer, Aucoin's essays and poetry have appeared in The Yale Review, The Colorado Review, The Boston Globe, and The Harvard Advocate. He has served as guest lecturer for the New York Shakespeare Society and a guest host for New York's WQXR. 

A pianist that "defies human description" for some (Concerto Net) and recalls "a young Peter Serkin" for others (The New York Times), Conor Hanick has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. In performances ranging from the early Baroque to the newly written, Mr. Hanick has collaborated with some of the world's leading ensembles and conductors, including Pierre Boulez, David Robertson, and James Levine. Described as a "true champion of contemporary music" (NPR), Mr. Hanick has premiered dozens of new scores, and been showcased at virtually every major performance venue in New York City. In addition to working with established composers as diverse as John Adams and Matthias Pintscher, Mr. Hanick maintains close relationships with composers of his own generation, collaborating with David Fulmer, Sam Adams, Vivian Fung, and David Hertzberg.

Conor's 2015-2016 season features concerto appearances with Jeffery Milarsky and The Juilliard Orchestra in Milton Babbitt's Second Piano Concerto at Alice Tully Hall an appearance with Alan Gilbert in György Ligeti's Piano Concerto for the New York Philharmonic Biennial at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition, Conor joins with The Metropolitan Opera Chamber Players and James Levine at Carnegie Hall in music by Pierre Boulez; the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in music of Louis Andriessen at the Park Avenue Armory; cellist Joshua Roman at Town Hall in Seattle; and pianist Pedja Muzijevic at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City. A recent finalist for the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, Conor is a graduate of Northwestern University and the Juilliard School, where he received his Masters and Doctorate degrees. He resides in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.