Were You There

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. 

Davóne Tines, deemed a "singer of immense power and fervor" by The LA Times and a "charismatic, full-voiced bass-baritone" by The New York Times, commands a broad spectrum of opera and concert performance as a singer and creator. Of his recent debut with the San Francisco Symphony, KQED writes, "In a just world, one in which fame was proportionate to talent, Davóne Tines would be as big as Kanye." Highlights from the past year include performances with the Dutch National Opera, Ojai Music Festival, London Symphony, LA Philharmonic, Orchestre national de France, and the Finnish National Opera in collaborations with Kaija Saariaho, John Adams, Matt Aucoin, Caroline Shaw, and Peter Sellars. Upcoming performances include engagements with the Baltic Sea Festival with Esa Pekka Salonen, the San Francisco Opera, Paris Opera, BAM, and the American Repertory Theater, as well as an international tour with the LA Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel.