Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Dianne Berkun Menaker, Paola Prestini, Jad Abumrad, Jessica Grindstaff: PORT(AL)

Jared Klein, Production Manager
Jason Kaiser, Stage Manager
Jeff Rowell, Audio Engineer

Rachel Katwan, Creative Producer
Duncan Sutherland, Producer
Ras Dia, Producer

Brooklyn Youth Chorus
Dianne Berkun Menaker, Founder and Artistic Director
Megan Lemley, Executive Director

VisionIntoArt
Paola Prestini, Co-Artistic Director
Jeffrey Zeigler, Co-Artistic Director
Ras Dia, Producing Director

Pomegranate Arts
Linda Brumbach & Alisa E. Regas, Executive & Creative Producers

A Note from Dianne Berkun Menaker

Ever since my first experience recording at the Agger Fish building in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, I felt a deep connection to this place – this hidden world within our city, tucked away behind gates. I loved how just a few set pieces and lights transformed this vast empty space into a kind of industrial cathedral, where our voices soared, reverberating off the steel walls and concrete floors

Coming out of a time of forced isolation, I began to think about how much our community is connected by our relationship to Brooklyn. And yet, there is so much of our history, tied to our own Brooklyn waterfront, that we knew little about. What better way to learn and explore than to investigate the Navy Yard in the creation of an original choral music production with our singers at the helm. Working with our amazing co-creative team of composers Paola Prestini and Jad Abumrad and co-librettist and director Jessica Grindstaff, we embarked on an exploration with our choristers. Through oral histories and archival materials, we started bringing to life those real life people whose stories bridge the past and present. We continue to reflect on the far reaching impacts of war and empire building, of women and people of color entering the workforce in unprecedented numbers and positions, the expression of queer life on the waterfront, and the development and modernization of industry and technology and its impact on our physical and family environments. I imagined Eugenia Farrar’s voice, the first sung sounds carried over radiotelegraph waves to a ship docked at the navy yard, blending with our young singers today, and a portal opened in my mind and heart.

As with the other original music projects that BYC has commissioned, Port(al) provides an opportunity for our young people to use their voices as a means of expressing themselves — their ideas, hopes, dreams, worries and anxieties — to create and perform work that is relevant to them in their place and their time.

Dianne Berkun Menaker, Founder & Artistic Director

A Note from Paola Prestini

I was so thrilled when Dianne approached me with the idea of exploring our port city with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus; working with them is always a joy. The focus we wanted to place on mining oral histories, and the depth we aimed for, immediately made me think of Jad, whose sound worlds and creativity I’ve long admired. I was also eager to collaborate with Jessica, and felt her affinity for movement would greatly enhance the chorus’s performance.

Our collaborative roles were fluid. Jad and I worked together on the music-he created soundscapes using recorded voices, which I then integrated into my music. We also had fun tag-teaming the writing process. Jad and Jessica collaborated on the text and Jessica and Ogemdi developed the movement aspects-the directing world was Jessica’s vision. The dramaturgy and the underlying “why” of the piece were deeply explored by all of us. Crucially, the children’s own experiences became central to our collaboration. They brought their whole selves to the project, including their complex emotions about the current state of affairs. The anxiety they feel about the future is significant, yet it exists alongside their hopes and desires, some as simple and poetic as wanting to do a handstand or fly like a seagull. These young voices join with the anxieties and hopes of those who have inhabited this spacelong  before them. Port(al) is truly a cross-generational collaboration, spanning centuries, and serves as a time capsule of our ever-evolving, beautiful city.

A Note from Jad Abumrad

First, gratitude. Paola had an early intuition to pied-piper me into this project, and I’m so grateful to her for that, and more generally to her for being who she is, a model of how to compose notes but also compose realities.  Also profound thanks and respect to Dianne for creating this miraculous choral universe and the oxygen and energy in it to propel us to this moment.  And to Jessica for her unflappable brilliance in weaving together so many moving parts.  I feel lucky to be a part of this team.

My first task on this project was to dig through archives.  I turned to Ruby Walsh, a brilliant researcher and producer who I’ve teamed up with many times.  And what we (mostly she) unearthed are the characters you will meet tonight, characters the choristers have spent two years dueting with. A dialogue across space and time.

I’ve always worked at the intersection of music and storytelling, but the process for making Port(al) was entirely new to me.   Paola and I traded scores, Jessica and I traded texts, I made sound worlds, but soon we were all doing everything, collaboratively pushing and pulling the work to achieve what I hope is a new form.

And also what I hope might be described as a new (or perhaps very old) kind of history practice.   Before historians were a profession of experts, people practiced history by writing letters to the dead.  History was personal.  They asked the ghosts for advice on how to make a world in their absence.   In Port(al), that’s what these young people are doing. Summoning the departed to walk with them as they create a new future.

A note from Jessica Grindstaff

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

-Howard Zinn

The historical themes in this work reflect back at us how far we’ve come while simultaneously reminding us of all of the rigorous work we need to do as humans to keep critically extrapolating “progress” and standing for what is righteous, ethical and joyful.

Port(al) is a gateway into the history of social movements that our city is built upon. A reminder of the sacrifice and historic brutality on which we stand as well as the first integration of women and people of color in the workplace and the early days of the queer movement on the waterfront. From Pre-Human times to Walt Whitman to Rusty Brown, the first drag king of Coney Island, we present to you just a few moments in a rich history of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

By nature, through a combination of unique geographic, historical, economic and cultural factors, areas around the water have always been the first to be exposed to new ideas and culture shifts.  The choice to touch on all of these themes with young people as our storytellers is critical.  At the start of my involvement in the project, it was made clear to me that we didn’t want to approach the choristers as just facilitators of the music.  We wanted them to be collaborators. The more I got to know them, I realized that I also wanted them to speak from their own experiences and to make those threads the fibers that would hold the tapestry together. Over the course of the past two years, we have conducted a series of interviews with the choristers.  These recordings have ultimately become a bedrock for the piece.

May we continue to keep this portal open so that the exchange of ideas, identities, and dreams will continue to flow on.

Oceans of gratitude to Dianne, Paola and Jad for this epic collaboration and to all the designers and production team who created this world we stand in tonight.  Marc Agger, steward of this space, we cannot thank you enough.

At the end of the day, give your loudest cheers for fiercely the talented kids that make up the Brooklyn Youth Chorus!  It’s been a privilege.

Dianne Berkun Menaker, Concert Ensemble Conductor
Scott Semanski, Bass Ensemble Conductor
Kyle Henning, Director of Program Operations
Elspeth Collard, Concert Ensemble Chorus Manager
Christa Chiovarelli, Bass Ensemble Chorus Manager
Aleeza Meir, Concert Ensemble Pianist
Rachel DeVore Fogarty, Bass Ensemble Pianist

Concert Ensemble
Áine Alexander-Mullen
Lydia Bach
Safira Berrada-Riggs
Sofia Rossa Bologna Gitti
Simone Braunstein-Coulston
Milena Broesche-Jones
Leah Brown
Mae Burke
Evelyn Cribbs
Zadia Danon
Josie Devlin
Kai Don
Laïa Dorais
Zoe Drubetskoy
Matilda Endres
Laila Gilabert
Charlotte Golden
Tessa Goldwasser
Talia Greenland
Kendall Hollmon
Victoria Johnson
Vivian Kravet
Gertrude Lipkin
Melina Mays
Lucy Mellon
Lucy Nadoban
Maahika Nair
Hanah Park
Stella Santos Hendricks
Savannah Savas
Niko Sembo
Livia simmons
Vaikuntha Tamayo
Eve van den Brulle
Arlo Zidell

Bass Ensemble
Martino D’Agostino
Emmanuel Gray
Carter Hollmon
Phineas Kelly
Conor Landauer
Ruslan Lymarenko
Kevin Russell
Finn Sethi
Isaac Stobbe
Owen Swift

BROOKLYN YOUTH CHORUS is a Grammy Award-winning ensemble, led by Founder & Artistic Director Dianne Berkun Menaker, that has collaborated with an impressive range of organizations and artists including the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The National, David Byrne, Davóne Tines, Wye Oak, Bon Iver, Shara Nova, International Contemporary Ensemble, William Brittelle, London Symphony Orchestra, Barbra Streisand, Sir Elton John, and Grizzly Bear.

Recordings of the Chorus have been featured in major motion pictures, commercials, and live events, including several tracks on The National’s concept album I Am Easy To Find, a new work by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke for rag & bone’s Spring 2016 collection, Chanel Paris’s 2019 Capsule campaign featuring Pharrell Williams, and Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s OTR II World Tour. As a bold commissioner and producer of new music, the Chorus has introduced into the repertoire more than 120 original works and world premieres by contemporary composers, including collaborations with Pulitzer Prize-winning composers Caroline Shaw, Tania León, and David Lang, the influential and visionary composer/pianist Philip Glass, Blues and R&B powerhouse Toshi Reagon, iconic British DJ Bishi, The National’s Bryce Dessner, and ubiquitous indie-classical superstar Nico Muhly.

In 2002, the Chorus made its debut with the New York Philharmonic in John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls, the recording for which the Chorus won a Grammy Award in 2005.

Brooklyn Youth Chorus has garnered a strong reputation as an arts producer. In 2019, Silent Voices: Lovestate premiered Off-Broadway at The New Victory Theater. Previous productions include the first two installments of the inclusive, social justice-oriented Silent Voices series (BAM 2017; National Sawdust 2018); Black Mountain Songs (BAM Next Wave Festival 2014); and Tell the Way (St. Ann’s Warehouse 2011). The Chorus has released two albums through New Amsterdam Records—Silent Voices (2018) and Black Mountain Songs (2017)—and has appeared at important contemporary music festivals including the Ecstatic Music Festival, MusicNOW, 21c Liederabend, Barbican Mountain and Waves Festival, and the PROTOTYPE Festival.

Most recently, the Chorus collaborated with acclaimed opera singer and Brooklyn Youth Chorus Artist Mentor Davóne Tines and Brooklyn Youth Chorus Artistic Advisor Arreon A. Harley Emerson to create AND SING!, a concert at BAM that examined choral music of the Black Diaspora and featured singers from all three of the Chorus’ performing ensembles.

With the support of a generous innovation grant from The Diamonstein-Spielvogel Foundation, the Chorus has created the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Youth and Contemporary Music Initiative to expand its emphasis on the importance of contemporary music, including commissioning, collaborating with living composers and performers, and deep explorations on the repertoire and performance practices of different musical genres. Through this major initiative, choristers work with artists such as Melanie Charles, Rebecca Ringle Kamarei, Laquita Mitchell, Karen Slack, and Davóne Tines as artist mentors and masterclass clinicians, as well as composers-in-residence including Kenyon Duncan, Yaz Lancaster, Alev Lenz, and Angélica Negrón.

Founded in 1992, Brooklyn Youth Chorus has served nearly 10,000 students, with more than 500 students a year currently enrolled in its after-school and public-school programs. The Chorus’s professional faculty teach a wide range of repertoire and styles using founding artistic director Dianne Berkun Menaker’s proven Cross-Choral Training® method, emphasizing healthy and versatile vocal technique, music theory, sight-singing and ear training. Classes take place at their Cobble Hill headquarters and neighborhood locations in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Heights, and Carroll Gardens.

DIANNE BERKUN MENAKER is the Founder & Artistic Director of Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Under her visionary leadership for 33 seasons, the Chorus has become one of the most highly regarded ensembles in the country and has stretched the artistic boundaries for the youth chorus.

Hailed by The New York Times as “a remarkable choral conductor,” Ms. Berkun Menaker has prepared choruses for performances with acclaimed conductors including Alan Gilbert, Marin Alsop, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel, Reinbert de Leeuw, and Lorin Maazel. She has also collaborated with an impressive range of organizations and artists including the New York Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, Joe Hisaishi, The National, David Byrne, Wye Oak, Bon Iver, Shara Nova, London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, Barbra Streisand, Arcade Fire, Sir Elton John, and Grizzly Bear. In 2002, she prepared the Chorus for its debut with the New York Philharmonic in John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls, the recording for which the Chorus won a Grammy Award in 2005.

Ms. Berkun Menaker has also prepared the Chorus for recordings with The National, Bon Iver, Fatoumata Diawara, Tyondai Braxton, Paola Prestini, Philip Glass, Wye Oak, Cécile McLorin Salvant, and Grizzly Bear.

She has developed an active commissioning program, born out of a desire to showcase the Chorus’s versatility and uniquely beautiful sound and has collaborated with some of the most important composers of our time, resulting in more than 120 original works and world premieres by contemporary composers, including collaborations with Pulitzer Prize-winners Caroline Shaw, Tania León, David Lang, Nico Muhly,  Angélica Negrón, Bryce Dessner, Paola Prestini, Nathalie Joachin, Paul Moravec, Toshi Reagon, Alev Lenz, Anna Clyne, Aleksandra Vrebalov, John King, and William Brittelle.

Ms. Berkun Menaker also has a strong reputation as an arts producer, having developed numerous original choral/theater productions for the stage, with the most recent production, Silent Voices: Lovestate, premiering Off-Broadway at The New Victory Theater in 2019. Previous productions include the first two installments of the inclusive, social justice-oriented Silent Voices series (BAM 2017; National Sawdust 2018); Black Mountain Songs (BAM Next Wave Festival 2014); and Tell the Way (St. Ann’s Warehouse 2011). The Chorus has released two albums through New Amsterdam Records—Silent Voices (2018) and Black Mountain Songs (2017)—and has appeared at important contemporary music festivals including the Ecstatic Music Festival, MusicNOW, 21c Liederabend, Barbican Mountain and Waves Festival, and the PROTOTYPE Festival.

In 2022, Ms. Berkun Menaker served as Associate Music Producer for Euphoria by Julian Rosefeldt, commissioned by Park Avenue Armory and starring Cate Blanchet.

Ms. Berkun Menaker is a regular choral clinician and teaching artist for such organizations as the New York Philharmonic and The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall and has also presented workshops and master classes for New York University, New York State School Music Association, the American Choral Directors Association, and the New York City Department of Education. In 2023, she was recognized by the American Academy of Teachers of Singing with their 2023 AATS Award for outstanding achievements in the field.

She is the creator of Cross-Choral Training®, a proven holistic and experiential approach to developing singers in a group setting encompassing functional voice training pedagogy for healthy, authentic singing across a range of musical styles and music literacy and sight-singing approaches based on experiential and sequential learning. Cross-Choral Training is now available as a digital course produced by Anthony Roth Costanzo, in collaboration with his organization SCENE.

JAD ABUMRAD (Co-Composer, Co-Librettist, Co-Creator) (b. Syracuse/New York) is a composer, musician and storyteller who lives in Brooklyn.He is the host and creator of several podcasts (Radiolab, More Perfect, Dolly Parton’s America) that collectively are downloaded over 130 million times a year.He’s been hailed for his unique ability to combine cutting edge sound-design, cinematic storytelling and a personal approach to explaining complex topics, from the stochasticity of tumor cells to the legal foundations of the war on terror. Jad studied creative writing and music composition at Oberlin College in Ohio.He wrote much of the music for Radiolab and continues to compose music for film, television, theater and live ensembles.Amongst his many current collaborations, he’s scoring a new commission for the Dance troupe Pilobolus, composing an album of Nocturnes along with a “sleep opera” (i.e. an opera performed by live waking performers but conducted via brainwave by a sleeping human).Jad has received three Peabody Awards, the highest honor in broadcasting. And in 2011 he received the prestigious MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. He’s currently a Distinguished Professor of Research at Vanderbilt University.

JESSICA GRINDSTAFF (Co-Librettist, Co-Creator) is a New York City-based visual artist, writer, director and co-founder of Phantom Limb Company. For the past decade, Jessica has created a trilogy exploring humans’ relationship to nature or the environment, through several different lenses with her partner Erik Sanko. This work has taken her to Antarctica; on an expedition to discover the oldest living tree in the world; and finally to Fukushima, where the tsunami and subsequent nuclear meltdown of 2011 have devastated a tremendous area of Northern Japan to this day.  These pieces have been performed across the United States and internationally. Her work in theatre is collaborative, image based, and intuitive, using a collage-like approach  while centering on the intersection of puppetry, movement, and storytelling. Recently, Jessica has extended an arm into television and film. She is currently writing, directing, and executive producing several projects with a focus on women that have transcended all ideas of what it is to be a woman and a creative phenomenon. She continues to collaborate with her partner Erik Sanko and will travel to Norway in 2025 for a residency for their next Phantom Limb theatrical collaboration: an existential circus work. She has taught, workshopped, and lectured around the world at AFUK in Copenhagen Denmark, NYU Abu Dhabi and NYC, The New School, Victoria College of Art, Melbourne Australia, Dartmouth College, Maryland Institute College of Art, UCLA, CAL Arts, and others.

PAOLA PRESTINI (Co-Composer and Co-Creator) has collaborated with poets, filmmakers, and scientists in large-scale multimedia works that chart her interest in themes ranging from the cosmos to the environment. She has created, written and produced projects such as the world’s largest and first communal VR opera, The Hubble Cantata, and the eco-documentary The Colorado. Her opera Sensorium Ex dives into community impact and AI-bridging her love of collaboration with system building. Her work has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Opera, Los Angeles Opera, San Diego Opera, Bellas Artes, and at the Festival Dei Due Mondi in Italy. She has been a resident at MASS MoCA, the Park Avenue Armory, the American Academy in Rome, and at Sundance. Prestini is a Co-Founder of VisionIntoArt, a non-profit new music and interdisciplinary arts production company in New York City and is the Co-Founder/ArtisticDirector of the non-profit music organization National Sawdust.

ANNE DEMELO (Associate Director) is a director and writer working across theatre, opera, and film. She develops and directs energetic, genre-melting interdisciplinary and intertextual work that often draws on and re-frames old stories, archival materials, and historical texts. Music, collaboration and community-making are at the core of her practice. Her stage direction has been seen at Ars Nova’s ANTFest, The Bushwick Starr, Exponential Festival at The Brick, JACK, LaMama Galleria, Pipeline, Prague Fringe, LPAC, and Columbia University, among others; her production of Ellen McLaughlin’s The Trojan Women was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. In 2023, Anne was the Creative Director for GRAMMY Award-winning duo Rodrigo y Gabriela’s national tour, In Between Thoughts. Her debut short film, I Have Love In Me, is currently on the festival circuit. As an Associate and Assistant Director, Anne has collaborated on two world premieres subsequently recognized by the Pulitzer Prize, several international opera tours, and at cultural institutions including BAM Next Wave, LA Opera/REDCAT, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Detroit Opera, Atlantic Theater Company, and the Prototype Festival. She is an Associate Editor at 53rd State Press. Anne completed her MFA as a John Wells Directing Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in May 2022. www.annececeliademelo.com

GARY GRAHAM (Costume Designer) Clothing designer Gary Graham launched his first collection of women’s apparel in New York City in 1999. Respected for its exquisite detailing, sophisticated craftsmanship and historical erudition, the line was sold at select luxury retailers worldwide (Barney’s Japan, Dover Street Market, Trois Pommes Switzerland) and beginning in 2009, at the Gary Graham flagship retail store in downtown New York’s Tribeca neighborhood. In 2018 Graham relocated to rural Franklin, New York and his eponymous brand was reborn as GaryGraham422. Production has been reconfigured as small-batch fabrication, featuring unique interventions to one-of-a-kind fabrics. The studio’s rural locale has inspired new historical narratives and encouraged experimentation with rare antique textiles, while expanding production of Graham’s signature custom print fabrics and custom engineered jacquards. Raised in Delaware, Graham studied painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art and earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was honored as a CFDA/Vogue award finalist in 2009 and received the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Legend of Fashion award in 2010. Outside of designing his own line, he has created textile collections for commercial interiors fabric manufacturer Pollack NY, designed a collection of single piece one-of-a-kind women’s wear in a collaboration with Asian retailer Joyce Hong Kong, and has licensed 2 seasons of a ready-to-wear line to online retailer Amazon. In 2024 he designed the costumes for Kara Walker’s SFMOMA installation, Fortuna and The Immortality Garden (Machine) currently on view. His work has been exhibited at Hancock Shaker Village, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the American Folk Art Museum, and is held as part of the permanent collections of the Peabody Essex Museum, the American Folk Art Museum, the Phoenix Museum of Art, and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

RYAN HALL (Sound Designer) New York: Cult of Love, Breaking the Story, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (2021 Update), Toros, Spun, Making Myth, Promised, Uproute, Versus, A Serious Banquet.  Regional: Uncle Vanya, Next Fall, Ruined, Frindle, and Oh, What a Lovely War!

CYNTHIA HOPKINS (‘Rusty Brown’) MA, MT-BC is a Doris Duke artist, music therapist, yoga instructor, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and internationally acclaimed musical performance artist. She has produced eight performance works, eight albums of original music, and one museum installation. Her work has been honored with many awards, including a 2015 Doris Duke Artist Award and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship. Ms. Hopkins also collaborates with others as a performer, composer, and musician, and most recently released Blackbird at the Well, a collection of Fellwalker songs (fellwalkermusic.com). She believes in the power of creativity to transform suffering into magnificence.

TARA KHOZEIN (‘Eugenia Farrar’ , on film) is a soprano, theatre-maker, improviser, teacher, and song-maker. As a multidisciplinary performer, she explores the intersections of classical singing, pan-idiomatic vocal sounds, concert music, and physical theatre. After her formal education in classical singing and physical theater, Tara lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she directed circus, immersive, operetta, and children’s performances, and established her vocal improvisation practice. While in New Mexico, she became a company member of Theater Grottesco, and contributed vocal recordings to multiple projects in Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return, where she later served as the primary content director for immersive performance. She moved to Budapest, Hungary at the end of 2019, and established an online voice studio during the pandemic, where she continues to teach students from around the world. Her recent creative projects include central roles in two world premieres by Ondrej Adámek: Connection Impossible (Ensemble Modern, Bregenzer Festspiele) and INES (Oper Köln); vocal performance in Once Within a Time, by Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass; creative and music direction for Stereo Akt’s secret public space concert SoundFishing in Budapest; and the central role in Samu Gryllus’s interactive documentary opera, Geiseloper. She is a member of the improvisation bands Kat and the Devil and PONT; JazzaJ’s Budapest Improvisers Orchestra and Timo Kinnunen’s International Experimental Orchestra; and she is a familiar face in the Central European free improvisation scenes, and a new face in New York’s. She has released four duo improvisation albums: Amuse-Bouches (2025) with Rhonda Taylor; Live at Lumen (2023) with singer/composer Thea Soti; Burdeo – Buda – Bridges (2022) with Etienne Rolin; and Iterations (2021) with Carlos Santistevan. She also has a live-performance-only solo voice anti-album called Until there is nothing left to forgive (2025) which she made with fine artist Zahra Marwan. She contributed a song used in Aida Shirazi’s “Yearning, Every Dawn” which premiered at Ojai Festival in 2023, and has an ever-evolving solo show called “in-to-out” (2019-2025). A vocal improvisation album with visual artist and gibberish emperor Brian Belott and one with pianist/composer/vocalist Ernő Rubik are also in the ether. Tara is based in Brooklyn, NY

ERIK SANKO (Foley Designer & Music for ‘Rusty Brown’) is best known as a fixture of the NYC downtown music scene, having recorded and toured with John Cale, Yoko Ono, Gavin Friday, Jim Carroll, James Chance and the Contortions among others as well as being a 16-year veteran of The Lounge Lizards and his own band, Skeleton Key. He recently started Knife Thrower, a new rock band inspired by the paintings of Franz Kline and is presently playing with SQÜRL, founded by film maker Jim Jarmusch. Erik is also the co-founder and co-artistic director of Phantom Limb, a theater company founded with his wife, director and set designer Jessica Grindstaff in which he is puppet designer and composer. He has taught Puppetry and Performance and Biomimicry and Puppetry at Rhode Island School of Design and Puppetry/Object Manipulation at NYU and The New School. He holds a B.F.A. from Cooper Union.

S KATY TUCKER (Video and Projection Designer) designs video and projection for live performance, working frequently in opera, theater and collaborating with composers and musicians. Her work has been seen internationally, including Broadway, The Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, New York City Ballet, Carnegie Hall, Park Avenue Armory, BAM, San Francisco Opera, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dutch National Opera, Sydney Opera House, and the Canadian Opera Company, among others.  She began her career as a painter and video installation artist, exhibiting her work at a variety of galleries, such as the Corcoran Museum, Dupont Underground, Artist’s Space in New York City and a video installation co-designed with Blake Manns titled Stone Memory, commissioned by The Kennedy Center. Tucker periodically works in television and on events for Drew Findley Productions as a screens producer and animator.  For DFP she has worked on The Emmy’s, Netflix’s Rhythm + Flow 2, the American Music Awards, The Soul Train Awards, and BlizzCon. Tucker was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for Letters from Max, a Ritual. Recent productions include Smashon Broadway with director Susan Stroman,   Das Rheingold and Die Walkure at Teatro alla Scala, Tannhauser (Houston Grand Opera),   Medea with Sir David McVicar (Metropolitan Opera, Canadian Opera Company and Greek National Opera), Florencia en al Amazonas, Eurydice, Peter Grimes, Verdi’s Requiem, and Prince Igor (Metropolitan Opera), Florencia en el Amazonas (Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, and Washington National Opera), Rebecca Das Musical (Vereinigte Bühnen Wien), Klangwolke 23 (Brucknerhaus), and Turandot, MacBeth, Fidelio, Elektra, Don Giovanni, and Samson and Delilah (Washington National Opera). Upcoming: The Ring Cycle (La Scala), Lunar Eclipse (2nd Stage), Medea (Lyric Opera of Chicago) and (Re)volution of Steve Jobs (Washington National Opera).

KYLEE LOERA (Video & Projection Designer) is video designer and content creator/editor for live theatre based in New York. Some design credits include: 92nd Street Y Kaufman Concert Hall (LOUDER THAN WORDS: THE SONGS AND LEGACY OF JONATHAN LARSON, REBEL WITH A CAUSE: NINA SIMONE, SOUL PICNIC: THE SONGS AND LEGACY OF LARA NYRO, COCKEYED OPTIMIST) 59e59 Theaters (THE LIGHT AND THE DARK) Washington National Opera Kennedy Center (GODS AND MORTALS, FIDELIO) The Kennedy Center (CHRONICLES OF NINA: WHAT NOW?) The Muny St. Louis (FROZEN, LA CAGE AUX FOLLIES, JERSEY BOYS, ANYTHING GOES, BEAUTIFUL, LEGALLY BLONDE, CAMELOT) Shepherd School of Music Rice University (GHOSTS OF VERSAILLES) Theater Under the Stars Houston (NEWSIES) Pittsburgh CLO (YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, THE COLOR PURPLE). Associate Designer MET Opera (FLORENCIA EN EL AMAZONAS, CHAMPION) Orpheum (BIG GAY JAMBOREE). More at kloeradesign.com

OGEMDI UDE (Choreographer) is a dance and interdisciplinary artist, educator, and doula based in Brooklyn. Her performance work focuses on Black femme legacies and futures, grief, and memory. Her work has been presented at The Kitchen, Gibney, Harlem Stage, Danspace Project, Abrons Arts Center, BRIC, ISSUE Project Room, Recess Art, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Center for Performance Research, and for BAM’s DanceAfrica festival. As an educator, she has taught at The New School, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, and University of the Arts. She is a 2025-2028 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, 2024 NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant recipient, a Live Feed Residency Artist at New York Live Arts, and a 2024/2025 BAX Artist-in-Residence. She has been a 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, 2021 danceWEB Scholar, 2021 Laundromat Project Create Change Artist-in-Residence, and a 2019-2020 Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU Resident Fellow. In January 2022 she appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine for their annual “25 to Watch” issue. Most recently, she has published a book Watch Me in a collection edited by Thomas DeFrantz and Annie-B Parson: Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study published by Dancing Foxes Press and Wesleyan University Press.

RAS DIA (Producer) is a Brooklyn-born producer and arts administrator whose work has been described as “stirring” (Washington Post), “bracing, compelling, and heartbreaking” (Musical America), and “grippingly produced” (The Boston Globe). He serves as Deputy Director, Creative Projects at National Sawdust, and as Producing Director of VisionIntoArt (VIA), where he leads commissions and productions supported by National Sawdust such as Primero sueño with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sensorium, a groundbreaking opera and social impact project at the intersection of disability and artificial intelligence, and We Were Fridays, a cultural heritage and music project inspired by diaspora, collective imagination, and co-creation, in addition to producing creative initiatives such as the National Sawdust/VIA Impact Lab Fellowship program. Ras previously served as the Creative Producer at Little Island, a public park and arts organization developed by the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation, where he helped to lead and curate its first three seasons, as the Assistant Producer of the Metropolitan Opera’s Peabody- and Emmy award-winning Live in HD series, and as the Managing Director of the New York City Master Chorale, in addition to marketing, development, production, and administrative roles with the National Children’s Chorus, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Carnegie Hall, and The New School, where he supported programs for immigrant, refugee, and survivor communities across New York City. Past projects include Heartbeat Opera’s BREATHING FREE: a visual album, the Frederick R. Koch Foundation’s Townhouse Series, San Francisco Symphony’s MTT25: An American Icon, and San Francisco Opera’s In Song. Ras is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Purchase College (SUNY), and the Boy’s Choir of Harlem.

RACHEL KATWAN (Creative Producer) is an arts administrator living in Brooklyn, New York. She currently serves as the General Manager for Pomegranate Arts, a Creative Producer dedicated to the realization of international performing arts projects. Since 2016, Katwan has served on Pomegranate’s core producing team for large scale works by artists including Philip Glass, Lucinda Childs, Taylor Mac, Robin Frohardt, Bassem Youssef and for North American multi-city tours of the Batsheva Dance Company and Japan’s Sankai Juku. In 2023, on behalf of Pomegranate she served as the lead festival producer for the Onassis Foundation’s Archive of Desire: A Festival Inspired by the Poet C. P. Cavafy curated by composer Paola Prestini. Katwan previously served in various roles at the Brooklyn Academy of Music from 2004-2016 and was a key member on the internal producing team for some of the Academy’s most ambitious programming initiatives including the city-wide Muslim Voices: Art & Ideas (2009), The Bridge Project international tours (2009-12), multi venue Si Cuba Festival (2011), three seasons of RadioLoveFest (2014-16), and the beloved annual DanceAfrica program.

JARED KLEIN (Production Manager, Lighting Designer) is an Artist-in-Residence and the Technical Director for the Skidmore College Theater Department. Select ligh’ng design credits at Skidmore include: Eurydice, Somewhere, Radium Girls, The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, We Used To Wear Bonnets & Get High All The Time, 33 VariaEons, Let The Right One In, Balm In Gilead, Fragments, Who Will Carry The Word, Our Town and Blood Wedding. Select visiting artist design collaborations include: Joel Mellin, Phil Soltanoff, Joe Diebes, Sara Juli, Howard Fishman, STREB, SITI and NYSSSA Dance. Previously, Jared was the Production Manager and Technical Director for BRIC Arts Media Brooklyn where he opened their state-of-the-art facility in the heart of downtown Brooklyn’s cultural district, and production managed the inaugural season. Prior to that, Jared spent six years as the Technical Director and Resident Designer for the Tech and Design program at Adelphi University. In addition to more than a decade of educational experience, Jared has twenty years of professional experience as a Technical Director, Lighting/ Video Designer, and Produc’on Manager for both theatrical and industrial design companies throughout the US and Europe. He was a member and resident Lighting/Video Designer with the New York-based experimental theater company, Fovea Floods, and a founding member of the Obie award-winning Bushwick Starr Theater in Brooklyn. International lighting design and technical direction credits include: Movement Live (NYU Abu Dhabi & Lincoln Center), Big Art Group’s House of No More, Shelf Life, and Flicker. NYC design credits include: Cassandra (Helga Davis, BRIC),Minority and Glee (Nina Winthrop & Dancers, The Flea Theater),The ResisEble Rise of Arturo Ui (Fovea Floods, Ontological-Hysteric Theater), One for the Road (Fovea Floods, CSV), The Maids (Fovea Floods, Bushwick Starr), and House of No More (Big Art Group, PS122).

DUNCAN SUTHERLAND (Producer)

VISIONINTOART (VIA)  is an interdisciplinary arts production company, led by composer Paola Prestini, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, and creative producer Ras Dia. VIA creates, produces and curates visionary art and music projects which expand the frontiers of culture – pioneering creative practices guided by the belief that equity is a central driver of artistic innovation. Through this work, VIA strives to empower and uplift artists in building new modes of expression, grounded in their unique experiences and identities, all while expanding the ways in which audiences and local communities can engage with the creative process and artistic works. Major works include: Primero Sueño, a processional opera commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Live Arts (MetLiveArts) and VIA, co-composed by Paola Prestini and jazz icon Magos Herrera, and directed by Louisa Proske, and made for The Met Cloisters (January 2025) which will make its Mexican premiere and subsequent tour in December 2025. The world premiere of Sensorium Ex – an ambitious new opera by librettist Brenda Shaughnessy and composer Paola Prestini, co-directed by Jerron Herman and Jay Scheib, and music directed by Elizabeth Askren – synthesizes artificial intelligence, disability, and the arts in a groundbreaking and innovative artistic work. The project is focused on devising community-centered practices for artists with disabilities and presented at Common Senses Festival in Omaha, NE (May 2025), and was most recently developed as part of UnMute ArtsAbility Festival in Cape Town (Africa’s premier disability-led inclusive arts festival), as well as in collaboration with The Shed, Performance Space NY, and with The REACH and Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center. We Were Fridays is a project exploring relationships between diaspora, music and memory, in development with the Penn Center and National Sawdust with music by Tamar-kali, Etienne Charles, Hannah Ishizaki, Jeffrey Zeigler, and choreography by Reggie ‘Regg Roc’ Gray. And, a forthcoming opera project commissioned by Spoleto Festival USA with music by Paola Prestini, libretto by Robin Coste Lewis, and executive produced by Ava DuVernay. VIA projects are made possible with generous support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mellon, Ford, Doris Duke, Achelis & Bodman, and Alphadyne Foundations.

Since 1998, POMEGRANATE ARTS has worked in close collaboration with a small group of contemporary artists and arts institutions to bring bold and ambitious artistic ideas to fruition. Creative and executive producers Linda Brumbach and Alisa E. Regas, along with their committed team at Pomegranate Arts, have produced the Olivier Award-winning revival of Einstein on the Beach; Taylor Mac’s epic A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, Holiday Sauce, and now – their third collaboration together, along with composer Matt Ray – a rock opera meditation on queerness calledBark of Millions; the touring production of Ambrose Akinmusire and Aszure Barton’s A a | a B : B E N D; Available Light by John Adams, Lucinda Childs and Frank Gehry; Robin Frohardt’s The Plastic Bag Store and Home Depot Parking Lot; Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch’s Shockheaded Peter; and the Drama Desk Award-winning production of Charlie Victor Romeo. In recent years, Linda and Alisa have expanded the vision of the company by producing in non-performative mediums, including their first feature documentary film Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music (HBO Original Doc), the film short Taylor Mac’s Whitman in the Woods (ALL ARTS), and museum installations for Machine Dazzle. Their first book, a special box set edition of Philip Glass Piano Etudes: The Complete Folios 1-20 with Essays by Fellow Artists, was published by Artisan Books in October 2023. In addition to our own productions, Pomegranate Arts is proud to support North American touring for Batsheva Dance Company and Sankai Juku.

Brooklyn Youth Chorus gratefully acknowledges the lead donors of Port(al), without whom this project would not be possible.

This project is made possible with the generous support of

CHARLES J. AND IRENE F. HAMM

THE DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL FOUNDATION
MARC AGGER OF THE AGGER FISH BUILDING
THE ARTHUR F. AND ALICE E. ADAMS CHARITABLE FOUNDATION
GARYGRAHAM422

The commissioning of Port(al) was made possible with major support from The Diamonstein-Spielvogel Youth and Contemporary Music Initiative.

The premiere of Port(al) is dedicated to the 60th Anniversary of the passage of the NYC landmarks law, the legislation that created the Landmarks Preservation commission and established the preservation law in New York City.

Additional Support Provided By:

Jacqueline and Joseph Aguanno
Henry and Karoly Gutman – In Memory of Grace and Bill Gutman

Special thanks to 5Ohm, Duggal Visual Solutions, PRG, Brian Floody and the Brooklyn Conservatory Community Orchestra, Skidmore College Theater Department.

Port(al) was developed with the support of a residency at PS21 : Center for Contemporary Performance in Chatham, NY.

The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice P. Ditson Fund at Columbia University, the BMI Foundation, New Music USA, The Williamson Foundation, The Heineman Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts. 

INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT:

PS21 BUSINESS SPONSORS:

A vibrant center for contemporary performance in the Hudson Valley, PS21 “presents work that challenges and invites” (The New York Times). Our adventurous productions by leading and emerging American and international artists showcase what’s new and thought-provoking in music, contemporary circus, dance, theater—and in entirely new genres. Largely supported by our generous donors, we’re a must-see, must-experience destination for performances that you won’t find anywhere else, at ticket prices that welcome all.

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