Artist Bio’s
Patrick Keppel, librettist, co-director
Stories from Patrick Keppel’s collection of fiction, The Monologist, have appeared in The Literary Review, The Berkeley Fiction Review, Tamaqua, and the entire collection is featured on the web journal Web del Sol. In 2004 his story "A Vectorial History of Leroy Pippin" was read by Eli Wallach at Symphony Space in New York as part of NPR's Selected Shorts program. His plays have been presented at The Boston Playwrights' Theatre, The Huntington Theatre's Studio 210, the Boston University School for the Arts, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The 1999 production of his play, The Freeing of Mollie Steimer, was funded by a grant from the St. Botolph Foundation. In 2008 he presented his short play Triangle about the 1911 Triangle shirtwaist factory fire and lectured on “Form and Content in ‘Activist’ Theatre” at the annual conference of the Association for Humanist Sociology in Boston. The Freeing of Mollie Steimer and Triangle were recently archived by the Kheel Center for Labor Management at Cornell University. He is currently working on a puppet opera version of Triangle as part of a New York City artistic commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The puppet opera project has received seed grant funding from the Henson Foundation.
Keppel is the Chair of the Liberal Arts department at New England Conservatory in Boston, where he has developed a two-semester course of actor training in improvisation and scene development for new actors, the NEC Drama Workshop, and has guided Workshop productions of Ferdinand Bruckner's Pains of Youth. Neal Bell's Therese Raquin, and Sam Shepard’s Buried Child. He is currently on sabbatical from NEC to work on the puppet opera version of Triangle and to seek publication for his recently completed novel, The Loving Frotteur.
Bradley Kemp, composer, co-director
Bradley Kemp’s music opens a space for contemplation, mixing fragile textures, acoustic and electric forces, the sounds of found objects and songlike melodies. Kemp’s songs and compositions span across folk, avant-garde, ambient, electronic, and minimalist genres, writing for small ensembles and for electronics, often involving performer interpretations and theatrical elements. As an active board member of the punk-chamber ensemble Anti-Social Music (NYC) he has had several premieres in NYC and performed dozens of premiers of others' works. His music has also been performed in Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, and Graz, Austria. The Houston Symphony and Detroit Symphony, among others, have performed his orchestral arrangements, while his ambient electronic album serves as a soundtrack to artist documentaries at the Santa Barbara Museum, CA.
As a collaborator Kemp thrives on working with artists in many disciplines. In 2007 he joined with Antonietta Vicario to create and perform music for her choreography, premiering at Dance New Amsterdam (NYC), with subsequent performances at The American Dance Festival (Durham, NC) and AMBUSH (NYC). Kemp recently joined Vicario for their second evening-length collaboration at Danspace Project at St. Marks Church in Our Togetherness. The music, which featured live musicians, played upon the unique acoustics of the church, bringing attention to the reverberant sounds of the moving bodies and the sounds of crumbling paper underneath their feet. As an artist-in-residence at The Space he collaborated with painters and sculptors to create an interactive sound installation, The Game (2006), a long-time favorite at the workshop. Other collaborations include Texas Vacation performed by Anti-Social Music with original text and performance by choreographer/performance-artist Regina Rocke (2008). Kemp has also enjoyed joining the processes of choreographer Eleanor Moore (Every place I have ever lived, WAX, Brooklyn), AMDaT (Blastwall, site-specific, Dumbo, NYC), Sharpelbow (dance for film), Triiibe (performance-artists), the Masashi Harada Condanction Ensemble, choreographer Marlies Yearby, and puppeteer Kevin Augustine. He has performed at the dance and music festival Improvised and Otherwise in previous years and will be performing in their upcoming 2009 festival. On-going collaborations include his work with M.I.T. robotics engineers composing algorithmic music for the Quartet (an interactive robotic Web-driven instrument) and volunteering teaching song-writing workshops at the 826NYC literacy center.
As a double-bassist, Kemp has performed works of modern masters Cage, Feldman, Scelsi, Stockhausen, Zorn, Crumb, Druckman, and Rautavaara. He has performed with improvisers Joe Maneri, Elliot Sharp, Cooper-Moore, Steven Drury, Matana Roberts, Jeff Arnal, Gordon Beeferman, Katt Hernandez, and Masashi Herada among others. He has also performed with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Now Ensemble, Barbez, World/Inferno, Capital M and William Brittelle’s Mohair Time Warp.
Kemp has been awarded funding from Meet the Composer’s Creative Connections (05, 07, 08), the Henry Cowell Performance Incentive Fund (06), and The American Music Center’s Live Music for Dance (07).
This year Kemp also produced the music video "Douce Dame” (see upload), which demonstrates his visual aesthetics. The set for this video was created by artist Kristina Schopper, who will be commissioned to work on the sets for Triangle.
Michael Winograd, clarinet
Michael Winograd has had the honor of performing music with Joe Morris, Frank London and his Klezmer Brass All-stars, Kenny Wollesen, DJ SoCalled, Ayelet Gottleib, and Michael Alpert. Mr. Winograd has also played with the Klezmatics, the Klezmer Conservatory Band, the Beat Circus, the Himalayas, Mikveh, Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird, Shtreiml, and Lesser Panda, just to name a few.
Along with the many ensembles Winograd performs with, he currently leads his own projects, including Infection, The Foreigners, and Khevre, an ensemble that for the past four years has been exploring the possibilities of Yiddish song in contemporary settings.
Mr. Winograd, in the fall of 2006, along with his contemporaries, founded the first regular Yiddish Tanzhoyz (dance house,) in New York City, where traditional European Jewish dance is taught and explored by some of the finest musicians and dancers in the field. Winograd has also been musical director of "Kids and Yiddish" at the Folksbeine Yiddish theater in New York City for the past three years.
In 2005, Michael Winograd graduated with distinction in performance from the New England Conservatory in Boston. There he studied with Hankus Netsky, Joseph Maneri, Dominique Eade, Joe Morris, Bob Labaree and Ran Blake.
He teaches at Living Traditions' annual KlezKamp in New York and at KlezKanada outside of Montreal. Considered a modern master of the Klezmer Clarinet style, he has performed all over the US, Canada and Europe.
Jodi Eichelberger, puppeteer
Jodi Eichelberger is a puppeteer, actor, writer, director, and composer whose roles include Stingy on the television series LazyTown which airs in over 100 countries. He is also an original cast-member of the Tony award-winning musical Avenue Q on Broadway. He has written both book and music for Other Hand Productions' puppet productions of Snow Queen and Pinocchio. He has also composed music for the Raleigh Symphony and Spectre Productions. Jodi was the artistic director of Tears of Joy Theatre, the second largest puppet theatre in the United States, where he wrote and directed several premieres which were funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Jodi is currently co-director of Other Hand Productions which is a recipient of the UNIMA Citation of Excellence, the highest award available to an American puppeteer.
Lindsey Briggs, puppeteer
Lindsey “Z.” Briggs (known as Z.) has been working as a professional puppeteer for the last 5 years. She has worked in both Television and Theater with credits including: Lottie Lamb on the PBS Kids show Seemore’s Playhouse, Bloo & Eduardo for Cartoon Network’s float - Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade 2006, 2007 & 2008, Sock Puppet Interstitials for Saturday Morning Qubo TV on NBC, Ensemble Puppeteer - I Like to Move in Here music video for recording artist Moby, Ensemble Puppeteer - Bride with a world premiere at PS122 in the of Spring 2008, and Chubby in Pigeonholed a show written by Annie Evans (writer - Sesame Street) and directed by Martin P. Robinson (Telly Monster - Sesame Street). When Z is not performing puppets she can be found building in various puppet shops throughout New York, working for the Jim Henson Foundation and performing as Little Miss Gamer in the online web series of the same name.
Amy Kerrigan, vocalist, puppeteer
Amy Carrigan is a Brooklyn based singer, puppeteer, actor, experimental theater maker, working principally on projects which cross disciplines using sound, voice and movement. She is a principal artist in Experience Vocal Dance Company, a London/New York based company whose work is based on Integrative Performance Practice, where classical voice, modern movement and theatrical performance merge. She is also a chorus member for the Brooklyn based Opera company Vertical Players Repertory (VPR) whose Red Hook container port opera performances challenge the traditional. Amy is associate director of Brooklyn puppetry/theater company, Drama of Works, helping to create such pieces as the minimalistic “Warhol TM”, and the orchestra accompanied shadow show “Sleepy Hollow.” She has been with the internationally acclaimed company as a puppeteer/actor with since 1998. As a musician, she performs frequently with guitarist/songwriter Aaron Dugan in their bands Ducarriganigan and Aaron Dugan’s Booby Trap, as well as improvisationally in the New York avant jazz scene. As a solo artist she creates short interdisciplinary dance/theater pieces working with other artists to create soundscapes and utilizing multimedia forms within the pieces. This year marked Amy’s debut as a music video director/producer with the theatrical MeWithoutYou puppetry/performance video “The Fox, The Crow and The Cookie” debuting on EntertainmentWeekly.com. Amy is currently in rehearsal for Meredith Monk’s “Songs of Ascension” chorus performing at BAM this October, as well as VPR’s “A View From the Bridge.”
Michael Douglas Jones, Bass
Michael maintains a very active commitment to performing new music-theater works and opera. Most recently Michael starred in and recorded Jazz legend Anthony Braxton’s newest opera Trillium E to be released in January 2011.
In 2009, he toured the UK with 11 performances of A Chair in Love which included performances at the Buxton Arts Festival in England and the Wales Millennium Center in Cardiff. His role as man’s best friend, the Dog, was developed over a 3 year period in collaboration with Welsh composer John Metcalf, librettist Larry Trembley and stage director Keith Turnbull through improvisations in creative workshops.
Other recent performances include Dream Seminar, a Swedish project involving 26 artists from around the world in a bilingual piece based on the poetry of Tomas Tranströmer with music by American composer Ellen Lindquist and Moo, Squeal & Scratch: in the garden of shadows, a piece based on the ancient poetry of Persia featuring Michael as both Narrator and singer.
Michael won the prestigious Jessie award for “outstanding performance by an actor in a leading role” for his creation of the Marquis in 120 Songs for the Marquis de Sade (Hannan) in the world premiere co-produced by Modern Baroque Opera and Vancouver New Music. He made his international debut in Sweden, singing the lead role of Director in Kafka‘s Chimp by Welsh composer, John Metcalf. The production was sung in Swedish, preceded by the world premiere at Banff Music Centre for the Arts and sung in English. He reprised this role in a unique remounting by Quantum Theatre in Pittsburgh in February 2004 with the Pittsburgh Zoo as the venue.
Highly regarded for his appearances in works of the 20th and 21st centuries, his world premieres include Westergaard’s The Tempest as Caliban, for Opera Festival of New Jersey, and Star Catalogues (Underhill) in the leading role of Tycho Brahe for Vancouver New Music. Other performances include Der Kaiser von Atlantis (Ullman) for the Goethe Institute. Long a favorite at the Banff Centre, his appearances there include the Rogue in an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and Arthur in Peter Maxwell Davies The Lighthouse with the latter reprised with the Opera Festival of New Jersey.
Michael, who made his New York City Opera debut in Madama Butterfly, has sung Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte in Victoria, BC; Anchorage, and Sarasota; Sparafucile in Rigoletto for El Paso Opera and Anchorage; the Doktor in Wozzeck,at the Banff Centre and with Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne in Montreal; Rocco in Fidelio with the operas of Sarasota and Anchorage, the Florida Philharmonic (semi-staged), and the San Antonio Symphony; Colline in La Bohème for the operas of Florentine, El Paso, and Memphis; Timur in Turandot,, the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, and Noye in Noye’s Fludde. Concert appearances have included Stravinsky’s L’histoire du Soldat, Kagel’s Fürst Igor, Stravinsky and Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon.
Originally from Hawaii, Jones now resides in New York.
