JOHN EATON was called "The most interesting opera composer writing in America today" by Andrew Porter in The London Financial Times.  Through his vast works in a variety of mediums, he has received international recognition as a composer and performer of electronic and microtonal music, and has written over fifteen operas.

Eaton's works have been performed extensively throughout Germany, France, England, Spain, Portugal, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Israel, Japan, Korea, China and the former Soviet Union.  In America, his works have been performed by the San Francisco Opera, Cincinnati Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Santa Fe Opera, and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Festival performances include Tanglewood, Aspen, and Pepsico Summerfare.  In addition, several works have been broadcast on Public Radio and Television including his opera, Myshkin, which was seen throughout world by an estimated 15,000,000 people.

John Eaton has received several prestigious awards including a Mac Arthur Foundation "genius" award in 1990.  His music was chosen to represent the U.S.A. in 1970 at the International Rostrum of Composers (UNESCO). He has received a citation and award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, three Prix de Rome Grants, two Guggenheim Fellowships, as well as commissions from the Fromm and Koussevitsky Foundations and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  He has lectured at the Salzburg Center of American Studies, and was Composer in Residence at the American Academy in Rome. In September 2000, his career was celebrated in the American Music Center’s web site and excerpts of his operas can still be seen as well as an extended interview in the archives of http://www.newmusicbox.org.

Eaton is Professor Emeritus of Music Composition at the University of Chicago.  He taught there for 10 years and at Indiana University (Bloomington) for 20.  His compositions have been recorded by Albany, C.R.I., Indiana University Press, (American) Decca, and Tournabout, and are handled by Shawnee Press, G.Schirmer (A.M.P.) and European-American Music. 

THE POCKET OPERA PLAYERS

CARMEN TELLEZ, Conductor
Venezuelan conductor Carmen Helena Téllez is Director of the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and of the Latin American Music Center at the Indiana University School of Music, where she earned a Doctor of Music degree and is now a Professor of Conducting. Her doctoral document on Handel’s Athalia won Julius Herford National Dissertation Award in 1991. Although she regularly conducts canonic choral orchestral works at Indiana University, (most recently Berlioz’s Requiem and Orff’s Carmina Burana) she is internationally recognized for her interpretations of contemporary music, with her own groups and as a guest conductor.  She regularly commissions and premieres new works in vocal and choral-instrumental genres form the most distinguished composers of the continent. Her recording of the Missa ad Consolationis Dominam Nostram by Mexican composer Mario Lavista, which she commissioned, won the Music Critics Award as the best Recording of Mexican Classical Music in 1998. She has earned grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the US-Mexico Fund for Culture, Arts International,the United States Information Agency, the Indiana Arts Commission and others. Carmen Helena Téllez is also the founder and music director of Aguavá New Music Studio, a production group and new music ensemble, with which she has recorded two CDs and toured Latin America and Israel, earning rave reviews. Since the year 2000 Carmen has been the music director of The Pocket Opera Players. During the 2001-2002 season she was guest music director of the Chicago Contemporary Chamber Players, with which she conducted the second-ever performance of Ralph Shapey’s oratorio Praise; and in November 2002 she conducted the Midwest premiere of John Adams’ oratorio El Niño. She performed most recently in New York in March 2003, at the American Festival of Microtonal Music, when she premiered John Eaton’s Vespers with Aguavá New Music Studio.

NICHOLAS RUDALL, Director – Nicholas Rudall is the Founding director of The Court Theatre in Chicago where as artistic director for more than twenty five years he directed over fifty plays ranging from The Oresteia to Othello, The Medieval Mystery plays and Endgame. He has won six Jefferson awards for his performances, his translations and his contribution to Chicago Theatre.

This is one of many collaborations with John Eaton and the Pocket Opera Company including last year's production of Golk at Symphony Center. This last summer Mr. Rudall's translations of Oedipus, Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus opened the International Arts Festival on the Acropolis in Athens in a production by the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington DC. He has published translations of Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and Ibsen.  Mr Rudall is a Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago. 

RHODA LEVINE, NY Director              

CAROLINE DUFRESNE, Stage Manager              

ED GREER, Producer, has been involved in music and the music business for most of his life. In his homeland of Ireland he made his stage debut at the age of four and was playing semi professionally in bands by the age of twelve.

After moving with his band from Texas to New York in 1988, he became involved as a sound engineer with the Knitting Factory. Moving quickly to Production Manager and then Project Manager for the build out of the Knitting Factory in its current location in Tribeca, Greer transitioned into Club Management and was the New York General Manager for several years.

As the company developed into a major entertainment business, Greer became Senior Vice President of Club Operations and traveled extensively to investigate possible club venues in London, Berlin and Paris as well as within the US, where he was the lead person in the development and construction of Knitting Factory Los Angeles, located in Hollywood. During his 12 years with the company Greer was actively involved in several major jazz festivals as Production Coordinator and most notably the 1998 Texaco Jazz Festival where he successfully organized and produced 14 days of shows in a 1500 seat tent venue at Battery Park City.

After leaving the company in 2001 to pursue a freelance career with his company Stonefly Productions (and get married), Greer has been extremely active as both a producer and production coordinator as well as holding an array of consulting positions for entertainment and nightclub ventures.

He produced the after party for the premier of the movie "Swordfish" starring John Travolta and Halle Berry at Rockefeller Plaza which included live performances and broadcast with Warner Brothers and MTV. He is the producer for The Pocket Opera Players, an ensemble company featuring the works of McArthur Genius Award winning composer, John Eaton. He is the producer of Sonic Boom an annual festival of contemporary music and composition. He will be producing the annual theater workshop and retreat at Bard College for Voice and Vision Theater Company in July 2004. In September 2003 he was the producer for the acclaimed theatrical performances of The National Theater of Israel in their first visit to New York in 30 years, at Symphony Space. He continues to work for both the Lincoln Center Music Festival in NYC and The JVC Jazz Festival in Miami. He consults on an ongoing basis for both the Knitting Factory and the recently opened Bowery Poetry Club and was on the design team for the midtown club "The Vue", favorite hangout of Derek Jeter, Michael Douglas and Katherine Zeta-Jones. He often consults on acoustical and sound isolation issues for recording studios and clubs. He is a resident of Fort Greene in Brooklyn. 

STEPHEN QUANDT, Lighting                     

JAMES KRAFT, Fund-raiser, was head of development at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Manhattan School of Music. Before that he was a member of the consulting firm of Brakeley, John Price Jones. Now retired, he is a consultant to arts organizations. He has a doctorate in literature and has written several books of non-fiction, and has published short stories.

JAY HOFFMAN, Publicist                  

MARTIN LOPEZ, Props and Costumes                  
Martin is happy to be joining the Pocket Opera players once again.  He designed last year's productions of John Eaton's Salome's Flea Circus and Travels with Gulliver.  Originally from New Mexico, Martin received his MFA from NYU.  NYC productions include costumes for Abundance by Marty Pottenger at Dance Theatre Workshop, sets and costumes for: American Mouth by Ray Bokhour at the Fringe, and The Power and the Glory at the Storm Theatre, sets for The Tempest, also at the Storm Theatre and costumes for Adam Rapp's Trueblinka at the Maverick Theatre.  Thanks to Rhoda for a great collaboration.

SINGERS

Soprano Sharon Quattrin’s concert repertoire spans the Baroque to the Contemporary periods. She is an active soloist performing with ensembles and orchestras such as the Southwest Michigan Symphony Orchestra, Northbrook Symphony, Music of the Baroque, the Albany (NY) Symphony Orchestra, the Elgin Choral Union and Elgin Symphony Orchestra, Concertante di Chicago, Rockefeller Bach Soloists and Chorus Angelorum.

Hailed for her “brilliant sounds” and “charming stage presence”, Ms. Quattrin’s operatic roles include Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, Papagena in The Magic Flute, both Susanna and the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, Micäela in Carmen, Madame Lidoine in The Dialogues of the Carmelites, Anne Egerman in A Little Night Music and various Gilbert and Sullivan roles. She will sing the role of Liane in Herbert’s operetta Sweethearts this June with Light Opera Works.

A regular performer of the works of John Eaton and many other contemporary composers, “The silvery-voiced soprano” (Chicago Tribune) has premiered and performed numerous chamber operas, chamber works and solo pieces with the Pocket Opera Company of Chicago, Pocket Opera Players, The New York New Music Ensemble, CUBE Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Contemporary Chamber Players and the Chicago Ensemble.

Ms. Quattrin is a past winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council North Carolina District and Southeast Regional competitions; has performed at summer operatic festivals in Italy, Israel and Germany; holds a master of music in vocal performance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a bachelor of science in music education from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. She is a regular performer with Chorus Angelorum of Northwest Indiana, The Chicago Ensemble and Music of the Baroque. Sharon resides in Chicago and teaches music and voice in inner-city Chicago Public Schools through Music of the Baroque and the Merit Music School.  

MARCIE RICHARDSON, Soprano coloratura and jazz singer, originally from Grosse Pointe, MI, received both her BM and MM from Indiana University in vocal performance.  An avid performer of New Music, Opera, Musical Theater, and Oratorio, she has performed with the Indiana University Opera Theater, Indiana University Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Minnepolis Plymouth Music Series, Bloomington Early Music Festival, Bay Area Summer Opera Institute, Aguava New Music Ensemble, and Brevard Music Center. Recent roles include Fiorilla in Rossini's "Il Turco in Italia," Kate in "Kiss Me Kate," Emmaline in Purcell's "King Arthur," Cinderella in "Into the Woods," Rosie in "Cabaret" and Poussette in "Manon." This summer, Ms. Richardson will sing the part of the Queen of Sheba in Handel's "Solomon" with the Bach Chorale Singers in the Bloomington Early Music Festival, and will then travel to Denver, where she will be a studio artist with Central City Opera.           

HYON-SOO SOHN, mezzo soprano is acclaimed as "the embodiment of a beautiful princess, with a mellow burnished mezzo" by The New York Times and is noted for her captivating stage performances and her warm, rich voice. Recently, she appeared on stage as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly, Hansel in Hansel and Gretel, and Nicklaus in Les Countes du Hoffmann, and Siebel in Faust. Additionally, she premiered the opera “. . .inasmuch” by John Eaton.

Equally comfortable on the concert stage, Ms. Sohn was praised for “her sparkling, crystal-clear voice” in her performance as Marguerite in Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust. Ms. Sohn’s repertoire spans a vast range of works. Other works include Handel’s Messiah, Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, Mozart’s C Minor Mass, Bach’s B minor Mass, Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne, and Vivaldi’s Gloria. Additionally, Ms. Sohn’s solid musicality has also made her a favorite for challenging contemporary works such as John Eaton’s Mass and Vespers which she premiered also.

Hyounsoo Sohn began her professional career with the Korean National Chorus, South Korea’s most prestigious choir. She came to the United States in 2000 to pursue further career. She currently resides in Bloomington with her husband.             

Born in Costa Rica, ULISES SOLANO, tenor has sung a wide rage of repertoire. He holds both a bachelor's and a master's degrees from Indiana University.  His repertoire includes works from the early baroque period to music of the XXI century. Among his stage roles are B. F. Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto, in Chico, California; Ernesto in Don Pasquale in Vienna, Austria; Hoffmann in the Tales of Hoffmann, at the Brevard Music Festival in North Carolina; and Haïmon an the world  premiered of John Eaton's opera Antigone, Chicago, 1999. Concert repertoire includes The Messiah, by Handel; Die Schöpfung by Haydn, most of Mozart's Masses, and Carmina Burana, by Carl Orff. Always interested in different genres, Ulises has sang works from Monteverdi to Ariel Ramirez, to Rodgers and Hammerstein. He is always active as a recitalist and in has his own private voice studio in Bloomington, Indiana where he resides. Ulises' voice has been heard on Costa Rican National television and he has traveled and sang in most of Central America, as well as many states in the USA, Austria and Hungary. Upcoming events include Beethoven's 9th in Kutztown, Pennsylvania..

ROBERT SAMELS, baritone, recently completed a Master's degree in vocal performance from Indiana University and will begin his doctorate at IU in choral conducting this fall. While at IU, Samels has performed the title roles in Don Pasquale and Il Turco in Italia, as well as Leporello (Don Giovanni), William Jennings Bryan (Ballad of Baby Doe) and Coppelius (Tales of Hoffmann). Oratorio credits include Raphael in Haydn's Creation, Brander in Damnation of Faust, and the bass solo in John Adams' El Nino. An active composer, Samels has had over 30 world premieres in the past six years, including three orchestra works premiered by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony. His large scale Requiem, for six soloists, organ, chorus and orchestra was performed by faculty and students at Bowling Green State University in 2001, and he is currently writing an oratorio based on the life of Pontius Pilate. Samels was also in the top five finalists of the 1997 National Hammered Dulcimer Championship held in Winfield, Kansas.

INSTRUMENTALISTS

JEAN KOPPERUD (clarinet), known for her virtuoso performances in both the concert hall and musical theater,  is one of the most versatile and innovative clarinetists appearing before the public today. A graduate of the Julliard School and former pupil of Nadia Boulanger, Ms. Kopperud has toured internationally as a concert soloist and chamber musician. National acclaim for her performances of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s HARLEKIN, a tour-de-force for dancing clarinet, promted the New York Philharmonic to present her Avery Fisher Hall debut.  Ms. Kopperud is currently a member of the New York New Music Ensemble, the Chamber Players of the League of Compeers (I.S.C.M), Washington Aquare Chamber Players, Ensemble 21 and the Omega Ensemble.  She is on the faculty of the Juilliard School and the adjunct faculty of Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University.  Ms. Kopperud has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Bridge Records, GM Recording, Koch, Musical Heritage and Centaur records.

JAYNE ROSENFELD (flute) has been an active member of several important musical organizations: the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, with whom she has played first flute for over twenty-five years, the New York New Music Ensemble, where she has been Executive Director for over a decade, and the New York Flute Club, of which she is currently president. She has appeared on many recordings, including twenty with the New York New Music Ensemble, and is the soloist in four recordings of the music of Cimarosa, Roussel, Constantinides, Kraft, Kirchner, Froom, Erickson and Steiger. She teaches at Princeton University and the Juilliard School in the Music Advancement Program, and spends part of every summer at the Manchester (Vt.) Music Festival.   

CELINE PENDERGRAST, flute, is a graduate student at NYU, studying flute performance with Robert Dick. She is co-principal flutist in the NYU Chamber Orchestra, and is involved with NYU's New Music Ensemble and various chamber music groups.
 

MEIGHAN STOOPS, clarinet     

LINDA QUAN (violin) began her violin studies with Joachim Chassman in Los Angeles, California and continued with Joseph Fuchs to earn her B.M. and M.M. degrees at the Juilliard School in New York City.  Ms. Quan has had a diverse career concertizing and recording in the United States, Canada, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia as soloist, chamber musician and principal orchestral player.    Ms Quan’s strong involvement in new music includes performing and recording with the Atlantic Quartet, The New York New Music Ensemble and the ISCM Chamber Ensemble.  In addition, she has appeared and toured with such groups as The Orpheus Chamber Ensemble, The Classical Band, The St. Luke’s Orchestra of New York, and The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, and has appeared in numerous summer festivals including Mostly Mozart at Lincoln Center, Tanglewood, Santa Fe, Blossom, Wolf Trap, Mt. Desert Festival of Chamber Music, and Connecticut Early Music Festival.  International festivals include Festival of Perth, Schleswig Holstein, Lufthansa Festival of London, and Edinburgh International Festival.  Extremely active in the field of “original instrument” performance, Ms. Quan is a founding member of the Aulos Ensemble and Classical Quartet, as well as appearing regularly with The Old Orchestra of the Fairfield Academy, The Handel and Haydn Society, Smithsonian Chamber Players, The Bach Ensemble, Aston Magna and the Helicon Foundation.  Besides her position on the faculty of Vassar College since 1980, Ms. Quan has led workshops in old and new music performance practices at universities and summer academies throughout America and most recently in Bressanone, Italy.  She has recorded on the Harmonia Mundi, Smithsonian, CRI, Musical Heritage Society, MusicMasters, Opus One, and Decca (L’Oiseau-Lyre) labels.  Presently residing in New City, New York, Ms. Quan lives with her husband, oboist Marc Schachman, their children Toby and Nikki, and their Akita dog, Mojo.    

VICTORIA PATERSON, violin    

EMI/Domo recording artist Dave Eggar (cello) has performed internationally as a solo cellist and pianist. This season's engagements have included Carnegie Hall, Central Park Summerstage, Lincoln Center's Avery Fischer Hall and New York State Theater, The Barbican Center Concert Hall in London, Shinjuku Park Tower Hall in Tokyo, and Monaco's Grimaldi Forum. A founding member of the FLUX Quartet, Mr. Eggar has premiered works by Charles Ives, John Cage, Frank Zappa, Conlon Nancarrow, Deborah Drattell, Elliot Sharp, and has performed and recorded with artists such as The Who, Pearl Jam, The New York City Ballet, Kathleen Battle, DJ Spooky, Michael Brecker, and many others. Mr. Eggar is a graduate of Harvard University and the Juilliard school and has received grants from the NEA, Time Magazine, the Leonard Bernstein Foundation, and SONY records for his work in contemporary music. 

STEPHEN GOSLING, piano, is a ubiquitous presence on the New York new music scene, and has also performed throughout the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia. His playing has been hailed as "brilliant," "electric," and "luminous and poised" (New York Times), possessing "utter clarity and conviction" (Washington Post), and "extraordinary virtuosity" (Houston Chronicle).

A native of Sheffield, England, Mr. Gosling relocated to New York in 1989 to begin studies with Oxana Yablonskaya at The Juilliard School. Upon graduation from the Bachelor of Music program in 1993, he was awarded the Mennin Prize for Outstanding Leadership and Excellence in Music. Earlier that year he performed John Corigliano's Piano Concerto with Leonard Slatkin and the Juilliard Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall, and gave the European premiere of Paul Schoenfield's Four Parables with the Dutch Radio Philharmonic under Lukas Foss.

In 1994 Mr. Gosling received his Master's degree from Juilliard and was awarded the Sony Elevated Standards Fellowship. He subsequently enrolled in the Doctor of Musical Arts program, from which he graduated in 2000.

Mr. Gosling was for three years pianist of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and appeared in several seasons of the Summergarden series at MOMA. He has also performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Grant Park Festival in Chicago, the Bang on a Can Marathon, Bargemusic, the 2001 Great Day in New York festival, and the PAN festival in Seoul, Korea. He is a member of both Ensemble Sospeso and the New York New Music Ensemble, and has performed with Orpheus, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Speculum Musicae, DaCapo Chamber Players, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, Continuum, the League of Composers/ISCM Chamber Players, and Da Camera of Houston. He has also participated in Off-Broadway productions and collaborated with a number of dance companies, including American Ballet Theater and Parsons Dance Project.

Mr. Gosling has been heard on the NPR, WNYC and WQXR radio networks, and has recorded for New World Records, CRI, Mode, Innova, and Rattle Records.     

THOMAS KOLOR, percussion, Cited by the New York Times as a "virtuosic percussionist", Tom Kolor specializes in recent solo and chamber music.  He has appeared internationally as a member of the Talujon Percussion Quartet, Ensemble Sospeso, Newband, and Ensemble 21, and is a frequent guest of the Group for Contemporary Music, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Speculum Musicae, Da Capo Chamber Players, Continuum, New York New Music Ensemble, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. As a soloist, he has given dozens of premieres, including the European premiere of Milton Babbitt's "Beaten Paths" for solo marimba. Recent solo engagements include Weill Recital Hall, New York's MOMA, Holland's State Museum at Amsterdam, Princeton University, and the University of California at Berkeley. Mr. Kolor has recorded for Koch, Mode, New World, CRI, Capstone, Naxos, and Albany labels, and is a graduate of the Juilliard School.     

ROB PATERSON, percussion  (b. 1970, Buffalo, NY, USA) has received performances of his music in the United States and abroad by many outstanding ensembles, including the New York New Music Ensemble, the Chicago Ensemble, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Aleph (Paris), Ensemble Nouvelles Consonances (Belgium), the Kairos String Quartet, the Intergalactic
Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the Eastman Marimba Ensemble and Percussion Ensemble, Duo Palmos (Netherlands), Iluminada and the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra. His music has also been performed by the Society for New Music, at the International Trumpet Guild Annual Conference and by the Percussive Arts Society in Poland, as well as at the 2001 Imagine Festival in Memphis, the MANCA 2002 Festival presented by the Centre National de Création Musicale (CIRM), the June in Buffalo New Music Festival, and at many Society of Composers, Inc. (SCI) festivals across the United States.

Paterson has won numerous awards for his music, including the Brian M. Israel Prize, the Finger Lakes Chamber Ensemble New Music Competition, the Tampa Bay Composers¹ Forum 1st Prize for Excellence in Chamber Music Composition, Cornell University¹s William James Blackmore Prize and Barbara Troxell Award, and he has also twice won the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer¹s Award. He was also honored to be the 2001 Michigan Music Teachers Association Commissioned Composer of the Year and has been granted additional grants and awards from Meet The Composer, ASCAP, the American Music Center and the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts.

He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Aspen Music Festival, ASCAP, the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. He received his Master of Music degree in composition from Indiana University and his Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music and his DMA degree from Cornell University. His teachers have included Samuel Adler, Warren Benson, Frederick Fox, John Harbison, Aaron Jay Kernis, David Liptak, Eugene O¹Brien, William Ortiz, Christopher Rouse, Joseph Schwantner, Roberto Sierra and Steven Stucky.

Recent honors include having a chamber work selected from entries from around the world for a European tour by the French group Ensemble Aleph. His Sonata for Bassoon and Piano was recently released on a new SCI CD of chamber works (Capstone) and he recently completed a new work for orchestra, Electric Lines that was one of only seven selected from around the country for the prestigious 2004 Minnesota Orchestra Reading Session and Composer Workshop. The same work was also selected for the 2004 American Composers Orchestra Whitaker New Music Readings in New York City. His most recent honor is being chosen as the Choral Arts Recipient for San Francisco-based
Volti choir¹s 2004/05 season.

Paterson is also active as a professional percussionist, particularly in the area of new music. He has pioneered the development of a six-mallet technique and has given numerous master classes across the United States on the use of this technique. In 1993, he gave the world¹s first all six-mallet marimba recital at the Eastman School of Music. He has freelanced and performed with numerous new music ensembles and orchestras across the Northeastern United States, as well as at the Aspen Music Festival and the Skaneateles Chamber Music Festival. He has recorded for the Mode, Bridge and Riax labels. Paterson plays on a hand-made, custom-designed, five-octave marimba built by Douglas DeMorrow and is an endorser for Mike Balter Mallets.
      

SASCHA VON OERTZEN, electronic music,