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Boris Godunov Biographies

Cast

Stanislav Trofimov () began his operatic career in the Chelyabinsk House in 2008, and went on to perform leading roles at the Ekaterinburg (the ) and other opera theaters across . He became a soloist at the in 2016. Mr. Trofimov has portrayed numerous leading roles including Boris Godunov (Boris Godunov), Philip II (), Procida (I vespri siciliani), Fiesco (), Konchak ( Igor), Ivan Susanin (Life of the Tsar), Sobakin (Tsar’s Bride), Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich (The of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia), Prince Gremin (), Ferrando (), Don Bartolo (Le nozze di Figaro), and Old Hebrew ( et Dalila). Recent performances include Procida in Mariinsky’s new production of I vespri siciliani, Zaccaria in Nabucco at the opening of Arena di Verona Summer Festival, a tour with the Bolshoi Theatre as Archbishop in The Maid of Orleans in France, and performances at the Festival as Priest in the new production of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Mr. Trofimov will appear at the 2018 Salzburg Festival and at Teatro alla Scala in 2019. These performances mark his San Francisco Symphony debut.

This season, Cuban-American mezzo- Eliza Bonet (Fyodor) made her debut at the Kennedy Center as a member of the Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, singing the role of Bradamante in Handel’s . As a part of this season’s nationwide Bernstein at 100 celebrations, Ms. Bonet performs as Paquette in with the WNO, and with National Symphony in West Side Story. She returns to Washington National Opera for the 2018-19 season performing in Kevin Put’s , Jeanie Tesori’s The Lion, Unicorn, and Me, and Kamala Sankaram and Jerre Dye’s Taking Up Serpents. As a member of the Merola Program at San Francisco Opera, Ms. Bonet performed the role of Eunice in the company’s production of Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire and as Zerlina in . Ms. Bonet’s numerous honors include an Encouragement Award from the National Council Auditions in 2013, being named a finalist at the Opera Birmingham Competition, and a Joe Festervan Memorial Award from the Mary Jacobs Smith Shreveport Opera Singer of the Year Competition. She completed her graduate degree from Florida State University in 2011 and was a Young Artist with Florida and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. These performances mark her San Francisco Symphony debut.

In the 2017-18 season soprano (Xenia) gives performances in the title role of Rhoda in John Musto’s Rhoda and the Fossil Hunt for On Site Opera at the Natural History Museum, reprises her role in Matthew Aucoin’s with American Repertory Theatre at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and plays Fanny in the New York premiere of ’s Morning Star. Last season, she made her European debut with the Stuttgart State Theater in Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, created the title role in the world premiere of Louis Karchin’s Jane Eyre with Center for Contemporary Opera, and concluded a run of Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway. On the concert stage, she performed ’s Lonh with the at the Park Avenue Armory and sang the role of Woglinde in that ensemble’s concert presentation of Das Rheingold. Ms. Zetlan sang the soprano solos in Bruckner’s Te Deum and Mozart’s Mass in C minor with Society of New York at Carnegie Hall and on tour in Uruguay, and was heard at Carnegie Hall as a celebrated alumna of Mannes College of Music in its Centennial Celebration concert. She was also heard in recital with pianist David Shimoni and composer Ricky Ian Gordon, and was seen in Charlottesville Opera’s new production of Oklahoma! as Laurey. These performances mark her San Francisco Symphony debut.

In recent seasons, mezzo-soprano Silvie Jensen (Nurse) has appeared at , San Francisco Opera, American Chamber Opera in Chicago, Island City Opera, and One World Symphony. She has created and performed new works at ’s Barbican Centre with Ornette Coleman, Teatro Comunale di Ferrara with Meredith Monk, and Carnegie Hall with . Ms. Jensen won second place in the 2014 Oratorio Society of New York Solo Competition, and made her solo debut at Carnegie Hall in 2014. This season she makes her debut with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and at the Mendocino Music Festival. She has commissioned and premiered works composed for her, and has appeared in recital in New York at Weill Recital Hall, Steinway Hall, Symphony Space, Americas Society, Liederkranz Club, the Stone, Bonhams, Nicholas Roerich Museum, the Cell Theatre, and at the Ethical Society of Philadelphia. She has made recordings for the ECM, London, Koch, Helicon, MSR Classics, Sono Luminus, and Soundbrush Records labels. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in 2015 and returned most recently in May in the SFS Chorus concert performing J.S. Bach’s Magnificat.

Tenor Yevgeny Akimov (Prince Shuisky) has appeared at the Mariinsky Theatre, San Francisco Opera, , Metropolitan Opera, Opéra de , , National Grand Theatre of China, and , Covent Garden. He has worked with singers including Giuseppe Giacomini, Plácido Domingo, and , and with conductors such as Lorin Maazel, , Esa- Pekka Salonen, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Gianandrea Noseda, and Semyon Bychkov. Mr. Akimov’s discography includes recordings of Boris Godunov, , The Tsar’s Bride, The Love for Three Oranges, , Francesca da Rimini, , and The Bells. In 2009 Mr. Akimov was awarded medals by the Foundation for his performance in Francesca da Rimini and The Bells. These performances mark his San Francisco Symphony debut.

This season, Alexsey Bogdanov (Andrei Shchelkalov) makes his debut with Arizona Opera as Scarpia in and with Sarasota Opera as Sebastiano in d’Albert's Tiefland. He also appears as Lionel in Tchaikovsky’s The Maid of Orleans with Odyssey Opera in Boston and the title role in Anton Rubinstein’s Demon with Gran Teatre del in Barcelona. A graduate of Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, Mr. Bogdanov received additional training as a young artist with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, the Glimmerglass Festival, and San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program. He is a two-time winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council District Auditions, a two-time winner of the Florida Grand Opera YPO competition, and a career grant recipient from the Sullivan Musical Foundation, the Shoshana Foundation, San Francisco Opera Merola Program, and Pasadena Opera Guild. These performances mark his San Francisco Symphony debut.

Bass Maxim Kuzmin-Karavaev (Pimen) graduated from the Conservatory and continued his education at the Opera Centre. He has participated in workshops with , Alexander Malt, Vladimir Chernov, Diane Zola, Richard Bado, Lenore Rosenberg, and Mirella Freni. Mr. Kuzmin-Karavaev has been a soloist at Moscow since 2007, a regular guest soloist at the Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Centre since 2006, and at Bolshoi Theatre Moscow. He is a laureate of the International Glinka Singing Competition in Moscow, the Galina Vishnevskaya International Opera Singers Competition (2008), and Bella Voce Young Opera Singers’ Competition in Moscow (2002). Notable roles include Pimen in Boris Godunov, Rodolfo in La Sonnambula, Bartolo in Le nozze di Figaro, Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor. In concert, he has performed repertory by J.S. Bach, Haydn, Rossini, Schumann, Verdi, Mozart, Fauré, and Saint-Saëns. These performances mark his San Francisco Symphony debut.

Sergei Skorohodov (Grigory) began his operatic career in 2007, when he joined the the Mariinsky Theatre alongside , Olga Borodina, and . Mr. Skorohodov has performed at Festspielhaus Baden Baden, in , Metropolitan Opera in New York, Washington National Opera, Welsh National Opera, among others. After his 2008 debut at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre as Grigory in Boris Godunov, he performed the role at the . Recent highlights include performances of the title role in , Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor, Cavaradossi in Tosca, Ivan in , Erik in The Flying Dutchman, Ismaele in Nabucco, Bacchus in , and Alfredo in La Traviata at the Mariinsky Theatre, State Opera, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Valencia Palau de la Musica, Chicago Lyric Opera, and Glynderbourne Festival. These performances mark his San Francisco Symphony debut.

Vyacheslav Pochapsky (Varlaam) is currently a principal soloist at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre. He has performed with major opera houses in Berlin, Bonn, , Chemnitz, Dresden, Edinburgh, Frankfurt, Genoa, Gera, Glasgow, Graz, London, Milan, Moscow, New York, Paris, Seoul, Stuttgart, Tokyo, Trieste, and Verona. Mr. Pochapsky has appeared in roles in Tchaikovsky's , and Rimsky-Korsakov's , The Tsar's Bride, and Mozart and Salieri. These performances mark his San Francsico Symphony debut.

Tenor Ben Jones (Missail) has appeared on stages around the world, including the Grosser Musikvereinssaal, the Rudolfinum, Mariinsky Theatre, , the Concertgebouw, and Walt Disney Hall. He is featured on recordings on the Albany label, as well as on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, the soundtracks for the video game franchises Halo and Civilization, and on commercials for Coors Light and Meow Mix. Mr. Jones has appeared as soloist with Pittsburgh Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Columbus Symphony, and the Oakland East Bay Symphony, sharing the stage with the likes of , Nathan Gunn, Rita Moreno, Helmuth Rilling, and Val Diamond. In the theatre, he has appeared in Guys and Dolls, Follies, Show Boat, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Cats, and Sweeney Todd, in addition to having portrayed multiple pop culture figures in the San Francisco revue Beach Blanket . He made his San Francisco Symphony debut earlier this season performing in Bernstein's Chichester Psalms and Candide. Mr. Jones is a proud member of SAG, AFTRA, and AGMA.

In the 2017-18 season, American mezzo-soprano Catherine Cook (Innkeeper) appears at the Metropolitan Opera in the role of Camila in Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel. Ms. Cook’s engagements last season included performances as Countess de Coigny in Andrea Chénier with San Francisco Opera, the Witch in excerpts from Humpderdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel with the San Francisco Symphony, and as Older Woman in Jonathan Dove’s Flight with Opera Parallèle. She can be heard in the world premiere recording of After Life with Music of Remembrance, recently released on the Naxos label. Ms. Cook is a professor of voice at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where she holds the Frederica von Stade Distinguished Chair in voice. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in 1990 and returned most recently in March 2018 as a part of the SoundBox show, Synesthesia.

Tenor Stanislav Mostovoy (Holy Fool) was born in , Russia, to a family of musicians. He graduated from the Glinka Boy School in 2000 and the Saint Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory in 2005. Notable roles include Lensky in Eugene Onegin, Boyar Ivan Likov in The Tsar's Bride, the Holy Fool in Boris Godunov, the title role in , and Duke of Mantua in . In 2012 Mr. Mostovoy joined the Bolshoi Theatre Opera Company in Moscow and in 2014 joined the of the XXI Century project. These performances mark his San Francisco Symphony debut.

Bass-baritone Philip Skinner (Nikititsch) is a graduate of Northwestern University and Indiana University. Mr. Skinner has recently performed with the Metropolitan Opera in Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac, Opera Parallèle in Jonathan Dove’s Flight, Pacific Symphony in Aïda, and Charlottesville Opera in Allen Shearer’s Middlemarch in Spring. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 1989 and returned most recently in November 2017 performing Dvořák’s The American Flag. Mr. Skinner’s long association with San Francisco Opera began in 1985 and he has given more than 380 performances in fifty-five productions with the company. His international credits include Rigotetto with the Israel Philharmonic, The Tales of Hoffman with the Victoria State Opera in Melbourne, with Vancouver Opera, and Salome with La Monnaie in . He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 1989 and returned most recently earlier this season as a soloist in Dvořák’s The American Flag.

Bass Chung-Wai Soong (Mityukha) began his singing career with Australia’s Victoria State Opera Chorus. He has performed as soloist with the VSO Schools Touring Company and has toured Europe and the US with Melbourne’s Vocal Consort. He has been a soloist in the requiems of Fauré, Mozart, and Dvořák, as well as Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ, and the Handel roles of Zebul in and Gobrias in . He joined the San Francisco Symphony Chorus in 1994, and made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 2005.

Elliott Encarnación (Boyar in Attendance) is a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Manhattan School of Music in New York. Mr. Encarnación has written for ensembles and institutions in his native Michigan as well as in New York and San Francisco. While his repertory includes numerous sacred choral works, his primary compositional focus is on the art of opera. He co-founded Prodigal Opera Productions in 2013, a Bay Area company, workshop, and theater dedicated to reviving interest, and relevance in the art form. He joined the San Francisco Symphony Chorus in 2013 and appeared as Ragotski in Candide this past January.

San Francisco native Samuel Faustine (Boyar Khrushchov) has appeared in Europe, China, and across the US in roles such as Anthony in Sweeney Todd (San Jose Stage), Vašek in The Bartered Bride (Pocket Opera), Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors (Ray of Light Theatre), Curly in Oklahoma! (Broadway by the Bay), Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi (Kunming Opera Festival), in Carmina burana (San Jose Sinfonia), and many leading roles with Lamplighters Music Theater. Mr. Faustine sings often with San Francisco Symphony, Gaude, Volti, Cappella SF, and many other local ensembles. He graduated with a Master of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He makes his San Francisco Symphony debut with these performances.

Tenor Jonathan Thomas (Lavitsky), a native of Lawrence, KS, joined the San Francisco Symphony Chorus in 2014. He has appeared as a soloist with the SFS in J.S. Bach’s Magnificat and Orff’s Carmina burana, and at SoundBox in Monteverdi’s Magnificat from the Vespers of 1610 and Pérotin’s Sederunt Principes. Mr. Thomas received his bachelor’s in vocal performance from the University of Kansas, and he completed apprenticeships at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City and Des Moines Metro Opera. He has performed with the Kansas City Symphony, Kansas City Chorale, and appeared on recordings as a soloist and ensemble member with the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers. Mr. Thomas currently sings with the chamber choir Cappella SF.

Baritone Matthew Peterson (Chernikovsky) joined the San Francisco Symphony Chorus in 2011. Appearances with the SFS include J.S. Bach’s Magnificat, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy and Missa solemnis, Stravinsky’s Mass, Magnificat from Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 in the SFS SoundBox series, and roles in Candide and Peter Grimes. His Bay Area solo appearances include those with Cappella SF, Opera San Jose, and the San Jose Symphonic Choir; in Washington DC with the Washington Master Chorale; and in the Czech Republic and with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Peterson studied with Hans Boepple and voice with Paul Murray at Santa Clara University.

Los Angeles native Christopher Bordenave (Choreographer/Actor/Dancer) is a curator, dancer, choreographer, and educator. He studied with Lula Washington, Debbie Allen, at the Alvin Ailey School, and holds a BFA in Dance from the Alonzo King LINES /Dominican University BFA program. Mr. Bordenave has performed with Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Morphoses, Luna Negra Dance Theater, and BODYTRAFFIC. He co-founded the movement collective No)one. Art House (NOAH) curating and managing performances and collaborations with noted artists SAINT HERON, Refinery 29, and the Hauser & Wirth. He has choreographed pieces for such artists as Solange Knowles, Kelela, Anderson Paak, Mayer Hawthorne, Tuxedo, Empress Of, and The Assembly Dance, and he teaches at CalArts, Loyola Marymount University, Pomona College, and UC Irvine.

California native Charissa Kroeger (Actor/Dancer) freelances for both commercial and concert dance projects. Her TV, film, music video, and commercial credits include The Ellen Show, Solange Knowles’s Saint Heron, Ford, , St. Vincent, and Anderson Paak. After receiving her Bachelors of Art in Dance from Loyola Marymount University, she furthered her studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance. Ms. Kroeger has performed works by noted choreographers and companies including Gustavo Ramirez Sansano, Bobbi Jene Smith, Tony Testa, Adam Barruch, and No)one. Art House. She currently assists Ryan Heffington on the show The OA, and tours internationally with music artist .

Sasha Rivero (Actor/Dancer) is a singer and dancer born and raised in a Belizean family in Los Angeles, CA. Ms. Rivero is trained in ballet, modern, hip-hop, contemporary, and musical theater, and graduated with a B.A. in dance from UCLA’s dance department. Upon graduating, she fully submerged herself into the commercial and concert dance circuit, performing the works of Ezralow Dance, Ryan Heffington, and No)one. Art House. Ms. Rivero has been assistant choreographer and rehearsal director on several dance projects and has performed in television shows, music videos, and with Los Angeles Opera.

Judson Emery (Actor/Dancer) participated in summer programs at the , the SF Conservatory of Dance, the LINES Ballet School, and the Alonzo King Professional Workshop. He assisted Tyce Diorio and Brian Friedman on So You Think You Can Dance and The PULSE on tour. Mr. Emery has worked on the television shows Glee, Dancing with The Stars, , The X-Factor, as well as the Academy Awards, the Emmys, the Kennedy Center Honors, and the MTV Video Music Awards. He has also worked , , Katy Perry, Florence & The Machine, Cher Lloyd, One Republic, and Adam Lambert. He is currently a faculty member of Revel Dance Convention.

Raised in Marietta, GA, Austyn Rich (Actor/Dancer) began his dance training at Pebblebrook High School’s Cobb County Center of Excellence for the Performing Arts studying dance and acting. Mr. Rich has performed the works of William Forsythe, Bill T. Jones, d. Sabela Grimes, Sylvia Palacios Whitman, Aszure Barton, Micaela Taylor, and many others. He has also been a part of commercial works by Solange Knowles-Ferguson, Adidas, Samantha Blake Goodman, and Gypsy Sport. Mr. Rich currently attends the University of Southern California studying dance with an emphasis on performance art.

Jobel Medina (Actor/Dancer) was born and raised in the Philippines. He received his BFA in Dance at the California State University, Long Beach and is currently a dancer for Ate9 Dance Company in Los Angeles and a touring performer for The YC. He also had the pleasure of performing Tino Sehgal’s Selling Out (2002) at the in LA. Mr. Medina has been a collaborator for NoOneart House since 2016.

Pacific Boychoir Academy (PBA) is a Grammy award-winning, independent choir school with seven afterschool for boys in pre- kindergarten through high school. Founded in Oakland, CA in 1998 by Kevin Fox, PBA serves more than 160 choristers a season. With the addition of a day school in 2004, PBA is the only choir school on the West Coast where a full academic curriculum is integrated with daily musical instruction for boys in grades four through eight. The Day School music program is currently led by Director of Choral Studies Andrew Brown and Artistic Program Director Marcia Roy.

Recent concerts have included masses by Haydn and Mozart and Rachmaninoff’s Vespers performed for the first time in America with boy and altos. In addition to Grammy-winning recordings of Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 3 and 8 with the San Francisco Symphony, the choir’s own recordings feature Bach’s Cantata 150, Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, two of Bach’s “Lutheran” Masses, and two recordings of American spirituals, That Promised Land and Show Me the Way. Andrew Brown is Director of Choral Studies at PBA, Artistic Director of the Vallejo Choral Society, and Concert Choir Director of the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir. He has served as artistic director of the Contra Costa Children’s Choir and has held conducting positions with Holy Names University Preparatory School, Southern California Young Artists Symphony, Riverside Master Chorale, and the Connecticut Valley Chamber Choir.

Production Team

Working at the convergence of opera, theater, and film, Los Angeles-based artist James Darrah (Director) brings together disparate artists and mediums for community-focused collaborations that pair narrative heft and intimate character studies with abstracted, enigmatic realizations of time and space. He is Artistic Director of Opera Omaha’s ONE Festival and directed the premiere of a new production of and Royce Vavrek’s latest opera Proving Up in the ONE Festival, and will direct the show’s New York premiere at the Miller Theater in fall 2018. Mr. Darrah premieres Mazzoli’s VESPERS, a film featuring violinist Olivia DePrato, for NPR’s First Watch, which will debut live with violinist Jennifer Koh at National Sawdust in Brooklyn this spring. This marks the latest chapter in a collaboration that began in 2016, when Mr. Darrah directed the world premiere of Mazzoli and Vavrek’s operatic adaptation of Lars Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves with Opera Philadelphia and the work’s New York premiere with the in 2017 (the opera was subsequently nominated for Best World Premiere at the 2016 International Opera Awards, and won Best New Opera for 2016 from the Musical Critics Association of North America). He directs the world premiere of ’s new opera in his LA Opera debut and at the Prototype Festival in fall 2018. Mr. Darrah returns to Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, reviving his production of Handel’s Alcina for the 2019 International Handel Festspiele; directs a new production of Philip Glass’s Les enfants terribles for the Opera Omaha ONE Festival 2019; develops Hecate House, a new play by Christopher Adams Cohen in Berlin; and creates and directs Ne quittez pas (a re-imagined humaine) to be staged and then filmed on location as part of Opera Philadelphia’s O18 Festival. Mr. Darrah is recipient of the National Princess Grace Award in Theater, the James Pendelton Foundation Grant, was a directing nominee in the 2015 International Opera Awards, and was named Musical America’s New Artist of the Month in December 2015. He is a graduate of the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television where he received the George Burns/Gracie Allen Directing Scholarship. He has taught acting and performance in the Adler Fellowship Program of San Francisco Opera, Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, Cornish College of the Arts, California State University, Long Beach, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Pablo Santiago (Lighting Designer) is winner of the 2017 Richard Sherwood Award and the 2015 Stage Raw Award, and was nominated for an Ovation Award in 2018 and 2014, and the LA Weekly Award in 2014. His work has been seen at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, the Latino Theater Co., Arena Stage in Washington DC, Paramount Theater in Boston, Skirball Cultural Center in New York, San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox, Annenberg Space for Photography, Summer Happenings at the Broad Museum, Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, Su Teatro in Denver, Teatro Brava, Getty Museum, ODC, Opera Santa Barbara, and Francis Ford Coppola’s "Distant Vision" project at UCLA, among others. Recent highlights include Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek's Proving Up at ONE Festival/Opera Omaha, Eugene Onegin with Boston Conservatory Opera, at Boston Lyric Opera, Destiny of Desire at Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Goodman Theater, War of the Worlds with the and The Industry, Skeleton Crew at Geffen Playhouse, Dementia at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, Pélleas et Mélisande with Cincinnati Symphony, Galileo with The Industry, Zoot Suit at the Mark Taper Forum, Breaking the Waves for Opera Philadelphia and Beth Morrison Projects, Flight for Opera Omaha, and Good Grief and Citizen at the Kirk Douglass Theatre. Upcoming projects include Schoenberg In Hollywood at Boston Lyric Opera, Prism at LA Opera, Ted Hearne’s Place at BAM, Ne Quittez Pas: A Reimagined La Voix Humaine at Opera Philadelphia, Pagliacci at Opera Omaha, and Mother Road at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Mr. Santiago was lighting designer for the SFS semi-staged production of Das klagende in 2017 and On the Town and the SoundBox performance Hidden Worlds in 2016.

Adam Larsen (Projection Design) is a documentary filmmaker and designer for live performance. Designs for the San Francisco Symphony include Debussy’s Le martyre de Saint Sébastien, Peter Gynt, Peter Grimes, On the Town, Das klagende Lied, and most recently Michael Tilson Thomas’s Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind. Mr. Larsen is also Resident Projection Designer for SoundBox. Other works include Hal Prince’s LoveMusik on Broadway; Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking The Waves at Opera Philadelphia and Prototype; Lee Breuer’s The Gospel at Colonus at the Athens, Edinburgh, and Spoleto festivals; Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle at the Singapore and Edinburgh festivals; Saariaho’s Maa with Atlanta Symphony; Janáček’s From the House of the Dead at Canadian Opera; The Pelleas Project at the Cincinnati Symphony; Dove’s Siren Song, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Offenbach’s at Hawaii Opera Theatre; ’s A Flowering Tree and Handel’s at Opera Omaha; Handel’s with Pacific Musicworks; John Cage’s Second Hand and Foss’s Phorion with New World Symphony; Dove’s Flight at Juilliard; Yoon’s Sunken Cathedral at Prototype; and Mascagni’s Iris at Bard Summerscape. Mr. Larsen’s documentary about autism entitled Neurotypical aired on the PBS series POV.

Emily Anne MacDonald and Cameron Jaye Mock (Scenic and Costume Design) are the creators of Mac Moc Design, LLC.. Working internationally in opera, theater, dance, and concert, they have worked with the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Los Angeles Philharmonic, , Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, The Juilliard School, Bard Summerscape, Merola, Opera Omaha, Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, and Trinity Wall Street. Ms. MacDonald is an active painter, printmaker, and sculptor, having been a resident artist at Burren College of Art in County Clare, Ireland and at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA, as well as a member of The California Society of Printmakers. Having studied music and dance, and worked professionally in museum design, fashion, and fine art, she has ventured into entertainment design. Mr. Mock, an avid student of live performance, worked and studied for the last fifteen years throughout California living and working as a scenic and lighting designer for companies such as Berkeley Opera, The Broad Stage, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, and The Los Angeles Theater Center before pairing up with Ms. MacDonald. The two hold Masters of Fine Arts degrees in Design for Theater and Entertainment Media from University of California, Los Angeles, a Theater Arts degree from University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Studio Art degree from Mills College.

San Francisco Symphony Chorus Ragnar Bohlin began his tenure as SFS Chorus Director in 2007. Mr. Bohlin served as choirmaster of Stockholm’s Maria Magdalena Church and holds degrees from the in Stockholm. He studied conducting with Eric Ericson and Jorma Panula, piano with Peter Feuchtwanger in London, singing with , and through a -America Foundation scholarship he visited choruses throughout the US. With Stockholm’s KFUM Chamber Choir, the Maria Magdalena Motet Choir, and the Maria Vocal Ensemble, Mr. Bohlin has won numerous prizes in international competitions. Currently teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he has also taught at the Royal Academy in Stockholm and been a visiting professor at Indiana University and Miami University. With the San Fran- cisco Symphony and Chorus, he has conducted J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and B minor Mass, Handel’s , Fauré’s , and Orff’s Carmina burana. Mr. Bohlin’s guest conducting engagements have included appearances with the São Paulo Symphony in , Malmö Symphony in Sweden, Stavanger Symphony in Norway, the Edmonton Symphony in Canada, and the Ericson Chamber Choir in Mozart’s C minor Mass. In 2018 he leads the BBC Singers and Swedish Radio Choir. Mr. Bohlin is the founding Artistic Director of the professional chamber choir Cappella SF; the group has released two recordings on the Delos label. In 2013, he was awarded the Cultural Achievement Award from the Swedish-America Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Symphony Chorus was established in 1973 at the request of , then the Symphony’s Music Director; the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, numbering thirty-two professional and more than 120 volunteer members, performs more than twenty-six concerts each season. Louis Magor served as the Chorus’s director dur- ing its first decade. In 1982 Margaret Hillis assumed the ensemble’s leadership, and the following year Vance George was named Chorus Director, serving through 2005-06. Ragnar Bohlin assumed the posi- tion of Chorus Director in March 2007. The Chorus can be heard on many acclaimed recordings, including Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, and 8 (with Michael Tilson Tho- mas conducting), choral works of Brahms, Mahler’s Das klagende Lied, Stravinsky’s Perséphone, selections from Berlioz’s Lélio, and John Adams’s Harmonium. The ensemble has received Grammy awards for Best Performance of a Choral Work (for Orff’s Carmina burana, Brahms’s German Requiem, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8) and Best Classical Album (for a collection of Stravinsky’s music including Perséphone, The Firebird, and Le Sacre du printemps; and for Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 and Symphony No. 8).