ARTISTIC CREW BIO

 

Conductor/Artistic director, Nicole Paiement, has been the Artistic Director of Ensemble Parallèle since 1993. With this professional ensemble, Paiement has recorded and performed many world-premiere performances and toured in various countries. Paiement is also the Artistic Director of the New Music Ensemble at the San Francisco Conservatory and the Director of Ensembles at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she conducts the Orchestra, the Chamber Singers and the Opera and the With all of these ensembles, she has also recorded extensively. In 2002, Paiement, with the support of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, founded the BluePrint project – a series focused on building new music for the city. Through BluePrint and Ensemble Parallèle, Paiement has commissioned many works from international composers and collaborated with various art organizations both in the US and abroad.

Paiement’s interest in both vocal and instrumental music has led her to conduct and record many new operas. She is presently working on mounting the world premiere of Harrison’s final version of his opera Young Caesar to be performed this February in San Francisco. In 2003, she made her Korean debut conducting the world premiere of Chan-Hae Lee’s opera Back to the Origins and Nicola Le Fanu’s Old Woman of Beare. Since then, she has returned to Korea to conduct reprises of these operas and to also conduct the Korean premiere of David Jones’s Bardos. In her interest to work on interdisciplinary projects, she has collaborated with many dancers and media artists. Through these collaborations she toured with Ensemble Parallèle in Australia last summer.

Paiement is also an active guest-conductor. Her more recent guest conducting engagements have included the Suwon Philharmonic Orchestra, the Seoul Contemporary Opera Company, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Kochi Orchestra from Japan, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, the San Francisco Women’s Philharmonic, the Monterey Jazz Festival Orchestra, the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Paiement’s recordings can be found on Mode Records, New Albion, Kleos and MSR records.

 

Brian Staufenbiel

Brian Staufenbiel, (director) is the head of the Opera Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His opera credits includes Bizet's Carmen, Donizetti's The Elixir of Love, Menotti's The Medium, Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, Die Zauberflöte and Don Giovanni and Britten’s Midsummer Night’s dream. Staufenbiel has also directed at the Seoul Contemporary Opera Company the Korean premiere of David Jone’s opera Bardos and the reprise of Chan Hae Lee’s latest opera: Back to the Origin. He has also been guest director in the Sherbrooke, Summer Music Festival, where he directed works by Ravel and Honneger.

As a tenor, Staufenbiel has gained considerable recognition and critical acclaim for his performances in oratorios, operas, and solo recitals in the United States and Canada. His more recent opera performances include leading roles in Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri, Britten's The Rape of Lucretia, Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tirésias, Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, Kurt Weill's Mahagonny, and Mechem's Tartuffe. Staufenbiel has appeared at the Boston Early Music Festival, the Rochester Bach Festival in New York State, and sings frequently throughout the Bay Area. He is well known for his dramatic interpretation of the Evangelist role in Bach's Saint Matthew and Saint John Passion.

Staufenbiel can be heard on various recordings with Musical Heritage Society, Koch International Classics, Mode and Helicon Records.

Lawrence Pech (choreographer/dancer) was invited by Mikhail Baryshnikov to join American Ballet Theater in 1980. For the next six years, Mr. Pech worked with such choreographers as George Balanchine, Martha Graham, Anthony Tudor, Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins (touring to the Spoleto, Italy Festival; ‘82), Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor, Jiri Kylian, Carol Armitage, David Gordon, Natalia Makarova, Eric Bruhn, Mark Morris, and others. And danced with such greats as Mr. Baryshnikov, Ms. Makarova, Ivan Nagy, Cynthia Gregory, Fernando Bujones, Gelsey Kirkland, Cynthia Harvey, Martine Van Hamel, Kevin McKenzie, and others. He has made numerous television appearances with A.B.T. in "Live from Lincoln Center ", as well as figuring prominently with Mr. Baryshnikov in the 1983 BBC movie, "Dancer and the Dance".
In 1986, Helgi Tomasson invited Mr. Pech to join the San Francisco Ballet and in 1989, was promoted to Principal Dancer, working with the likes of David Bintley, William Forsythe, James Kudelka, Mark Morris and others. In 1991, Mr. Pech was the subject of a PBS/KQED Special entitled “Blue Lair”, a ballet about his victory over cancer, awarded a 1991 Emmy for Best Choreography.

Mr. Pech is Founding Artistic Director of Diablo Ballet, Walnut Creek, CA., (1992-95) and of the Lawrence Pech Dance Company (LPDC) (1996). In August, 1999, LPDC inaugurated the annual “Valley of the Moon Festival of the Performing Arts” in Sonoma, CA. Mr. Pech is the current Ballet Master and Resident Choreographer for the San Francisco Opera (since ’97).
Mr. Pech returned to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music to finish his Composition degree (BM) (’05), graduating with Honors. To date, Mr. Pech has choreographed over 45 ballets, 38 musicals, 28 operas and numerous self-produced evenings of original music, dance and theater.

Robert Gordon's (librettist) plays have been developed at such venues as the O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut (as part of the National Playwrights Conference), the Berkeley Repertory Theater in Berkeley, and Theater Rhinoceros in San Francisco. His plays have been produced at the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in SF, the Goodman Theater in Chicago, Playwrights Horizons in New York, and the Center for the Performing Arts in Portland.

Mr. Gordon was playwright-in-residence at ACT, and is the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation grant in playwriting, as well as a Bay Area Dramalogue Award for his play ONCE AND FOR ALL, which premiered at the Marsh in SF. He recently completed a very free adaptation of Hawthorne's HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES, and is currently working on a biographical novel based on the life of the controversial Bishop James Pike, which explores the visions and tensions of the sixties---social, political, sexual, spiritual--- with venues in San Francisco, Los Angles, New York, Cambridge and Israel.

Lawrence Pech was invited by Mikhail Baryshnikov to join American Ballet Theater in 1980. For the next six years, Mr. Pech worked with such choreographers as George Balanchine, Martha Graham, Anthony Tudor, Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins (touring to the Spoleto, Italy Festival; ‘82), Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor, Jiri Kylian, Carol Armitage, David Gordon, Natalia Makarova, Eric Bruhn, Mark Morris, and others. And danced with such greats as Mr. Baryshnikov, Ms. Makarova, Ivan Nagy, Cynthia Gregory, Fernando Bujones, Gelsey Kirkland, Cynthia Harvey, Martine Van Hamel, Kevin McKenzie, and others. He has made numerous television appearances with A.B.T. in "Live from Lincoln Center ", as well as figuring prominently with Mr. Baryshnikov in the 1983 BBC movie, "Dancer and the Dance".
In 1986, Helgi Tomasson invited Mr. Pech to join the San Francisco Ballet and in 1989, was promoted to Principal Dancer, working with the likes of David Bintley, William Forsythe, James Kudelka, Mark Morris and others. In 1991, Mr. Pech was the subject of a PBS/KQED Special entitled “Blue Lair”, a ballet about his victory over cancer, awarded a 1991 Emmy for Best Choreography.

Mr. Pech is Founding Artistic Director of Diablo Ballet, Walnut Creek, CA., (1992-’95) and of the Lawrence Pech Dance Company (LPDC) (1996). In August, 1999, LPDC inaugurated the annual “Valley of the Moon Festival of the Performing Arts” in Sonoma, CA.
Mr. Pech is the current Ballet Master and Resident Choreographer for the San Francisco Opera (since ’97). Mr. Pech returned to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music to finish his Composition degree (BM) (’05), graduating with Honors.
To date, Mr. Pech has choreographed over 45 ballets, 38 musicals, 28 operas and numerous self-produced evenings of original music, dance and theater.

Since 1985, Matthew Antaky, lighting designer has created and collaborated on both scenic and lighting designs for all of the performing arts including Theater, Opera, Dance and Music. His work has been seen though out the United States as well as Europe, Canada, and Mexico. In Recent years Mr. Antaky’s has created designs for The Barber of Seville and The Crucible for Opera San Jose and Festival Operas’ productions of Candide, Tosca, Don Giovanni and Un Ballo in Maschera. For the Cabrillo Music Festival complete designs for Copland’s Tender Land, Phillip Glass’s Photographer and Lou Harrison’s Rapunzel in addition to Bernstein’s MASS which he has also designed multiple productions of around the country including Dallas Symphony, Promusica in Ohio and with the St. Luke’s Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
For the Utah Symphony he designed a concert version of Bartok’s Bluebeards Castle and is currently creating designs for the staging of Eight Songs for a Mad King.

His design history in dance includes many years as Resident Designer with such companies as Stephen Pelton Dance Theater, Liss Fain Dance Company, La Tania Flamenco, Lily Cai Dance Company, Mark Foehringer Dance Project, Fellow Travelers Performance Group, Flyaway Productions, Caminos Flamencos and The San Francisco World Music Festival.
In 1993 Mr. Antaky, became a founding member of Shadowlight Productions, a company pioneering new techniques and designs dedicated to the exploration and performance of shadows. Mr. Antaky is a five-time nominee and two-time recipient of the Isadora Duncan award for Outstanding Visual Design.

Wig and make designer Jeanna Hurd started her career in San Jose where she designed for many south bay theatres. Since moving to San Francisco, she has been creating designs for the American Conservatory Theatre. Theatreworks, Broadway by the Bay, Alemeda Civic Light Opera, UC Santa Cruz, Opera, and Sacramento Civic Light Opera. Mr Hurd also works regularly as guest designer for many theaters in the bay area.