the artists who join us on stage

Ariel Aberg-Riger is a self-taught artist whose work has been featured in gallery shows, magazines, newspapers, apps, plates, and even in a hit card game. She is focused on using the power of visual storytelling to explore issues of equity and social justice, encouraging readers to think differently about history, science, policy, and the other forces that shape our lives. Her debut book America Redux: Visual Stories from Our Dynamic History (Balzer+Bray, HarperCollins) won the 2023 Kirkus Prize for Young Reader’s Literature and was a 2024 Finalist for the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction award, in a addition to being named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Public Library, Publisher’s Weekly, School Library Journal and more.

With over two decades on the cello, Titilayo Ayangade has gracefully navigated classical music's landscape. A recent recipient of the Chamber Music America Artistic Projects grant, as the cellist of Duo Kayo, Titilayo continues her history of excellence in chamber music preceded by awards at Fischoff and tours spanning China to Brazil. Titilayo is a passionate educator, coaching chamber music at New York Youth Symphony, various summer festivals and she is also a 2024 Lift Every Voice Juror at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. In Spring of 2024 Titilayo was awarded the Sphinx MPower Artist grant, to record and release a newly commissioned work by Curtis Stewart. This season features collaborations with m Sphinx Virtuosi, Minnesota Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Lukes, and performances on stages at MAD Museum, Caramoor, Newport Classical, Lincoln Center and more. Titilayo champions BIPOC musicians through commissioning new works, research and performance, advocating for an inclusive musical tapestry. Off-stage, she's a successful portrait photographer, crafting vibrant and colorful images with Grammy-nominated musicians and creatives from all arenas. Explore her journey at www.titilayoandco.com

Eliza Bagg is a Los Angeles based experimental musician, performing in boundary-pushing projects along with composing and producing her own work. She is known for her “ethereal” aesthetic (New York Times), “luminous sound” (New York Times) and “gossamer” singing (New Yorker), along with a unique sound and improvisational practice. Bagg has performed as a soloist around the globe, with a wide-ranging career that includes chamber music at the Concertgebouw, motets by John Zorn at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and Meredith Monk’s opera Atlas with the LA Philharmonic. She has premiered many new works, including those by Ellen Reid with the New York Philharmonic, Ted Hearne at Carnegie Hall, and Chaya Czernowin at Walt Disney Concert Hall. She is a long-time member of GRAMMY-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, touring globally and recording with the group. A renowned collaborator, Bagg frequently develops new work with composers, often bringing her own improvisation, vocal processing system, and compositional skills to the table. She has performed many roles in new operas such as Ted Hearne’s The Source at Festival Musica Strasbourg (2024), Hearne’s over and over vorbei nicht vorbei at the Komische Oper Berlin (2024) and Deutschen Nationaltheater Weimar (2025), Dylan Mattingly’s Stranger Love with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (2023), Du Yun’s Angel’s Bone at Re:naissance Opera (2022), Michael Gordon’s Acquanetta at the Prototype Festival (2018) and Bard Summerscape (2019), Yaz Lancaster’s Paper Tiger with Opera Philadelphia (2023), Ash Fure’s Hive Rise with The Industry (2021), and Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding’s Iphigenia at Cal Performances (2022).

Matt Brady is a music producer and audio engineer living in the Boston area. He picked up guitar at age 11 and found an interest in the recording process soon after. He's produced projects with genres that range as widely as his musical taste – from electronic to pop to classical. In addition to engineering, he's also a keen songwriter, garnering praise for his personal projects as well as collaborations. He has worked with Palaver Strings on both the Lullaby and Lifesongs projects since 2016 and deeply enjoys how meaningful the musical experience is for everyone involved. Aside from making music, he enjoys sushi, time spent in record stores, and propagating plants to the best of his ability.

Director, producer, and librettist Edwin Cahill’s unique background as a concert pianist and Broadway actor “a talented pianist, a first-rate singer, and an engaging stage presence” (New York Times), and linguist with studies at the University of Paris Sorbonne-Nouvelle who served as a French/Italian Political Analyst for Medley Global advisors, informs his “joyful and passionate directing” (onmilwaukee.com) that is “light, effortless, and fits the space like a glove” (Music4awhile), leading to a body of work in theater, musicals, and operas that “will make hearts melt” (Broadway World), is “seamless…completely engrossing the patron in the idiosyncrasies of Mozart’s music” (dosavannah.com), “achieved the nearly impossible...and staged every scene with urgency, inventiveness and most importantly, a reverence for the music” (The Huffington Post), and reached the pop culture breakthrough of the “brilliant and highbrow approval matrix” (New York Magazine). His work has led critics to acclaim that “Cahill has perhaps invented a new style of opera…punk opera comique” (dosavannah.com) and that he created “by far the most enjoyable and thought-provoking Don Giovanni New York has heard in many a year.” (Opera News) Highlights of recent seasons at Hogfish include: a newly set in Maine, English dialogue and direction of Gluck’s THE MAGIC TREE (L’ARBRE ENCHANTÉ), with a commissioned piano-vocal score, orchestral parts, and libretto available for rent. The co-creation and curation of a new English, Spanish, and French libretto and direction of CARMXN at Hogfish, a new musical theater adaptation of the classic opera Carmen exploring borders of gender, genre, and geopolitics. (Also available for rent). And the Maine premiere of Guilliaume Apollinaire and Francis Poulenc’s BREASTS OF TERESIAS, a special English language, two piano-version arranged by Benjamin Britten and Viola Tunnard, in the state-of-the art night club AURA in downtown, Portland followed by TERESA’S TATAS! , the interactive dance party with tunes and themes from the show woven into a night of empowering electronica by DJ xnrg.

Matt Cahill (he/they) believes that each of us is inextricably linked with the world around us, and that by shifting the way we pay attention to that relationship, we can live heaven on earth. Their professions include actor, singer, model, writer, director, choreographer, artistic director, administrator, producer, and teacher. Their art forms include film, television, physical theater, musical theater, concert, opera, and the Alexander Technique. As Le Monde in Paris declared of their performance of Papageno in Peter Brook’s Molière Award-winning adaptation of The Magic Flute, Une Flüte Enchantée “you really want to hear him in either an opera or a musical. He has a big presence, a warm baritone voice, immense humanity, and the gift of an actor.” They have performed at Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, American Repertory Theater, Barbican Theatre on The West End, Les Bouffes du Nord in Paris, Piccolo Teatro in Milan, New York City Opera, and The Kennedy Center; sung with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and Leipzig MDR Symphony Orchestra; and appeared in the National Tour of Scrooge: The Musical, on television in Law & Order, and in the feature film The Producers! Matt is passionate about educating the next generation of artists in a way that empowers each artist’s inner creative fire and self-agency, is inclusive, diverse, and “out-of-the-box” in terms of both human and artistic genres. They consider the regenerative arts residency at Hogfish to be the culmination of their work creating an incubator space for the next generation of stories as medicine from artist to community and back again.

Liz Knowles’ fascination with music has always been rooted in how one can arrive, land, and leave a note. Her early foundations were in classical music but her discovery of Irish music connected the dots between memories of her grandfather’s singing, a lifelong exploration of modal melodies in Early music, and the “In-Between”, a life theme for Liz that illuminates the challenge and vitality of the liminal places in life and music. Liz has established herself as a dynamic performer and recording artist as soloist on the soundtrack for “Michael Collins”, fiddler with “Riverdance”, Broadway’s “The Pirate Queen” and “The Green Bird”, soloist with the New York Pops and featured artist for the Ireland 100 Festival at the Kennedy Center. She was music director and producer for several stage shows and recording projects that toured Europe, Asia and South America. Her compositions and arrangements of tunes and songs have been recorded by John Whelan, Flook, Chicago’s Metropolis Symphony Orchestra, Liz Carroll, Beolach, Bachue, J.P. Cormier, Michael Black, John Doyle, and Ensemble Galilei. In addition to serving on the faculty at the New England Conservatory, she has an active online teaching schedule of lessons, seminars, and presentations on various topics, some of which have been presented by organizations such as New York’s Irish Arts Center, and Music Network Ireland and is a highly sought after teacher in the Irish music world both here in the United States and abroad. Liz has composed and produced music for two exhibits featuring Irish art first at the Art Institute in Chicago as well as two commissioned pieces for Notre Dame’s Snite Museum and for a book release later this year. She and Liz Carroll produce a podcast called “The Lizzes Podcast” and Season 2 is due out in the spring of 2024. She currently tours with her trio Open the Door for Three, The String Sisters, The Martin Hayes Quartet, and a new trio with Niall Vallely and Niwel Tsumbu.

Chris Pattishall is a pianist and composer known for his wide stylistic breadth, meticulous sense of detail, empathy, and an inclination towards the surreal. An in-demand pianist and musical collaborator, Chris has established himself over the last decade as “an expert at using the jazz tradition as a jumping-off point for experimentation” (JazzTimes). His 2021 release Zodiac — a reimagining of the Zodiac Suite by pioneering yet under-appreciated pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams — was called “a startling achievement” (NY Times) and “a hell of a debut album” (Stereogum). With an expanded ensemble and subliminal layers of electronic sound design, Zodiac immerses the listener in a visceral, dreamlike experience of Williams’s kaleidoscopic suite. Chris is a featured performer on a wide range of recordings, from the GRAMMY- nominated debut album of Jamison Ross to the film scores of Knives Out, Nightmare Alley, and Everything Everywhere All At Once. He has collaborated with artists across multiple disciplines, including Shariffa Ali, Kamilah Long, Michela Marino-Lerman, Simeon Marsalis, Najja Moon, Kambui Olujimi, and Samora Pinderhughes.

Syrian-American-Canadian Kareem Roustom is an Emmy-nominated composer and performer (on the oud) of emotionally rich, rhythmically intricate music for chamber, orchestral, choral ensembles, dance and chamber opera. Blending Middle Eastern traditions with contemporary colors, Roustom’s genre crossing collaborations include music commissioned by conductor Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, arrangements for pop icons Shakira and Tina Turner, as well as a recent collaboration with acclaimed British choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh. Roustom has been composer-in-residence at the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago, the Grand Teton Music Festival in Wyoming, and with the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen in Germany and the Mannheim Philharmonic. A musically bi-lingual composer, Roustom is rooted in the music of the Arab near-east but his music often expresses beyond the confines of tradition. The themes of a number of his works often touch issues of those affected by war and instability, as well as themes of spirituality.

Vuyo (Vuyolwethu) Sotashe is an award-winning New York-based jazz vocalist and composer, originally from the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Since moving to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar, Sotashe has performed with jazz legends including Wynton Marsalis, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Jimmy Heath, Al Jarreau, and Winard Harper. He has appeared at Montreux Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, and Newport Jazz Fest, and was the first male vocalist to place in the finals of the Thelonious Monk Institute competition.

GRAMMY Award-winning cellist Andrew Yee has been praised by Michael Kennedy of the London Telegraph as “spellbindingly virtuosic”. Trained at the Juilliard School, they are a founding member of the internationally-acclaimed Attacca Quartet who have released several albums to critical acclaim including, Andrew’s arrangement of Haydn’s “Seven Last Words,” which Thewholenote.com praised as “ . . .easily the most satisfying string version of the work that I’ve heard.” They were the quartet-in-residence at the Met Museum in 2014, and have won the Osaka and Coleman international string quartet competitions. Their newest recording of the string quartets of Caroline Shaw won a GRAMMY for best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble performance. As a soloist last season, Andrew performed John Taverner’s The Protecting Veil and Strauss Don Quixote. In 2019 they won the first prize at Oklahoma University’s National Arts Incubation Lab for their pitch of a wearable garment that translates sound into vibrations for the hard of hearing. They like to make stop-motion videos of food, draw apples, cook like an Italian Grandma and have developed coffee and cocktail programs for award-winning restaurants (Lilia, Risbobk, Atla) in New York City. Their solo project “Halfie” draws on their experience as a bi-racial and non-binary person in having access to multiple communities at once, while not feeling at home in any of them. The works commissioned and on the concerts will feature a wide range of composers all for solo cello.