IN A GROVE

(b. 1984) is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations. His three-time GRAMMY-nominated work balances lushness and austerity, immersive textures and telling details.

His latest release, Beaufort Scales, an oratorio commissioned by Lorelei Ensemble, earned his third GRAMMY nomination. Notable works include The Year of Silence for the Louisville Symphony, A Body, Moving for the Cincinnati Symphony, and Breaks and Breaks, a violin concerto for the Detroit Symphony. His first opera, Invisible Cities, was a 2014 Pulitzer Prize finalist, premiered at LA's Union Station. His albums The Pieces that Fall to Earth and The Arching Path received GRAMMY nominations.

Cerrone won the 2015-2016 Samuel Barber Rome Prize and completed a residency at the Laurenz Haus Foundation (2022-2023). He holds degrees from Yale School of Music and Manhattan School of Music, and teaches composition at Mannes School of Music at The New School. He lives in Jersey City with his wife.

is an award-winning librettist and playwright whose texts serve as blueprints for intricate three-dimensional sonic and visual worlds. Her plays and music-theater works have been presented internationally and across the U.S. Opera libretti include Poppaea (with Michael Hersch, for Wien Modern and Zeiträume Basel, nominated for Austrian Music-theater Prize), Dido (with Melinda Wagner, for Dawn Upshaw and the Brentano Quartet), The Pigeon Keeper (with David Hanlon, for Santa Fe Opera), and Another City (HGO) and The Long Walk ( Opera Saratoga, music for both by Jeremy Howard Beck), as well as numerous operas in development. Her work has been commissioned, presented, or developed by Chicago Lyric, Houston Grand Opera, Utah Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, West Edge, Chicago Opera Theater, and others.

Winner of the 2022 Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, she has received grants/fellowships/residencies from Café Royal Cultural and Howard Foundations, MapFund, NEA, NYFA, NYSCA, Opera America, Venturous Theater Fund, New Dramatists, and more. She taught playwriting at Skidmore College for a decade.

Mary Birnbaum’s November production of Luigi Rossi's L'Orfeo was just named "Best Classical Music of 2021" by the New York Times. In 2019, Mary became the 3rd female director to open the Santa Fe Opera season with a new production of La Bohème as her Dido and Aeneas played Opera Holland Park and Opéra de Versailles. Her work has been seen from Taiwan to Central America, from the Ojai Festival to Seattle Opera and beyond. As a writer, Mary’s English translation of The Barber of Seville, set in the 1990’s in Seville, Florida, premiered at Opera Columbus in February 2020. She has directed films of classical pieces, most recently Obscura Nox, a film of Mozart’s ”Exsultate, Jubilate” with interpolated music by Iman Habbibi.

Currently Associate Director of the post-graduate Artist Diploma in Opera Studies program at Juilliard, Mary has taught acting for singers at Bard College and in the Lindemann Young Artists Program at the Metropolitan Opera. A graduate of Harvard, Mary trained in physical theater at L’Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.