Ariadne Greif, soprano
Seth Parker Woods, cello
Conor Hanick, piano

ARIADNE GREIF, praised for her "luminous, expressive voice" (NYTimes), her "elastic and round high notes" (classiqueinfo), and her "mesmerizing stage presence" (East Anglian Daily Times), began her opera career as a ‘boy’ soprano in the Los Angeles area and at the LA Opera, eventually making an adult debut singing Lutoslawski’s Chantefleurs et Chantefables with the American Symphony Orchestra. She starred in roles ranging from Therese/Tirésias in Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias, singing a “thoroughly commanding and effortless” run at the Aldeburgh Festival, a "sassy" Adina in The Elixir of Love with the Orlando Philharmonic, to Sappho in Atthis by Georg Friedrich Haas, for which the New York Times noted her “searing top notes,” and “dusky depths,” calling it “a solo high-wire act for Ms. Greif,” “a vehicle for Ms. Greif’s raw, no-holds-barred performance,” “one of the most searingly painful and revealing operatic performances in recent times.”

Ariadne began summer of 2025/2026 with Rome is Falling, by Doug Balliett, at the Run AMOC* Festival at Lincoln Center at Alice Tully Hall, and sang Schoenberg String Quartet No. 2 and Colin Jacobsen’s Chalk and Soot with Brooklyn Rider on their festival, also part of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City festival, at Alice Tully Hall. She performed Crumb, Glass, Lang, and Paul Pinto with Adam Tendler in a Gala for PS21 Chatham. She sang a program of French Baroque Airs de Cour with Dušan Balarin in The Affair of the Poisons with Death of Classical, The Royal Opera Orchestra of Versailles, Company XIV, La Creatine Price, and Liana Zhen-ai. And she performed a wild concert of the virtuosic and stomach-turning “Music for People Who Like Art” by Andrew Hamilton and “Machaut-a-go-go” by Eve Beglarian with Contemporaneous. She returned to Club Liza and Nijinsky in a cameo in October, and performed Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2 and Colin Jacobsen’s Chalk and Soot with Brooklyn Rider at Ukaria Cultural Center in Australia, as well as We Need To Talk, by Caroline Shaw, and “Am I in your Light” from Doctor Atomic with the Osmana Quartet. In January she appears as Winston Churchill in Potsdam with the Orlando Philharmonic, in Tiergarten at the Prototype Festival in New York, and in Femenine by Julius Eastman with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. In spring she sings RETROSCOPE by Clarice Assad with the American Youth Philharmonic Orchestras in Washington DC, Les nuits d’été and Fiançailles pour rire with David Kaplan at The Clark, and then in her own neighborhood with Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra, singing Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915.

She has premiered over a hundred new works and more than a dozen new operas. She created a twenty-composer commissioning project, called Dreams & Nightmares, subject of a forthcoming documentary called Only a Dream. Operas have included the role of Yaga the Witch in Matti Kovler’s Ami & Tami, where she played a villain for the first time, and a nameless main role in Gabrielle Herbst’s disturbing masterpiece BODILESS. Though the opera is hardly ‘new’ at a hundred years old, Ariadne sang the main female role, Lady Madeline, in the US premiere of Debussy’s unfinished opera La Chute de la Maison Usher in its most complete form, with the Opera Français de New York. Ariadne has premiered pieces by composers including Kaikhosru Sorabji, Caroline Shaw, Sofia Jernberg, Lukas Ligeti, Aleksandra Vrebalov, Elena Langer, Malik Gaines, and worked closely with Chris Cerrone, Kate Soper, and Ljova Zhurbin.

Ariadne founded Uncommon Temperament, a Manhattan-based baroque ensemble, with whom, among other things, she toured three times, created a traveling production of Bach's Coffee Cantata, thrown a birthday party for Telemann, and made her Poisson Rouge debut, hailed as "…accomplished and winning…" by the NY Times. She also performs and tours regularly with SHUFFLE Concert, with whom she has made more than six tours in North America and the Middle East, and has released a debut album. With Uncommon Temperament, SHUFFLE Concert, and the concert accordionist Merima Kljuco, she has done teaching/performing chamber music residencies at the Gettysburg College Conservatory, Odessa College, Cal State Chico, Mirman School, Philips Exeter Academy, and the Detroit Institute of Art.

As a student, she won the Bard Conservatory Concerto Competition singing Witold Lutoslawski's Chantefleurs et Chantefables, and premiered The Door, by Ryan Chase, with the Mannes Orchestra. A California native, in her early career as a "boy soprano," she toured internationally with the Los Angeles Childrens Chorus, performed as "Sem" in Britten's Noye's Fludde, and sang in the premiere of Tobias Picker's Fantastic Mr. Fox at the Los Angeles Opera under the baton of Peter Ash.

Hailed by The Guardian as “a cellist of power and grace” who possesses “mature artistry and willingness to go to the brink,” three-time GRAMMY®-nominated cellist Seth Parker Woods has established his reputation as a versatile artist and innovator across multiple genres. Woods’ projects delve deep into our cultural fabric, reimagining traditional works and commissioning new ones to propel classical music into the future. As The New York Times wrote, “Woods is an artist rooted in classical music, but whose cello is a vehicle that takes him, and his concertgoers, on wide-ranging journeys.” Also at the forefront of fashion, Woods has topped the “Best Dressed” lists in Variety, Texas Monthly, and OC Register, among others. He is an honoree of the 2023 Seattle Symphony’s 25th Anniversary Silver Gala and recipient of the 2022 Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award. Woods has served on the faculty of the Thornton School of Music at The University of Southern California since 2022, and was appointed to the Robert Mann Chair in Strings and Chamber Music in 2024.

Among the highlights of his 2024-2025 season, Woods performs in the world premiere of Nathalie Joachim’s new cello concerto, Had to Be, at Spoleto Festival USA. He later performs the same piece in its New York premiere as he makes his debut with the New York Philharmonic. Among his other upcoming engagements, Woods performs the East Coast premiere of Rebecca Saunders’ cello concerto Ire as 2024 Guest Artist with The Next Festival of Emerging Artists. He later makes his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut in the world premiere of a new cello concerto by Julia Adolphe. A core member of the music collective Wild Up, Woods is also a featured soloist in the fourth release of Wild Up's GRAMMY®-nominated Eastman Project: Eastman Vol. 4: The Holy Presence, an exploration of composer Julius Eastman’s works on religious themes released June 21, 2024 on New Amsterdam Records and nominated for a 2025 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. In a second new release due out this season on Sono Luminus Recordings, Woods is featured alongside flutist Claire Chase on a recording of music by Anna Thorvaldsdottir.

During the 2023-2024 season, Woods brought his GRAMMY®-nominated, autobiographical tour-de-force Difficult Grace—described as “dazzlingly inventive” (Gramophone Magazine) and “a feast for the ears, eyes and mind” (The New York Times)—to San Diego and Philadelphia. Difficult Grace was premiered at 92NY in the 2022-2023 season with choreographer Roderick George, followed by performances at UCLA and Chicago’s Harris Theater. It was released as an album on Cedille Records in 2023 and nominated for the 2024 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Woods performed the Boston premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s UBIQUE at Harvard University and featured in a pair of performances with GRAMMY® Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn at Konzerthaus Dortmund in Germany. With American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), Woods toured a new version of John Adams’ El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered with libretto by Peter Sellars, concept by AMOC member Julia Bullock. He appeared in two performances of Fallen Petals, a program commissioned by Chamber Music Detroit that was inspired by stories of juvenile offenders serving life in prison.

In the 2022-2023 season, Woods curated and performed a program honoring the centennial of composer George Walker at The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.; premiered Freida Abtan’s My Heart is a River, commissioned by the Seattle Symphony; and performed in a world premiere by Anna Thorvaldsdottir at Carnegie Hall as part of Claire Chase’s Density Series. The Great Northern Festival in Minneapolis presented Woods in his critically acclaimed performance installation, Iced Bodies, in which Woods, in a wetsuit, plays an obsidian ice cello. He also performed on the soundtrack of the PBS documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust—a film by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein. Woods also became a member of celebrated new music ensemble Wild Up, with whom he was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY® Award.

In addition to solo performances, Woods has appeared with the ICTUS Ensemble (Brussels, BE), Ensemble L’Arsenale (IT), zone Experimental (CH), Basel Sinfonietta (CH), Ensemble LPR, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Atlanta and Seattle Symphonies, and in chamber music with Hilary Hahn and pianist Andreas Haefliger. A fierce advocate for contemporary arts, Woods has collaborated and worked with a wide range of artists ranging from the classical world, such as Louis Andriessen, Elliott Carter, Heinz Holliger, G. F. Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Klaus Lang, and Peter Eötvos; popular musicians such as Peter Gabriel, Sting, Lou Reed, Dame Shirley Bassey, and Rachael Yamagata; and visual artists as Ron Athey, Vanessa Beecroft, Jack Early, Adam Pendleton, and Aldo Tambellini. In the 2021-2022 season, he also premiered concertos by Rebecca Saunders and Tyshawn Sorey.

In recent years, Woods has appeared in concert at the Royal Albert Hall – BBC Proms, Aspen Music Festival, Ojai Festival, Snape Maltings Festival, the Ghent Festival, Washington Performing Arts, Strathmore, Dumbarton Oaks (Washington D.C.), The Isabella Gardner Museum (Boston), The Wallis Annenberg Center (Beverly Hills), Das Haus (Brussels), Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Le Poisson Rouge, Cafe OTO, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Klang Festival-Durham, INTER/ actions Symposium, ICMC-SMS Conference (Athens, GR), NIME-London, Sound and Body Festival, Instalakcje Festival, Virginia Tech, La Salle College (Singapore), and FINDARS (Malaysia), amongst others. Recent awards include a DCASE artist grant, Earle Brown/ Morton Feldman Foundation Grant, McGill University-CIRMMT/IDMIL Visiting Researcher Residency, Centre Intermondes Artist Residency, Francis Chagrin Award, Concours Re]connaissance-Premiere Prix, and the Paul Sacher Stiftung Research Scholarship.

Woods’ debut solo album, asinglewordisnotenough (Confront Recordings-London), has garnered great acclaim since its release in November 2016 and has been profiled in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, The Guardian, 5against4, I Care If You Listen, Musical America, Seattle Times, and Strings Magazine, amongst others.

In addition to his post at The University of Southern California, Woods serves on the artist faculty of the Music Academy of the West each summer and has previously served on the faculties of the University at Buffalo, University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, and the Chicago Academy of the Arts and as Artist in Residence at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and Northwestern University – Center for New Music. He holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Musik Akademie der Stadt Basel, and a PhD from the University of Huddersfield. In the 2020-21 season, he was an Artist in Residence with Kaufman Music Center, and from 2018-2020 he served as Artist in Residence with Seattle Symphony and Creative Consultant for the interactive concert hall, Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center.

Seth Parker Woods is a Pirastro Artist and endorses Pirastro Perpetual Strings worldwide. Learn more at www.sethparkerwoods.com.

Pianist Conor Hanick is regarded as one of his generation’s most inquisitive interpreters of music new and old whose “technical refinement, color, crispness and wondrous variety of articulation benefit works by any master.” (New York Times) Hanick has worked with conductors Esa-Pekka Salonen, Ludovic Morlot, Alan Gilbert, and David Robertson; collaborated with the San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Orchestra Iowa, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Juilliard Orchestra; and been presented by the Gilmore Festival, New York Philharmonic, Elbphilharmonie, De Singel, Centre Pompidou, Cal Performances, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Park Avenue Armory, and the Ojai Festival, where in 2022 with AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company) he served as the festival’s artistic director and where in 2026 he’ll be a featured artist under director Esa-Pekka Salonen.

A fierce advocate for the music of today, Hanick has premiered over 200 pieces and collaborated with composers ranging from Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, and Steve Reich, to the leading composers of his generation, including Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Tyshawn Sorey, Marcos Balter, and Samuel Carl Adams, whose piano concerto, No Such Spring, he premiered in 2023 with Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony. This season Hanick presents solo and chamber recitals in the US and Europe, including concerts at the Barbican Centre, Cal Performances, Da Camera, Kaufman Center, and Aviva Studios Manchester, where he’ll join the BBC Philharmonic in the UK premiere of No Such Spring. He also appears with Orchestra Iowa, Ensemble New SRQ, and AMOC*, and collaborates Julia Bullock, Seth Parker Woods, Jay Campbell, and Sandbox Percussion, including the premiere of new works by Tania León, Samuel Adams, Marcos Balter, and others.

Hanick is the director of Solo Piano at the Music Academy of the West and serves on the faculty of The Juilliard School, the CUNY Graduate Center, and Mannes College at The New School. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School and lives with his family in the Hudson Valley.