Music on the Mind

Composer Marc Neikrug has had an international career for 30 years. He has written chamber music, symphonic music, music-theater, and opera. Major performances have taken place with the New York, Los Angeles, and Buffalo Philharmonics, as well as the symphonies in Pittsburgh, Houston, Atlanta, Cincinnati, New World (Miami), St. Louis, Washington DC, Chicago, Utah, Dallas, Phoenix, New Mexico, the Minnesota and Cleveland orchestras, and the St. Paul and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestras.

His works have been performed internationally, by the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa, the BBC Symphony, London Synfonietta, English Chamber Orchestra, Halle Orchestra, Zurich Tonhalle, Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Barcelona Symphony, Liege Orchestra, Lisbon Orchestra, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, Osaka Symphony, Jerusalem Symphony, and the Israel Chamber Orchestra. Festival performances have been at Ravinia, Tanglewood, Hollywood Bowl, Aspen, Angel Fire, La Jolla, Marlboro, Menlo, London’s South Bank, Aldeburgh, Berlin Festival, Frankfurt Festival, Schleswig Holstein, Zurich, Melbourne, Tokyo’s Music Today, and Jerusalem.

Among noted performers of his music are Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Christoph Eschenbach, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Alan Gilbert, David Zinman, Leonard Slatkin, Lawrence Foster, Oliver Knussen, James Galway, Pinchas Zukerman, Maximilian Schell, John Turturro, and the Emerson, Vermeer, Tokyo, and Orion Quartets. His music-theater work Through Roses was commissioned by London’s South Bank Festival with the National Theater. Since its premiere in 1980 it has had hundreds of performances in fifteen countries and has been translated into 11 languages. There are three CDs on Deutsche Grammaphon, Enya, and Koch International.

There have also been two films produced: a documentary by Christopher Nupen, and a feature film directed by Jurgen Flimm and starring Maximilian Schell. Los Alamos, an anti-nuclear opera written in 1988, is the only American opera ever commissioned by the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Its American premiere was at the Aspen Music Festival. Neikrug has been composer-in-residence at the Marlboro, Santa Fe, Angel Fire, Bravo Vail, and La Jolla festivals. Works have been recorded on Deutsche Grammaphon, Koch International, Stereophile, Laurel, and Enya records. His publishers are G. Schirmer and Chester Music.

Visual artist, designer, and director Doug Fitch, who collaborates on A Song by Mahler with lighting designer Nicholas Houfek, is known for his acclaimed and innovative productions of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre and Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen for the New York Philharmonic, Puccini’s Turandot for The Santa Fe Opera, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel for LA Opera, HK Gruber’s Gloria—A Pig Tale for The Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with the New York Philharmonic and The Juilliard School, and Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat for the Festival. “The thing about A Song by Mahler,” Mr. Fitch says, “is that there’s nothing else like it. I love how musically and dramatically efficient this opera is and how it reinvents the form while being completely adherent to the storytelling.” The Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Giants Are Small, Fitch was the inaugural visiting artist at SUNY, where he created an opera of images, How Did We...? , and he has directed projects for Canada’s National Arts Centre, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and Tanglewood.

Nicholas Houfek is a New York City-based lighting designer working in music, dance, and theater. Selected projects include: Claire Chase’s Density Project (The Kitchen,) International Contemporary Ensemble, Oyá by Marcos Balter (NY Philharmonic, Soloist for Light,) Natalie Merchant, Maya Beiser, Ojai Music Festival, Silk Road Ensemble, Tyshawn Sorey’s Perle Noire directed by Peter Sellars (OMF, Oberon-ART,)Marc Neikrug’s A Song by Mahler, Anohni’s She Who Saw Beautiful Things at The Kitchen, Suzanne Farrin’s La Dolce Morte at the Metropolitan Museum of Art directed by Doug Fitch, George Lewis’ Soundlines featuring Steve Schick and directed by Jim Findlay (Skirball,) Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s In The Light of Air, Ash Fure’s The Force of Things (Mostly Mozart,) and The 39 Steps (Olney Theatre Center). In addition to traditional lighting for live performance Mr. Houfek has been developing a light organ software interface called the ColorSynth that acts as an intermediate between a performer and their lighting. Mr. Houfek has also designed for the Martha Graham Dance Company, Cedar Lake Contemporary Dance, and Ian Spencer Bell Dance; is an ensemble member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, a member USA829, and a graduate of Boston University.

A naturally gifted singer known for her commanding stage presence and profound artistry, Jennifer Johnson Cano has garnered critical acclaim for committed performances of both new and standard repertoire. In response to her performance as Virginia Woolf in The Hours with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Opera News praised her “impressive tone and dead-on pitch throughout a wide range, and a fierce command of words,” calling her “a matchless interpreter of contemporary opera.” The New York Times noted her “mellow sobriety — and, in Woolf’s darkest moments, stricken intensity.” As Offred in Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale she was lauded by the Times as “towering…restless, powerful, profound, she is as formidable as this astonishingly demanding role deserves." With more than 100 performances on the stage at The Metropolitan Opera, her most recent roles have included Nicklausse, Emilia, Hansel and Meg Page.

Cano undertakes a balance of orchestral, opera and chamber music performances each season.  She appears with major orchestras and conductors, and has collaborated on numerous projects with the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst as well as the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel in both the US and Europe. She has performed with the New York Philharmonic in both New York and Vail, as well as the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck.

Highlights of Ms. Cano's 2021-22 season included performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin in a world premiere of Kevin Puts's The Hours, a debut with the Chicago Symphony and Riccardo Muti and a return to the San Francisco Symphony for Beethoven's Ninth. She starred in the New York premiere of A Song By Mahler, a new chamber opera by Marc Neikrug at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.  She made operatic debuts in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites (Mother Marie) with the Houston Grand Opera, the world premiere of Gregory Spears' Castor and Patience (Celeste) with the Cincinnati Opera and Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle (Judith) with the Roanoke Opera.

This season she performs at the Metropolitan Opera in Falstaff (Meg Page) and makes her company debut with the Atlanta Opera in Don Giovanni (Donna Elvira); she also appears with the New York Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony and Atlanta Symphony.  Jennifer returns to the Chamber Music Society of New York, where she performs Mahler's Rückert-Lieder; and to the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society in an All-Bach Program with the Gamut Bach Ensemble.

Previous operatic appearances have included Donna Elvira, Carmen and Offred with the Boston Lyric Opera; the role of the Fox in The Cunning Little Vixen with the Cleveland Orchestra and Welser-Möst; the Mother the Dragonfly, and the Squirrel in L'enfant et les sortilèges with the San Francisco Symphony; performances of El Niño with John Adams and the London Symphony Orchestra; Carmen with the New Orleans Opera and the title role in Orphée with the Des Moines Metro Opera and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

A native of St. Louis, she earned degrees from Rice University and from Webster University, where she was honored as a distinguished alumna and commencement speaker in May 2017. Her debut recital recording with pianist Christopher Cano, “Unaffected: Live from the Savannah Voice Festival,” was recorded live and unedited. Recent recordings include a live performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony as well as Bernstein's Symphony No. 1 "Jeremiah" with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She also recorded Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble.

Ms. Cano joined the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera after winning the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and made her Met debut during the 2009-10 season. Among her honors are Winner of the Young Concert Artist International Auditions, a Sara Tucker Study Grant, a Richard Tucker Career Grant and a George London Award.

Anjan Chatterjee is Professor of Neurology, Psychology, and Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and the founding director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. He received his BA in Philosophy from Haverford College, MD from the University of Pennsylvania and completed his neurology residency at the University of Chicago.

The past Chair of Neurology at Pennsylvania Hospital, Dr. Chatterjee’s clinical practice focuses on patients with cognitive disorders. His research addresses neuroaesthetics, spatial cognition, language, and neuroethics. He wrote The Aesthetic Brain: How we evolved to desire beauty and enjoy art and co-edited: Neuroethics in Practice: Mind, medicine, and society, The Roots of Cognitive Neuroscience: Behavioral neurology and neuropsychology and the forthcoming Brain, Beauty, and Art: Bringing Neuroaesthetics in Focus. His editorial services include: American Journal of Bioethics: Neuroscience, Behavioural Neurology, Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, Empirical Studies of the Arts, European Neurology, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, European Neurology, Neuropsychology, and The Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. He received the Norman Geschwind Prize in Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology by the American Academy of Neurology and the Rudolph Arnheim Prize for contributions to Psychology and the Arts by the American Psychological Association.

Dr. Chatterjee is a founding member of the Board of Governors of the Neuroethics Society, the past President of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics, and the Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology Society. He is on the Board of the Global Wellness Institute, and has served on the Boards of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Haverford College, the Norris Square Neighborhood Project and the Associated Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired.